Horemkhaef was an ancient Egyptian local official who lived in the

Second Intermediate Period The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when ancient Egypt fell into disarray for a second time, between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom. The concept of a "Second Intermediate Period" was coined in 1942 by ...

. He had the titles ''first inspector of priests of

Horus Horus or Heru, Hor, Har in Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as god of kingship and the sky. He was worshipped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the P ...

from

Nekhen Nekhen ( egy, nḫn, ); in grc, Ἱεράκων πόλις Hierakonpolis ( either: City of the Hawk, or City of the Falcon, a reference to Horus or ''Hierakōn polis'' "Hawk City" in arz, الكوم الأحمر, el-Kōm el-Aḥmar, lit=the ...

'' and ''

overseer of fields The overseer of fields was one of the highest court officials at the Egyptian royal court. The title appears first in the provincial administration of the Old Kingdom and is attested in the First Intermediate Period at the royal court. In the early ...

''. Therefore, he was most likely the main priest at the local temple at Nekhen (known to the Greeks as Hierakonpolis), where Horus was worshipped. Horemkhaef is known from his tomb at Nekhen. The rock-cut tomb is small, but is one of the few tombs of that period with a painted decoration in the chapel. In front of the chapel was a courtyard where a

stela A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

was found. The stela reports the journey of Horemkhaef to

Itjtawy Itjtawy (full Egyptian name ''Amenemhat-itj-tawy'' — "Amenemhat, Seizer of the Two Lands"), is the name of the royal city founded as a new capital by Twelfth Dynasty Egyptian King Amenemhat I, who ruled from approximately 1991 BC to 1962 BC ...

, the Middle Kingdom capital. There he received in front of the king, a new cult image of Horus and ''his mother'', most likely

Isis Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingd ...

. The tomb of Horemkhaef is small, but has the unusual painted decoration. The ''draughtsman'' Sedjemnetjeru, who most likely was the artist responsible for decorating the chapel, is depicted in the tomb.W. V. Davies: ''The dynastic tombs at Hierakonpolis: the lower group and the artist Sedjemnetjeru'', in: W. V. Davies (Hrsg.), ''Colour and Painting in Ancient Egypt'', London 2001, 119-20

References

17th-century BC Egyptian people 16th-century BC Egyptian people