The display in this part of the hall contains items from the second half of the New Kingdom era. An interesting monument from the time of the late 18th dynasty is the upper part of the stela of Horemheb, a military commander under Tutankhamun who later became pharaoh himself. The stela comes from a tomb in Sakkara that was not used for his burial due to his change in status. The tomb was created during the brief reign of Tutankhamun, at the time of the return to the traditional cults of multiple gods that followed the rejection of the religious reforms introduced by Pharaoh Akhnaton in the mid-14th century BC. The cult of the sun-god Aton as a state religion did not survive its creator, but artistic approaches that arose in that period can be traced in later works, as, for example, here in the treatment of Horemheb’s figure.
The fragment of a royal sculpture and the naophorous statue (showing a man kneeling before a small chapel containing a depiction of a god, in this case Osiris) on display in the showcase opposite date from the late 18th or early 19th dynasty, the third quarter of the 14th century – early 13th century BC.
The sarcophagi, one made of granite (19th dynasty, 13th century BC), the other, opposite, of wood (25th dynasty, late 700s – mid-500s BC), testify to the importance of the funerary cult in the system of Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs.
