Stele of Khety

Under Senusret I, the second king of the 12th Dynasty, officials of every rank set up stelae at Abydos, where Osiris, the god of the dead, was believed to lie buried. This one was shared by colleagues. Three men with shaven heads stand with their hands raised in prayer, and the inscriptions give all three the same junior title, assistant sealer, a minor post in the treasury. They are Khety, Hetepuy and Mery. Khety's line names his mother, Hetep, and a son called Senusret, like the king. Above the offering table, at a much smaller scale, a man holds up birds and a woman kneels with a vase. Mery may be what dates the stone. Another stela in the Louvre belongs to an assistant sealer of the same name and carries a year of Senusret's reign, and Egyptologists group the two with two more stelae thought to have stood together in one offering chapel at Abydos, both belonging to the general Nesumontu. The whole group, three stones in Paris and one in Berlin, is also attributed to a single workshop of carvers.