Stela of Lady Nestarut Led by Thoth before Atum

In about 943 BC a general of Libyan descent named Sheshonq took the throne of Egypt and founded the 22nd Dynasty. For the next two centuries Egypt was ruled by families whose ancestors had come from Libya, west of the Nile valley, yet the small wooden stelae made for their subjects kept the traditional Egyptian imagery of the afterlife.

The lady Nestarut is being led into the presence of a god. Thoth, with the head of an ibis, holds his scribe's palette and presents her. She wears a pleated dress, a heavy wig and a cone of perfume on her head, and she breathes in the sign of life, the ankh. Facing her sits Atum, wrapped in a shroud like a mummy and wearing the red crown, holding the crook, the flail and the was sceptre. A chain of ankh signs runs between the god and the dead woman. The hieroglyphs give ritual formulas, and her father's name may have been Ankhpakhered.

The stela came to the Louvre in 1826, and the next year Champollion described it in his catalogue of the Egyptian rooms, as number A. 309.