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Description

This object belongs to the group of ointment slabs - tablets with seven round depressions for keeping samples of the so-called "sacred oils" used in funerary rites. Out fragment is the right half of such a tablet with three depressions preserved along its lower edge and the names of the "oils" spelled in vertical columns above the depressions. The fourth depression is preserved only partly, as well as its label.

This object belongs to the group of ointment slabs - tablets with seven round depressions for keeping samples of the so-called "sacred oils" used in funerary rites. Out fragment is the right half of such a tablet with three depressions preserved along its lower edge and the names of the "oils" spelled in vertical columns above the depressions. The fourth depression is preserved only partly, as well as its label.

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Dating

Dating (free text)

Dating Criterion

Gods

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Writing
Language
Category of text
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Writing Technique
Preservation of Text
Hieroglyphs \|1-s-T-W59-O22- W3-W2\r1-! \|2-H-k-W24w-W2-! \|3-s-f-T-N33N33*N33-W2-! \|4-//-//-W2-!
Transliteration (1) sT(j) Hb (2) Hknw (3) sfT (4) [n(j)-Xnm]
Translation The names of the "sacred oils" can hardly be translated correctly at present. The names of the "sacred oils" can hardly be translated correctly at present.

Acquisition

Year of Acquisition

Object''s History

1908 - purchased by Likhatchev at an Italian antiquarian in Cairo.
1918 - with the collection of Likhatchev donated to the Archaeological Institute, Petrograd.
1925 - with the collection of Likhatchev transferred to the Museum of Palaeography (since 1935 Museum of Books, Documents and Scripts) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR,
1938 - with the collection of Likhatchev transferred to the Institute of History, Leningrad.
1938 - with the collection of Likhatchev transferred to the Hermitage.

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Bibliography

Bolshakov A.O., Egipetskiye zhertvenniki Starogo tsarstva iz sobraniya Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazhha. EV 24 (1988), 10-28, pp.25-27.
Bolshakov A.O. Fragment staroegipetskoy plitki dlya umashcheniy, SGE 51, 1986, p.46-48.

General Comment


Provenance: 
The arrangement of depressions for oils along the lower edge is characteristic of the Saqqara - Abusir region.

Preservation: 
Only the right half of the tablet is preserved.

Text comment: 
All the names of the "oils" are determined by a sign of a tall stone vase. This is a result of simplification of original scribal tradition where two different determinatives were used for different "oils". The new spelling is hardly earlier than middle Sixth Dynasty, which is a reliable dating criterion.

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