Stela of Pepy

Many stelae discovered at Abydos were originally left in tombs with other items intended to help the deceased achieve immortality. British archaeologists working there early in the twentieth century found this stela of a man called Pepy—a traditional name—in a Middle Kingdom tomb. Although the text reveals little about Pepy, a streak of individualism seems to have run through his household: of the eleven relatives and servants depicted here, five have names that appear in no other works from more than three thousand years of Egyptian history.