Graffiti on a Thirteenth Dynasty Stela from Abydos (Louvre C8)

Graffiti are considered as one of the richest sources of evidence available of the personal experience of religion in Ancient Egypt. This applies not only to textual graffiti, but also to their figural counterpart. Figural graffiti have long been neglected by scholars and therefore remained difficult to interpret. The growing number of publications dedicated to the study of figural graffiti over the last years has increased their corpus, especially for the New Kingdom and later periods. Earlier periods are yet underrepresented. This study is dedicated to the graffiti left on a royal monument of the Thirteenth Dynasty. The main aim of this article is to make the graffiti available to a wider scholarly audience. After discussing the monument’s provenance, context, and ownership, the graffiti are described and interpretations about their function and motives of the graffitist are offered.