Graffiti of the Priesthood of the Eleventh Dynasty Temples at Thebes

Abstract

The simple, unpretentious inhabitants of Thebes during the Middle Kingdom have left very few records of their lives. It is seldom that so much as a line written spontaneously by any of them has survived the accidents of the four thousand years between their days and ours; and even when, on very rare occasions, some of them did scratch their names on the temptingly smooth, soft limestone of their native cliffs, they affected a minute, cramped, practically hieroglyphic hand which is far less likely to attract attention than the flowing hieratic of Ramesside scribes. Thus it is that comparatively few Middle Kingdom graffiti have been noticed among the hundreds of later scribblings on the rocks of Thebes today. The earliest known of these graffiti are near the temple of King Neb-hiepet-R~c Mentu-hotpe at Deir el Bahri. If one climbs as high as he can on the rocky spur which extends along the south side of the temple forecourt (Fig. 1),1 to the point where the cliff rises sheer above him and where the temple site lies some eighty meters below to the right, he will find scratched on the rock: "Horus Neter Hedjet, King of Upper and Lower Egypt (Neb)-hepet-Rc?, Son of Re2C Mentuhiotpe; (written) by his beloved Wenenef-Rac's son Nenen-R" (Fig. 2).3 Here we have a man who writes his king's name in the fashion common to the sculptors of the shrines of the princesses in the temple below and who must, therefore, have lived in the earliest years of the reign of Neb-hepet-RIc.4 Near by Nenen-R'c scratched his name once 1 This is the light-colored tongue of rock projecting from the cliff in the right of Fig. 1 -a photograph taken in 1919 by the late Harry Burton. 2 Written within the cartouche.