A Fish in the Water below a Boat
Middle Kingdom
The temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri combined innovative building ideas with a relief decoration that was largely based on prototypes from the Old Kingdom pyramid temples in the Memphite area. Utterly destroyed by stone robbers in antiquity, this decoration was preserved in thousands of fragments. The piece here features wavy lines that depict water. The slightly curved line at the top must be the bottom contour of a boat and the partial object on the left likely belongs to a fish.