Abusir XIV

In the course of the exploration of the funerary temple of King Neferre, the expedition of the Czech Institute of Egyptology discovered about 2000 fragments of faience inlays and tablets of Egyptian blue bearing texts and scenes in relief. The present volume contains the full description, analysis and interpretation of this unique find. The evidence, analysed by the author in archaeological and historical context, suggests that the inlays (and probably also the tablets of Egyptian blue) had once decorated wooden shrines containing the statues of the king, and the functional analysis of their motifs indicates that the inlays and tablets in all likelihood formed a substitute of the relief decoration that was missing in the temple of Neferre. The volume contains a separate chapter with the mineralogical analysis of several samples of both faience and Egyptian blue, studied in transmitted light using the Axiolab microscope, and on the microprobe Cameca SX 100 at the Department of geological sciences, Masaryk University Brno.