Stele of Pharaoh Ramses III offering to Maat at the Karnak Triad. Ancient Egypt, New Kingdom, 20th Dynasty, reign of Ramses III, 1184–1154 B.C.

Stele of Pharaoh Ramses III offering to Maat at the Karnak Triad. Ancient Egypt, New Kingdom, 20th Dynasty, reign of Ramses III, 1184–1154 B.C.
Limestone carved in bas-relief.
Provenance: Private collection of Dina Recanati (1928–2021), New York, United States. Dina Recanati, a painter and artist, was born in 1928 in Cairo, Egypt. She graduated from French and English schools in 1945. She married Raphael Recanati in 1946 in Tel Aviv, Israel, and moved to London to study history and art from 1946 to 1948. She later settled in New York. She has exhibited her work in various locations around the world, with permanent installations at the Israel Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum, Ben Gurion Airport, and the Jewish Museum of New York, among others.
Publications: Attached is a study on the age of the piece by Egyptologist and architect Fernando Estrada Laza, author of *Los obreros de la Muerte* and *Entender y amar el Arte Egipcio*. He served as a consultant to the firm’s architecture team for the project of the future Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and as a consultant to Arata Isozaki’s architecture team in Tokyo for the organization and selection of pieces for the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
In good overall condition. It has two restored breaks that divide the stele into three fragments, located in the upper section.
Measurements: 37 x 45.5 cm.

The stele depicts one of the central themes of Pharaonic ideology: the sovereign’s presentation of Maat before the gods. Maat personified truth, justice, and cosmic order—principles whose preservation constituted the pharaoh’s primary ritual responsibility. By offering her small effigy, Ramses III symbolically proclaimed that he ruled in accordance with the balance established by the gods and that he ensured its continuity on earth.

The composition is organized beneath a winged sun disk—a symbol of protection and sovereignty—accompanied by two udjat eyes. In the main register, the pharaoh appears before the Theban triad consisting of Amun-Ra, Mut, and Khonsu, the principal deities venerated at Karnak. The scene combines the figures with columns of hieroglyphs that identify and accompany its protagonists. This association between Ramses III, the offering to Maat, and the Theban Triad is documented on stelae and official reliefs from his reign.

The relief, executed with shallow incisions and sharply defined outlines, adheres to the conventions of official Ramesside art: ritual frontality, hierarchical arrangement of the figures, and the subordination of each element to the symbolic clarity of the whole. The rounded upper form, common in Egyptian stelae, transforms the surface into a closed and orderly space, designed to eternally perpetuate the act of worship.

Ramses III was the second pharaoh of the 20th Dynasty and the last great ruler of the New Kingdom. His architectural and religious program found its principal expression in the mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, whose reliefs combine military campaigns, ceremonies, and scenes of the monarch worshiping the deities. This is a piece of remarkable interest both for its royal iconography and for its connection to the Theban cult at Karnak.