Fig. 1
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Menyet, Bronze, Faience, stone and glass. Length (of counterpoise) 14.5 cm. Excavated from the ruins of Amenophis III at Western Thebes in 1921 by the Metropolitan Museum Egyptian Expedition. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Reg. No. 11.215.450
The menyet is a ceremonial object associated with the goddess Hathor whose priestesses are commonly shown holding the emblem. Queens and ladies of waiting when officiating as priestesses also wore or carried it (see Fig. 3 ). On rare occasions it was worn by men (see Fig. 4 ), particularly by priests of Hathor, and it is also worn by the god Khons. Originally it consisted of a necklace with small beads of numerous strands, the ends of which are caught into two strings of heavier beads, each ending in a counterweight [as shown in Fig. 5 - KGG].
Statues of the earlier periods sometimes show these two counterpoises hanging down the back of the wearer (see Fig. 5); but by the beginning of the New Kingdom, they are fused into one such weight, though in votive faience menyets a thin groove is frequently incised about the outside edges, as though the two counterpoises had been stuck together one on top of the other...
The menyet illustrated here is a rare example of an actual specimen, not an ex voto and shows a single heavy bronze counterpoise to which two strings of stone, polychrome glass and faience beads connecting with the ends of the necklace proper. This consists of multiple strings of small blue faience ring beads capped at each end with a shallow bronze cone.
Menyet counterpoise, bronze. Height: 17.2 cm. Later XVIII Dynasty. In the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Reg. No. 51.57.2
This counterpoise takes an openwork form which is not uncommon in the reign of Amenophis III and seems to represent Hathor with the features of Queen Tiye. It is surmounted by the head of the goddess wearing a diadem with uraeus and her characteristic horns and disk. In the openwork design below, she appears in her human aspect as an elegant queen holding a papyrus sceptre, and also in her animal guise as a wild cow in a papyrus skiff in the waters of the papyrus marshes.
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