Walking Into a 4,300 Year Old Egyptian Tomb in New York

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I walked into a real ancient Egyptian tomb, not a replica or a model, but a tomb that stood in the Egyptian desert more than four thousand years ago and was moved whole to Manhattan.

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

The tomb belonged to Perneb, whose name means “my king is with me.” The name alone tells you how close he was to the pharaoh. Judging from the size and location of the tomb, he was a court official or a member of the royal family, in charge of dressing the king and of the coronation ritual. Every time the pharaoh put on the robes of divine kingship, they passed through Perneb’s hands.

It is a mastaba tomb. Mastaba is the Arabic word for bench, because the structure is a flat topped rectangular platform, a form older than the pyramids. It was built during the reigns of the Fifth Dynasty pharaohs Djedkare Isesi and Unas, roughly 2381 to 2323 BC, in the Saqqara necropolis about 30 kilometers south of Giza, with the famous Step Pyramid of Djoser to its south.

One detail I loved. Perneb’s tomb is joined to the tomb of a high official who may have been Perneb’s father. A father and son, side by side, asleep in the desert for more than four thousand years.

The tomb was discovered in 1907. In 1913 Edward Harkness bought it from the Egyptian government and gave it to the Met. It was taken apart, shipped across the Atlantic and put back together inside the museum.

Standing inside is hard to describe. It is not the distance of looking at an object behind glass. You have actually stepped into a space from four thousand years ago.

I keep thinking about Perneb. He spent his life serving the pharaoh, performing the ritual that turned a man into a god. His name was carved into stone, kept for four thousand years, and then carried across an ocean to New York, where thousands of strangers from all over the world walk into his tomb every day, curious about his life. That is probably a kind of immortality he never imagined.

If you visit New York, do not skip the Met’s Egyptian galleries. Before you step into Perneb’s tomb, do not read too much about it. Walk in first and feel it for yourself.