Funerary Cone of the Royal Herald Intef

This cone has the impression of a stamp seal inscribed for the royal herald Intef who served during the joint reign of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut. He was owner of tomb TT 155 in the Dira Abu el-Naga cemetery of Western Thebes.

Hundreds of stamped pottery cones like this one have been found in the non-royal cemeteries of the Theban necropolis. More than six hundred different stamps have been recorded. Although a few cones are inscribed with the names of identifiable tomb owners like Intef, most record the names of people whose tombs cannot be identified.

During the 1926-27 field season, the Museum's excavators uncovered a Middle Kingdom tomb (MMA 110) with rows of unstamped cones embedded along the upper edge of the façade (see fig. 1). It is quite likely that stamped cones, which date to the New Kingdom and later, were used in the same way, identifying the tomb owner by name and title. Intef's tomb facade appears to have been decorated with cones stamped with two slightly different inscriptions. The Museum owns one of each type. On this cone, Intef is honored by the god Osiris "the great god." On the other, he is honored by Anubis "who is upon his mountain." The impressions on these cones are round, similar in size, deeply pressed into the surface, and lack lines to seperate the columns of text.

The stamp on this cone is type 139 in A Corpus of Inscribed Egyptian Funerary Cones compiled by Norman de Garis Davies and published by M. F. Laming Macadam in 1957 by Oxford University Press. (CHR)

Credit: Rogers Fund, 1914