An offering which the king gives...

An offering which the king gives to Osiris, foremost of the Westerners, the great god, lord of Abydos. May he give an invocation offering of bread, beer, oxen, fowl, alabaster pots, linen, and a thousand of all good and pure things.

The first part of the text contains a so-called offering formula. Passages like this are among the most frequent on Egyptian stelae. The deceased is asking for offerings to be brought to him; these would be useful for him in the afterlife.

Even though it is unknown where exactly the stela was found, it most likely comes from the cemetery of Abydos.Sehetepibreankh’s stela, as well as many other objects in the collection of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden, originates from the collection of 19th century antiquities dealer Giovanni d’Anastasi. d’Anastasi sold a large collection of Egyptian antiquities to the Leiden museum in 1828, which would form the basis of its Egyptian collection. The provenance and archaeological context of many, if not all, objects from d’Anastasi’s collections are unfortunately unknown, but many have proved to originate from the cemeteries in Abydos, in the south of Egypt, or Saqqara, in the north.See: Chrysikopoulos, V., ‘À l’aube de l’égyptologie hellénique et de la constitution des collections égyptiennes: des nouvelles découvertes sur Giovanni d’Anastasi et Tassos Néroutsos’, in P. Kousoulis, N. Lazaridis (eds), Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists (Leuven, 2015).

Abydos is located in the south of Egypt, and was an important center for the cult of the god Osiris. Abydos was the site of the so-called Terrace of the Great God, a procession road of Osiris along which many stelae like this one were set up, possibly organized into chapels. By placing a stela in Abydos, the ancient Egyptians would make sure they would always be present at this important place. Through the stela, its owner would get in the good graces of Osiris and share in the offerings the god received during his festivals. See: Simpson, W., The terrace of the great god at Abydos: the offering chapels of dynasties 12 and 13 (New Haven, 1974).

Since Osiris features prominently on the stela of Sehetepibreankh - in the lunette, and in the offering formula we see here - we might conclude that it stood at Osiris’ procession road as well.