Models and Magic

The tomb of Meketre, chancellor to Eleventh Dynasty king Mentuhotep II, held a secret missed by the looters who otherwise stripped it. In a sealed chamber, Meketre had placed 25 exquisitely detailed models of daily life and activities that his spirit could magically activate to brew his afterlife beer, catch fish for him, clean his house, serve his meals, bake his bread, haul water, care for his animals, fight off invaders, weave linen, build him a Nile yacht—any task that would need doing in the afterlife.

A model of the cattle census is complete with animals, herdsmen, village officials, and royal tax collectors. There are models of granaries (buildings for storing grain), boats of different sizes, and Meketre’s house and garden.

There are miniature workshops for bakers, butchers, brewers, weavers, and woodworkers Meketre added model serving girls to carry water, and battalions of tiny archers and soldiers, ready to fight if the need arose. Some of the models from Meketre’s tomb can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (the rest are in the Cairo Museum).

The tradition of placing such models, and other servant figures, such as ushabtis (“answerers”), in tombs was a typical Egyptian response to a practical problem. With fewer resources available to build and stock huge, lavish tombs, even the king relied on magical servant figures, and paintings, figurines, and menus that could be magically activated as needed.