Priest Teti with His Family
Description
<p>Teti the priest was the principal owner of this group statue. In keeping with artistic conventions, he is placed in the center, larger than the two other figures, and receives their supportive gestures. The smaller man is Teti's father, also named Teti, while the woman is the elder Teti's wife, Meket. The reference to the god Ptah of ancient Memphis in the inscription on the front of the younger Teti's kilt suggests that the sculpture may have been dedicated in a temple there. This association with Memphis might also account for the statue's unusual pyramid-like shape, as a similarly shaped sacred monument, called the "benben," was worshiped in the region.</p><p>For the latest information about this object, <cite><a href='https://purl.thewalters.org/art/22.163' rel='external'>Priest Teti with His Family</a></cite>, visit the Online Collection of the Walters Art Museum.</p>
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- Walters 22.163 PNM text
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
Stone sculpted figure of a priestly person standing frontally with two smaller accompanying figures at the sides, over a tall vertical column of carved hieroglyphs.
The image shows a dark, polished stone statue (or figure group) photographed against a light background. The central figure stands frontally, arms held down with hands clenched or held close to the body. A broad collar or garment is indicated by shallow carving. On either side are two smaller subsidiary figures, each with a simplified human form. Behind or along the sides of the central body is a dense arrangement of incised hieroglyphic text in vertical registers, continuing into the open space around the figures. The hieroglyphs appear to be the primary inscription element; individual signs are not fully legible at this resolution, though multiple vertical lines/registers are clearly present. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. No cartouches are clearly readable in the provided view. The object’s dark stone surface and carved details are consistent with a worked hard stone statue.
Cross-references (3)
- PNM-Object pnm:83889655 tier-2 (inventory-match)
- Walters-AccNum 22.163 tier-2
- Walters-id 184 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Walters Art Museum (Egyptian).
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.