Stela of a Woman Named Niseret

Stela of a Woman Named Niseret

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This stela bears the name of a woman who lived in the early days of the Egyptian state. Her stela was found in the royal cemetery in Abydos, which yielded approximately 360 similar stelae, the majority of which belonging to women. The surface of the stela is weatherworn, but one can still make out the three hieroglyph and the image of a squatting woman, carved in larger proportions. The reading of the name is difficult to translate, as the hieroglyphs belong to the earliest stages of the writing system, before more standard forms were introduced. Thus, her name has been previously rendered as Senba, Niseret, and Nitkhnum. Her figure acts both on the visual level and on the level of the script, serving as a classifier (determinative) for women.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Stela of a Woman Named NiseretStela of a Woman Named NiseretStela of a Woman Named NiseretStela of a Woman Named NiseretStela of a Woman Named Niseret

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.