Antico Egitto | Egittologia.net

The most famous object bearing this king's name is the statuette of a kneeling priest (Cairo C.G.1) once called Hotepdief and now more probabily identifiable as Redjit . The material is pink granite, the provenance Memphis (Mit Rahina). The base has an inscription (Helck, Thinitenzeit, 1987, 240) relating to the 'Chief of the incensers, who makes an offering, beloved by Ntr-Akhty, Redjit'; the god Netjer Akhety is a phoenix atop a stand or perch; this could also have relationship with the city of Buto; fragments of stone vessels have the names of Hotepsekhemwy and Nebra associated with Bastet the goddess of Per Bast (Bubastis) or 'She of the ointment jar' (Wilkinson E.D.E. p. 282); the bird on the top of a conical object appears also on the same statuette' s shoulder before the Horus names of the first three kings of the second dynasty. (Redjit inscriptions) (Wildung suggests to interpret the bird hieroglyph in question as the god Dbawty). Redjit was therefore a funerary priest of these three kings' cult in the Memphite necropolis during the mid or late 2nd dynasty (see also H.G. Fischer, in: Artibus Asiae 24, 1961, 46, fig.1; D. Wildung, Die Rolle..., 1969, 36-40). This latter author, and more recently M. Eaton-Krauss and H. Sourouzian (both in: Grimal ed., Les Criters de datation stilistiques... 1998) date the statuette to the late Third Dynasty for the unusual location of the inscription on the shoulder and especially on the base of the circular headdress which in similarto that of the statue of Metjen. "