The Mastaba of Pehenuka

In museums around the world are blocks of stone like the one below. This one, from the mastaba of Pehenuka, resides in Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin. Why does this museum have a single block of what was once an entire tomb wall decorated for one of ancient Egypt's wealthy upper-class dignitaries?

"Puzzle pieces" such as this one exist because of the attitude that both Egyptians and Europeans had during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Until Napoleon's military expedition to Egypt in 1798, the civilization of the pharaohs had been "lost" to Europeans. The "rediscovery" of this ancient land created a demand for its artifacts. At the time, Egyptians were all too willing to part with what they considered worthless stones. The decorated blocks that reached Europe were the ones lucky enough not to be "recycled" in Egyptian construction projects. Many monuments from Saqqara, for example, had been raided over the years for building materials.

The carved relief below contains a tiny part of a typical hunting scene. Notice the two dog-like figures at the bottom right. The top figure is obviously a basenji. Luckily, the curly tail remains, cementing the animal's identification. This basenji has grabbed what scholars identify as a jackal. Even though both animals have nearly identical heads, the front one wears a collar, while the one behind shows no evidence of domestication. Egyptian artists might have depicted basenjis and jackals in such a similar fashion because tame pets would have made much more willing models than wild animals dragged in from the desert borders.