Pharaoh Offering an Image of Ma`at

This sunk relief depicts a pharaoh in traditional attire—wearing the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt—and in a standard pose of offering. He holds a conventional image of a goddess, identified as Maat by her feathers. This offering signifies that the king has fulfilled his traditional responsibility of preserving the Egyptians’ universal order, personified as Maat. Yet the style of the relief dates it to the time when the actual ruler was either one of the later kings of the Macedonian Greek family of Ptolemy or the Roman emperor Augustus, who conquered Ptolemaic Egypt but never lived there.