tour 8 of 22
Enlightenment: Ancient Scripts
Statue of the priest Henat
This black basalt statue shows an Egyptian
priest holding a small shrine containing a figure of the goddess
Neith. It was donated to the British Museum in 1771 by the lawyer
Matthew Duane.
At the time
it was given to the museum no one could read the hieroglyps on the
statue. But we now know that the text identifies the figure as the
'chief lector priest Henat, surnamed Khnumjbremen'.
The head has been lost.
The
statue was probably erected in the temple of Neith at Sais (modern
Sa el-Hagar). The inscriptions evoke offerings in the hope that
'his [Henat's] name will last in the Temple of
Neith for all time'. Henat was the temple's high
priest and came from a family of priests. He lived during the reign
of the Egyptian king Amasis (570-526 BC) and the first Persian
rulers of Egypt.
A similar
statue of Henat is in the Museo Archeologico,
Florence.