Some of the stone sarcophagi of the priestesses are very elaborately decorated with carved and painted reliefs depicting each deceased receiving offerings from priests, one of whom milks the holy cows of Hathor to give her milk.  The sarcophagi were let down into the tomb in pieces and there joined together, and they have been removed in the same way.  The finest is a unique example of XIth Dynasty art, and it is now preserved in the Museum of Cairo.

[Illustration:  330.jpg CASES OF ANTIQUITIES LEAVING DER EL-BAHARI FOR TRANSPORT TO CAIRO.]

In memory of the priestesses there were erected on the platform behind the pyramid a number of small shrines, which were decorated with the most delicately coloured carvings in high relief, representing chiefly the same subjects as those on the sarcophagi.  The peculiar style of these reliefs was previously unknown.  In connection with them a most interesting possibility presents itself.

[Illustration:  331.jpg SHIPPING CASES OF ANTIQUITIES ON BOARD THE NILE STEAMER AT LUXOR, FOR THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND.]

We know the name of the chief artist of Mentuhetep’s reign.  He was called Mertisen, and he thus describes himself on his tombstone from Abydos, now in the Louvre:  “I was an artist skilled in my art.  I knew my art, how to represent the forms of going forth and returning, so that each limb may be in its proper place.  I knew how the figure of a man should walk and the carriage of a woman, the poising of the arm to bring the hippopotamus low, the going of the runner.  I knew how to make amulets, which enable us to go without fire burning us and without the flood washing us away.  No man could do this but I, and the eldest son of my body.  Him has the god decreed to excel in art, and I have seen the perfections of the work of his hands in every kind of rare stone, in gold and silver, in ivory and ebony.”  Now since Mertisen and his son were the chief artists of their day, it is more than probable that they were employed to decorate their king’s funerary chapel.  So that in all probability the XIth Dynasty reliefs from Der el-Bahari are the work of Mertisen and his son, and in them we see the actual “forms of going forth and returning, the poising of the arm to bring the hippopotamus low, the going of the runner,” to which he refers on his tombstone.  This adds a note of personal interest to the reliefs, an interest which is often sadly wanting in Egypt, where we rarely know the names of the great artists whose works we admire so much.  We have recovered the names of the sculptor and painter of Seti I’s temple at Abydos and that of the sculptor of some of the tombs at Tell el-Amarna, but otherwise very few names of the artists are directly associated with the temples and tombs which they decorated, and of the architects we know little more.  The great temple of Der el-Bahari was, however, we know, designed by Senmut, the chief architect to Queen Hatshepsu.