This talk took place in person at the November 2025 meeting.
Talk information
During the 2009 excavation season, a modest tomb was unearthed at Saqqara by a joint expedition of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and Leiden University. The tomb belonged to a man named Tatia, who worked as a priest of the front of Ptah and chief of goldsmiths. The south wall of his decorated tomb-chapel shows a musical scene of a harpist, a flute player and three seated figures.
The scene is accompanied by a hieroglyphic inscription in seventeen framed columns above their heads. It was assumed that this inscription represented the text of a harpist’s song. Recent research by the speaker, however, has led to the discovery that the scene in question is more than just a harpist’s song…