Maarten J. Raven

René van Walsem

Willem F. M. Beex

Amanda Dunsmore

Ladislava Horáčková

This funerary monument of a high Memphite official was discovered by a joint expedition of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities and Leiden University in 2001. Meryneith started his career as steward of the Memphite temple of the sun god Aten during the reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. During midlife, he may have joined the court set up by the Pharaoh at the new capital at Amarna. He ended his career under Tutankhamun as high-priest of the Aten in the Memphite temple again. Thereby, the importance of the tomb of Meryneith lies in the fact that for the first time it allows us to witness various stages in the rise and fall of the Amarna heresy from a Memphite point of view. Thus the tomb-owner was apparently forced to change his name from Meryneith - with its reference to the now proscribed goddess Neith - into Meryre. Several other variants of his name and some additional titles came to light, revealing various stages in his career. These stages mirror the ideological developments of the Amarna Period and its immediate aftermath, which are further illustrated by the different styles of the decoration of the tomb. This proved to be remarkably well preserved and consists of both wall-reliefs and paintings on mud plaster. Thanks to the evidence of the inscriptions, it can be observed how the tomb was built and decorated in various stages, each characterized by a marked change in style and iconography. The present report includes a full description of these wall scenes, as well as chapters on the career of the tomb-owner, on the double statue of Meryneith and his wife found in one of the west chapels, and on the objects, pottery, and skeletal material found in the course of the excavations.

The Tomb of Meryneith at Saqqara

Geoffrey Thorndike Martin

David Aston

Janine Bourriau

Rene Van Walsem

The New Kingdom Pottery

The Memphite Tomb of Horemheb

The tomb of the official Pay, at Saqqara, was originally constructed in the reign of Tutankhamun and then adapted by his son and successor Raia. It was used for the family's burials until the reign of Ramesses II, and then plundered soon after the final interment. In the Saite and Persian Periods, the tomb was reused for lower-status burials. First discovered in the nineteenth century, the tomb was excavated and recorded by the joint EES/National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden expedition between 1994 and 1998. This book, the result of international collaboration by many scholars, provides a full and detailed publication of the tomb's architecture, its relief decoration and the excavated objects.

The Tomb of Pay and Raia at Saqqara

"The ancient Egyptians were firmly convinced of the importance of magic, which was both a source of supernatural wisdom and a means of affecting one's own fate. The gods themselves used it for creating the world, granting mankind magical powers as an aidto the struggle for existence. Magic formed a link between human beings, gods, and the dead. Magicians were the indispensable guardians of the god-given cosmic order, learned scholars who were always searching for the Magic Book of Thoth, which could explain the wonders of nature. Egyptian Magic, illustrated with wonderful and mysterious objects from European museum collections, describes how Egyptian sorcerers used their craft to protect the weakest members of society, to support the gods in their fightagainst evil, and to imbue the dead with immortality, and explores the arcane systems and traditions of the occult that governed this well-organized universe of ancient Egypt."--Publisher's website.

The Quest for Thoth's Book of Secrets

Egyptian Magic

Maarten J. Raven

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