Description

This plaque is rather mysterious. It appears to have been sawn off from its original location in modern times, and is matched by a piece of similar size and style in our gallery which names a king Psamtik (909.80.555.) Both have carefully drawn and carved glyphs.

This piece appears to have been part of a funerary inscription as it names a person who is ‘revered before the god Sopdu’ (or possibly the god, Horus-Sopdu). The word translated as ‘revered’ almost always refers to a person who is dead.

Sopdu was a god of the sky and of the Eastern Desert. He can be shown as a human being, a warrior, in fact, with a peculiar crown of four feathers, or as a mummified falcon with the same crown, as he is here. The name of the god was written with an isosceles triangle, which writes the word for ‘sharp,’ and a plural marker. Thus his name meant “sharp ones” and may have referred to the hawk’s talons.

The name of the dead man may have been Horus-the-Elder (Her-ser). It is also possible to read the plaque as referring to a deceased who is ‘revered before Horus-Sopdu’ – a slightly different way of thinking about this god, and in that case the name of the deceased is incomplete, with only “the elder” remaining.