Stele of Lady Taperet

On this small wooden stele the rays of the sun fall as flowers. Lady Taperet stands in a pleated gown with her hands raised before Re-Horakhty, the falcon-headed sun god, and from the disc on his head streams of blossoms pour down towards her where you would expect lines of light. The flowers can be read as life itself, the reward she hoped her devotion would bring. On the other side she stands before Atum, the sun at its setting, who wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. Above him bends the goddess Nut, her body painted deep blue and scattered with stars. Egyptians believed she swallowed the sun every evening and gave birth to it again at dawn. Stelae like this one were placed in Theban tombs in the 22nd and 23rd Dynasties, in the 9th and 8th centuries BC, so that the dead could travel with the sun through the night and rise with it. Louis Batissier, a French collector, gave it to the Louvre in 1851.