Egyptians?

Before we move on to the text and script, let’s have a quick look at the owners of this stela. We see them here: a man called Inyt The museum catalogue identifies the man on the stela as Inyt. However, looking at the hieroglyphs (also executed a bit clumsily) we could also read his name as either Iny-Iqer, or Iny-ber(u). Unfortunately, we will have to leave the question of his true name unanswered for now. For continuity, we shall refer to the man on the stela as Inyt. , and ‘his beloved wife’ Bendit. Inyt is holding a bow in one hand, and a (barely visible) quiver with arrows in the other. Inyt and Bendit are depicted together with their two dogs.

Inyt and Bendit (or at least only Inyt) are most probably Nubians: they came from Nubia, the area of current Sudan. Their ethnicity is not explicitly mentioned on this stela, but we can compare our example to similar ones, for example the stela from Boston in fig. 1. We see the owners of this stela depicted in practically the same way, with the bow and quiver, and wearing the same type of clothing. The appearance of the stela in general is also very similar, and even the texts are almost identical. In the Boston one, the owner, called Nenu, has an epithet: ‘Nehy’, meaning ‘the Nubian’. H. Fischer, ‘The Nubian mercenaries of Gebelein during the First Intermediate Period’, KUSH 9 (1961), 44-80.

In the First Intermediate Period many Nubians came to Egypt and fought (particularly with bow and arrow) in the Egyptian army.