Amenkhau, justified
The name of Amenkhau consists of two components. The first part of his name, Amen, refers to a god and is written with hieroglyphs that represent respectively a reed plant, a side view of a draughts-board and a (wavy) line, representing a line of water. Already appearing in the Old Kingdom as a minor god, Amen, or Amun, grew out to become one of the most important gods of ancient Egypt.
The second part of the name of Amenkhau consists of a sign representing the sound ‘kha’, which depicts the rising sun behind a hill. Behind this three strokes are visible, which indicate plurality. Therefore, we don’t read ‘kha’, but instead we read the plural of ‘kha’, which is ‘khau’. Like many ancient Egyptian names, the name of Amenkhau can be read as a full sentence. Translated, Amenkhau means ‘Amen has appeared’.
The last two signs of the inscription could be read as ‘maa-kheru’, which literally means ‘true of voice’, but is often translated by Egyptologists as ‘justified’. This is often added behind the name of the deceased, to indicate that the person has lived an honest life. The ancient Egyptians believed that after death, the soul of the deceased started a long journey with the afterlife as the end goal. One of the challenges the deceased has to face during this journey is a trial, during which the god of the underworld, Osiris, determines if the deceased has lived an honest life.