Two Boats with Female Mourners

This relief depicts part of the flotilla accompanying the funerary boat. The setting could be either the brief voyage across the Nile to the cemetery on the west bank or the traditional voyage downstream to Abydos, the sacred city of Osiris, where in earlier times final rites for the dead were performed. Both of the boats preserved here are filled with professional female mourners whose task it was to proclaim the virtues of the deceased and to lament his departure. This composition is certainly copied from a lost, probably painted, original of Dynasty 18.