Stele of the High Priest of Ptah, Shedsunefertem (945–924 BCE): Art, History and Details

Stele of the High Priest of Ptah, Shedsunefertem (945–924 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This stele of Shedsunefertem, the High Priest of Ptah, is rich in religious symbolism. In the center of the top register is a disk and crescent, originally gilded. At either side a baboon raises its arms in adoration. The Egyptians believed that the jabbering of the baboons at dawn was a hymn of praise to the sun god Ra in a secret language only the king understood. It begins, "Praising Ra when he shines on the horizon." Directly below in the middle register a child god is seated on a lotus flower. In Egyptian mythology the sun arose out of the primeval waters at the dawn of creation in a lotus flower. Winged figures of Maat, goddess of Truth, stand protectively at either side. The damaged figure of the high priest himself, wearing the panther skin and jackal-collar of his office, appears at the far right, worshipping the god Ptah, whose consort, the lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet, appears on the far left. The figures in the bottom register are colleagues who appear here as dependents under the powerful high priest's protection.

Object facts

• Title: Stele of the High Priest of Ptah, Shedsunefertem
• Date: 945–924 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, Third Intermediate (1069–715 BCE), Dynasty 22, reign of Shosheng I (943–922 BCE)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: limestone, originally painted and gilded
• Dimensions: Overall: 86.8 x 78.5 cm (34 3/16 x 30 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - New Kingdom
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1914.669

A detail from the museum

The eye and eyebrow of the young sun-god Ra (at center) were once inlaid.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Williams, Caroline Ransom. "Stela of a High-Priest of Memphis." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 5, no. 8/9 (1918): 67-69.
• Williams, Caroline Ransom. "The Egyptian Collection in the Museum of Art at Cleveland, Ohio (Continued)." The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 5, no. 4 (1918): 279.
• Moret, Alexandre. The Nile and Egyptian Civilization. London: Kegan Paul, French, Trubner and Co., 1927. p. 202, pl. VII 1.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.