Stela of Ameny, BM EA 162, offering formula

As you can expect a lot of ancient writing important enough to chisel in stone will be formulaic. Amusingly, to me, a good deal of it is titles for deities, kings, and aristocracy that sound a bit like the Star Trek Next Generation character Lwaxana Troi announcing herself Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed. And these formulas are spotted right off. They're basic. All the beginning textbooks cover these. So through three or four beginning textbooks the experience is like inhabiting the beginning of the beginning of codified writing.

I like the instructor of this class quite a lot. She writes to her students about this exercise:

This dates to the 12th dynasty (c. 1937 B.C.E. to 1739 B.C.E). That makes it over 3700 years old. You’ve just translated an extended text that is older than the oldest book of the Hebrew Bible—older than the poems of Homer. And you did it from the original—not a later copy of a copy of a copy etc.

Wow. I didn't know that.

The immediate tip off that this is an offering forumla is the pyramid shape at the beginning that means "give." And then the staircase shape, actually a throne, that will stand for either Isis or Osiris. Those two together will suggest an offering by a king in the name of some deity.

The students studied only the first three of the five lines at the top of the stela reading left to right.

See the sedge plant (royalty) and the tall triangle (give) and the eye over the step shape (throne) at the beginning. That's the indication that the whole thing will be an offering formula. Whatever follows will be exceedingly formal and rather haughty like the Lwaxana Troi's titles. All there is to learn is which king, which deity for the benefit of whom, and which standard offerings are mentioned. And if we're lucky, if it's not a stela like this is, if it's written somewhere else, say on a tomb or an obelisk or a temple wall, it might mention how many thousands of oxen were were offered, how many vases of beer, how many loaves of bread, how much linen, how many ducks. When these formulas are shown on television I get all bent out of shape when the cameraman scans across the hieroglyphs just to show hieroglyphs but with no lingering over them to see how big an event this offering represented. When a king makes an offering, a real offering, not a voice offering like this one, not a prayer, real commodities turned over to the priesthoods, and then chisels in stone the accounting, it's a very big mind-blowing deal tallied in the thousands. And that's worth checking out. 

But not here. 

The students are looking at a photograph of the actual stela, not a drawing like this. The bashed out portion is guess at. By the expected formula the text book guesses "the great lord." By the allowed space, the British museum guesses simply, "lord." 

And photographs of the actual object are more difficult to discern than an artist's rendition. 

With a great deal of help in the book, the students agree the top three lines read:

1) An offering the king gives before Osiris, Khentyimentu, great god, lord of Abydos, in all his good and pure places.

2) So that he may give a voice offering in bread, in beer, in oxen and fowl, and everything good

3) for the ka of the revered one, general-in-chief, Ameny of Kebu, the justified.

Usually formulas continue with "true of voice," and "first companion," and a whole list of other prestige titles. 

You can take in quite of lot of how the formula will go by scanning over the glyphs before digging in, skipping over sections because individual glyphs and clusters can mean different things. And the formulaic arrangements are often shuffled. No need to get bogged down immediately. For example, the owl can mean a lot of things. Here it means "in" used in the phrases "in bread, in beer, etc." While lower down on the third line it also has the meaning  "manager" associated with soldier determinative, with three lines, meaning "army." So then, some kind of manager of the army. A general! It must be. Who else will have an offering made through the king to a god and chiseled in limestone, a lieutenant? What sticks out is the glyph of a soldier. You don't always see that. While the three lines behind it will mean "army." 

So this guy Ameny is some kind of general or some type of manager (owl) of the army. And it's Ameny of Kebu but there is no circle with an x in the middle, a wagon wheel shape, that means "crossroads" or "town." See in the first line one of the titles of Osiris is "great lord of Abydos" with one of the "crossroad" glyphs meaning Abydos is a town. But Kebu is not a town. It means Ameny son of Kebu, not Ameny from the town of Kebu. Because Kebu is not shown with a "crossroad" sign.

Faced with the stela and with no idea of its content, just scanning across the first three lines, skipping over details, can provide a good deal of insight into its content before digging in further: