Reading Imény’s family memorial

Begin with the meal shown on Imény's stele, an upright memorial carved in limestone. A seated figure, an offering table and relatives turn the stone into a gathering of people. Then notice the written signs around them. Names and an appeal to the living add voices to the scene. Imény was a works supervisor in Egypt around four thousand years ago. His memorial came from Abydos, an ancient Egyptian city. You do not need to read every sign to understand something of its purpose: pictures and words kept a person connected with offerings, family and those who would encounter his name. The broken edges tell a later story. The Louvre acquired the stele intact in 1857; it was probably broken in the autumn of 1870. Its history continued long after it left Egypt. This room is devoted to changing research displays, and Imény's stele shows why close attention matters. A familiar-looking fragment can raise several questions at once: who is remembered, how the image works, and what happened to the object itself.