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and heating ember with a fan; above his head, there is the label wdpw S3bj ‘Sabi, the
cupbearer’.® This must have been the same action to which the spell of the Pyramid
Texts (PT 207 $ı24b-c [W/S/E sup. 19]7°) refers: wdpw °b3 mw rkh sdt hnd m‘b s35r.t
‘Cupbearer, present water! Light the fire (for) a joint among the roast meat!’”
1.2.2. First Intermediate Period
The examples from the First Intermediate Period, albeit fewer in number, show a simi¬
lar position of an wdpw to the ones from the previous period. All of their occurrences
are on funerary stelae from the 3"‘—6"" Upper Egyptian nomes. Most of them show the
wdpw as an offering bearer standing before an offering table and the deceased, pouring
some liquid out of a vessel or offering a bowl. The wdpw is labelled in each case with the
vessel sign of his title and his name.” There are two examples, however, which differ
from the others. One of them is the stele of Iri, on which a certain wdpw Sbkrn ‘the cup¬
bearer Sobekren’ appears in the last column of the text, without figural depiction, among
others who are meant to be provided with offerings in the afterlife. Here the title wdpw
is written with the usual vessel and a waw as a phonetic complement after it.” This
feature of the writing of the word wdpw was common in the Middle Kingdom. The other
interesting example is the stele of Merer, who was an wdpw himself.” According to its
text, Merer was smr-w“ tj wdpw jmj-r3 sftw n.w pr Hww ‘sole friend, cupbearer, overseer
of the slaughterers of the entire house of Khuu’. Unfortunately, the text of the stele is a
very common example of its type with the offering formula, the usual formulae appre¬
ciating the life of the deceased and his acts of kindness, and with an offering formula
for his wife at the end, does not provide us with a wide range of information about the
status or function of an wdpw during this period. At the same time, it reveals that Merer
bore one of the ranking titles smr-w“ 4 ‘sole friend’, which refers to his high status in
69 Altenmiiller, 1998, 51, Taf. 16b.
” Abbreviation is after Berger el-Naggar et al, 2013.
7 Allen, 2005, 29, no. 141.
” For the stele of Demi and his wife Senebet, see Martin, 1980, 117-120; Sternberg, 1978, 55-59; for the
stele of Heqaib, see Polotsky, 1930, 194-199, pl. XXIX; for the stele of Khnumerdi, see Petrie, 1900a,
51-53, pl. XV; for the stele of Nenu, see Leprohon, 1985, 45-48; for the stele of Shendjintef, see Dun¬
ham, 1937, pl. 3.1.
2 Ziegler, 1990, 74-77.
* Cerny, 1961, 5-9.