The Letter to Nebetitef on Her First Intermediate Period Stela in the Michael C. Carlos Museum

This paper offers a publication of the stela of Nebetitef with a letter to the deceased owner of the stela on the back. The letter was first published by Edward Wente more than four decades ago after he had seen it briefly in the Cairo Museum, and this publication has formed the basis for all subsequent discussions of the letter, in which the writer notably refers to wishing to see the deceased in a dream. A study of the front of the stela along with a re-examination of the hieratic letter, under more favourable circumstances than those available to Wente, yields new insights into the letter, its writers and its recipient. In particular, the re-examination calls into question Wente’s original identification, followed almost unanimously in the subsequent literature, of the main writer of the letter as the husband of the deceased, altering the social backdrop for the interpretation of the letter.