‘I Gave Grain to All of Dendera in its Entirety’: mentions of large-scale food donations in the VIth Upper Egyptian nome in the First Intermediate Period

Abstract

The paper scrutinizes written sources on large-scale food donations in the Denderite nome during the First Intermediate Period, paying special attention to their contexts – the official statuses of the owners of these inscriptions, the peculiarities of their monuments, etc. Such data cast a new light on incentives for boasting about lavish food donations in Denderite autobiographies. While the owners of the inscriptions in question have relatively humble official positions, their funerary monuments appear to be very expensive by the Dendera cemetery standards of the time. The author argues that these Denderites emphasized their generous food donations primarily to justify their moral entitlement to their monuments, which would otherwise have appeared far too sumptuous for the persons not belonging to the administrative elite.