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The Stele of Shemai, Chief of Police, of the Early Twelfth Dynasty, in The Cleveland Museum of Art

Lawrence M. Berman

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n choosing a subject wherewith to honor my former teacher, Kelly Simpson, I have been guided by his interest in all things Middle Kingdom and also his devotion to publishing little-known monuments in American collections. In 1901–02 and 1904, Lady William Cecil, eldest daughter of William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst of Hackney, excavated thirty-two rock-cut tombs at Qubbet el-Hawa, opposite 1 Aswan. Family friend Howard Carter, then Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt, was periodically on hand to supervise the excava2 tions. Lady Cecil’s share of the finds entered the Amherst collection at Didlington Hall, Norfolk. When the major part of this important collection was auctioned at Sotheby’s, London, in 1921, Carter acted as agent 3 for the Cleveland Museum of Art. Among the dozen objects he acquired for the Museum was the upper part of a stele inscribed for a chief of police named Shemai, from Lady Cecil’s second season at Qubbet el4 Hawa (figs. 1–2). The stele is in the form of a false door framed on three sides by a torus molding with transverse and diagonal lashings in raised relief and crowned by a curved cavetto cornice with parallel palm fronds. The panel is sunk within a door frame. Below was probably a lintel and one or 5 more pairs of jambs enclosing a central niche. The main scene, carved in raised relief, shows Shemai on the right, seated on a low-backed chair, facing left toward a pile of offerings. He 1

Lady William Cecil, “Report on the Work Done at Aswan,” ASAE 4 (1903), pp. 51–73, with pl. IV; idem, “Report of Work Done at Aswan during the First Months of 1904,” ASAE 6 (1905), pp. 273–83; PM 5, pp. 240–42. 2 See T.G.H. James, Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamen (London and New York, 1992), pp. 81–82. 3 For Carter’s association with the Cleveland Museum of Art, see idem, “Howard Carter and The Cleveland Museum of Art,” in Evan H. Turner, ed., Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum (Cleveland, 1991), pp. 66–77.

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Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson

Fig. 1. Stele of Shemai. Painted limestone, 83.4 x 87.4 cm. Aswan, Qubbet el-Hawa, northeast slope of hill, excavations of Lady William Cecil, 1904, tomb no. 28, early Dynasty 12, probably reign of Sesostris I. Gift of Edward S. Harkness. CMA 21.1017.

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Lawrence M. Berman, The Stele of Shemai, Chief of Police, of the Early Twelfth Dynasty, in The Cleveland Museum of Art

wears a short, curled wig that covers the ears, a pleated kilt, and a sash across his chest. His broad (wesekh) collar is composed of three rows of tubular beads and an outer row of drop-shaped beads. He wears bead bracelets on both wrists, and a bead belt. His left hand rests on his thigh, holding a folded bolt of cloth or handkerchief, while his right reaches out toward the pile of offerings: joints of meat, loaves of various shape, a duck or goose, a basket of figs on a tray, onions or leeks, and other vegetables. In the center is a raised relief inscription arranged in three columns: “The one honored before Osiris, lord of Busiris, (2) the great god, lord of Abydos, that he may give invocation-offerings of bread and beer, oxen and fowl, (3) linen and travertine (vessels) to the ka of the overseer 6 of police, Shemai, vindicated.” Some of the much faded color remains. The door frame is inscribed in sunk relief with two offering formulae beginning in the center of the lintel and continuing down the jambs on either side. On the right is “An offering which the king gives to Anubis, who is on his mountain, who is in the place of embalming, lord of the cemetery, that he may give a thousand of bread and beer, oxen and fowl, 7 linen and travertine, of[ferings and provisions(?)…]” On the left is “An offering which the king gives to Osiris, lord of Busiris, the great god, lord 8 of Abydos [that he may give…]” Some of the hieroglyphs have raised

4 CMA 21.1017 Stele of Shemai, painted limestone, H. 79 cm, W. 87.4 cm, D. at cornice 24 cm, D. below cornice 13 cm. Aswan, Qubbet el-Hawa, northeast slope of hill, excavations of Lady William Cecil, 1904, tomb no. 28, early Dynasty 12, probably reign of Sesostris I. Gift of Edward S. Harkness. Ex collection: William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst of Hackney, Didlington Hall, Norfolk; sale: London, June 13–17, 1921, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, The Amherst Collection of Egyptian and Oriental Antiquities, lot 191, cat. p. 19 and pl. IV (as midDynasty 18). Publications: Cecil, ASAE 6, pp. 276–77; Handbook of The Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, 1925), p. 55, repro. (as Dynasty 18), 2nd ed. (1928), p. 70, repro. (as Dynasty 18); PM 5, p. 241. 5 E.g., J. Vandier, Manuel d'archéologie égyptienne, vol. II: Les grandes époques. L'architecture funéraire (Paris, 1954), p. 407, fig. 278, 1, 3. 6 The name is incorrectly spelled in Cecil, ASAE 6, p. 277, with the feather (H 2) as the final sign; it is the reed leaf. For the title, ¡my-r ßnt (or ßn†), William A. Ward, Index of Egyptian Religious and Administrative Titles of the Middle Kingdom (Beirut, 1982), no. 390; add Labib Habachi, Elephantine IV: The Sanctuary of Heqaib, AV 33 (Mainz, 1985), no. 85, line 17, a stele from the Heqaib sanctuary; Guillemette Andreu, “Deux stèles de commissaires de police (¡my-r ßn†) de la Première Période Intermédiaire,” Mélanges Jacques Jean Clère (= Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et d'Egyptologie de Lille 13) (1991), pp. 11–23; Ronald J. Leprohon, “Administrative Titles in Nubia in the Middle Kingdom,” JAOS 113 (1993), p. 432, no. [143], with references. I thank Professor Leprohon for an offprint of his very useful article. 7 Ìtpw, 8 The

probably followed by ∂f£w “provisions.” top part of d¡ is just visible.

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Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson

Fig. 2. Head and shoulders. Detail of stele of Shemai, CMA 21.1017.

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Lawrence M. Berman, The Stele of Shemai, Chief of Police, of the Early Twelfth Dynasty, in The Cleveland Museum of Art

interior modeling with incised detail—note particularly the quail chick and owl (figs. 3–4). Traces of red, black, blue, and green pigment on the surface are discernable to the naked eye. Shemai’s skin is painted red, as is every third square of his belt; his wig is black. The offerings of meat, bill and feet of the goose, and basket of figs are red. The hieroglyphs are blue for the swtplant, the bread (t), the mountain (∂w), the reed leaf, the t£-sign, the throne in Wsr “Osiris,” and the city-sign; red for the conical loaf (d¡), ¡my, the hand (d), the vertical stroke in Îdw “Busiris,” and the foot (b) in £b∂w “Abydos;” black and blue for Anubis on his shrine; red and black for the profile head (tpy), red9 and blue for ∂sr, £b in £b∂w, and Îd in Îdw; green for the basket (nb). It is curious that the deceased faces left. The main figure in two- and three-dimensional representations nearly always faces right except when architectural or other considerations dictate the reverse—for example, on tomb walls, where the overriding consideration is for the 10 deceased to face the entrance. The leftward orientation of this figure might have been occasioned by its placement in relation to the burial or 11 even by external factors, such as the proximity of a shrine. Unfortunately, the circumstances of the find do not enable us to say what that was. Most of the Cecil Tombs, including no. 28, are now inaccessible, and we must rely on Lady Cecil’s description of it in the excavation report (fortunately accompanied by a plan, which does not, however, show the position of the objects as found): It is simply a passage measuring about fifty feet long and four feet wide, and from four to six feet high. At the end of the passage are two very small tomb chambers. About thirty-six feet from the entrance and occupying nearly the whole width of the passage is a shaft about twenty feet deep, at the bottom of which is a third small tomb-chamber. In the passage were found pottery of various qualities and 12 shapes, and the remains of arrows with many beads nearly all in blue glaze.

The stele of Shemai was discovered at the bottom of the shaft. Also found there were portions of another stele (present location not known)—also of limestone, but inscribed in paint only, with remains of

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thank Patricia S. Griffin, Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation, for her assistance in locating and identifying the pigments. 10 See Henry George Fischer, Egyptian Studies II: The Orientation of Hieroglyphs, Part 1: Reversals (New York, 1977), pp. 3–46, esp. pp. 21–26, and fig. 42 on p. 40. 11 Fischer (ibid., p. 25, n. 64), cites as an example tomb 34 at Aswan, in which the New Kingdom offering scene at the back faces left, “perhaps because the cult chamber which leads to the burial is at the right.” 12 Cecil, ASAE 6, p. 276.

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Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson

the artist’s guide lines in red—inscribed with a hotep-di-nesu formula for a woman named Muthetpet and also mentioning “[the overseer of] 13 po[lice], Shemai.” Although the excavators claim to have “most carefully sifted the sand of 14 every fragment,” they never found the missing portions of either stele. The tombs at Qubbet el-Hawa date mainly from the Old and Middle 15 Kingdoms. The objects that entered the Amherst collection, however, mostly come from intrusive burials of the late New Kingdom to Roman 16 periods. In the Amherst sale catalogue the stele of Shemai is dated to mid-Dynasty 18. The offering formula alone would suggest a date in the first half of Dynasty 12, according to the criteria established by 17 Bennet. Cooney dated the stele to Dynasty 12, “probably, in view of its 18 obvious dependance on Old Kingdom work, to very early Dynasty 12.” Freed is more 19 precise and assigns it, to my mind correctly, to the reign of Sesostris I. The limestone pillar of Sesostris I from Karnak and recently discovered reliefs at Elephantine Island afford the closest paral20 lels. Features in common, as pointed out by Freed, include the 13 Ibid.,

p. 277; PM 5, p. 241. ASAE 6, p. 276. 15 Elmar Edel, “Qubbet el Hawa,” LÄ 5, col. 54 with bibliography. 16 Amherst sale, lots 1–2 (Third Intermediate period shawabtis), 14 (Third Intermediate period shawabtis), 29 (shawabtis), 40 (shawabtis), 59 (shawabtis), 65 (Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figure), 340 (coffin panels), 341 (coffin), 342 (coffin), 465 (beadwork shroud and amulets), 576 (amulets), 590 (amulets), 718 (scarab of Ramesses II). Tomb 15 contained an original burial of the Old Kingdom (ravaged by termites); more Old Kingdom pottery was found in tombs 19 and 24, along with a cylinder inscribed with the prenomen of Amenemhat III (Cecil, ASAE 4, pp. 60–61, 66, 73). Two tombs contained oyster shells inscribed with the prenomen of Sesostris I (Cecil, ASAE 4, pp. 68, 72; the first is Cairo JE 36398, H. E. Winlock, “Pearl Shells of Se™n-Wosret I,” Studies Presented to F.Ll. Griffith [London, 1932], pl. 62, no. 1; cf. p. 391). Tomb 20 contained the intact burial of Mesenu’s son Heqaib, whose painted limestone stele has been dated on stylistic grounds to the reign of Amenemhat I (Cairo JE 36420; ibid., pl. V; Rita E. Freed, “A Private Stela from Naga ed-Der and Relief Style of the Reign of Amenemhet I,” in Studies in Ancient Egypt, the Aegean, and the Sudan: Essays in Honor of Dows Dunham on the Occasion of His 90th Birthday, June 1, 1980, edited by William Kelly Simpson and Whitney M. Davis [Boston, 1981], p. 76 and fig. 7 on p. 71). 17 J.C. Bennett, “Growth of the ¢tp-d¡-nsw Formula in the Middle Kingdom,” JEA 27 (1941), pp. 77–82. 18 CMA curatorial files. The Dynasty 18 date, though clearly mistaken, is interesting nonetheless in view of the early Eighteenth Dynasty’s deliberate (and frequently even now deceptive) archaism back to Dynasty 12, discussed by James F. Romano, “A Relief of King Ahmose and Early Eighteenth Dynasty Archaism,” BES 5 (1983), pp. 103–15. 19 Rita E. Freed, “The Development of Middle Kingdom Relief: Sculptural Schools of Late Dynasty XI, with an Appendix on the Trends of Early Dynasty XII (2040–1878 B.C.),” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1984, pp. 212–13. 14 Cecil,

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Jean-Pierre Corteggiani, The Egypt of the Pharaohs at the Cairo Museum (London, 1987), no. 33; Werner Kaiser et al., “Stadt und Tempel von Elephantine: 15./16. Grabungsbericht,” MDAIK 44 (1988), pl. 52.

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Fig. 3. Quail chick. Detail of stele of Shemai, CMA 21.1017.

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Lawrence M. Berman, The Stele of Shemai, Chief of Police, of the Early Twelfth Dynasty, in The Cleveland Museum of Art

perfectly almond-shaped eye with short diagonal line at the inner can21 thus, the modeling of the jawbone in relief, and incipient double chin. Aswan was the scene of great activity under Sesostris I: the king rebuilt the main temple of Satis, lady of Elephantine, and his nomarch 22 Sarenput I the shrine of the deified Heqaib.

b

21 Sesostris

I's double chin is commented on by C. Vandersleyen, “Objectvité des portraits égyptiens,” BSFE 73 (1975), p. 9. 22 See Labib Habachi, “Building Activities of Sesostris I in the Area to the South of Thebes,” MDAIK 31 (1975), pp. 27–31; Wolfgang Schenkel, “Die Bauinschrift Sesostris' I. im Satet-Tempel von Elephantine,” MDAIK 31 (1975), pp. 109–25, pls. 33–39; Wolfgang Helck, “Die Weihinschrift Sesostris' I. am Satet-Tempel von Elephantine,” MDAIK 34 (1978), pp. 69–78; Habachi, Heqaib, nos. 9–10, pp. 36-39; Kaiser et al., MDAIK 44, pp. 152– 57.

Fig. 4. Owl. Detail of stele of Shemai, CMA 21.1017.

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