While the most noted Egyptian art is that of the Pharaohs themselves, their family retainers were also prosperous commissioners of sculptured tombs. A discovery earlier this year in the cemetery of Memphis proved to be the tomb of the royal butler in Akhenaten’s household, a man who may have known the young Tutankhamun while serving his father (or elder brother, some scholars believe).

The tomb of Ptahemwia, “royal butler, clean of hands” was found by Dutch archaeologists some 200 metres south of the famous but much earlier Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, on the desert edge west of Memphis. It consists of a monumental gateway leading into a courtyard, with three offering chapels at the far end. The tomb chambers lie below and will be explored this winter.

“Royal butlers were not menials,” Maarten Raven of the Leiden Museum told the journal Minerva. “On the contrary, they were not only responsible for the provisioning of the royal household, but also accompanied their master on his trips of inspection and on the battlefield” – a sort of combination of Jeeves and estate manager. Ptahemwia wears a “gold of honour” collar to emphasise this on the carved gateway reliefs, which are in the distinctive Amarna style of Akhenaten’s reign.

One relief shows him on an inspection tour, his bodyguards, charioteer, musicians and servants at hand. Another shows his wife Maia, “the songstress of Amun”, being served a drink, while two pet monkeys gambol and scoff fruit beneath her chair. She and Ptahemwia clearly lived a life of considerable luxury as high members of the royal household.

During this period they may well have come to know the infant Tutankhamun: the tomb dates to somewhere around 1344BC, close to the time of his birth, but is unfinished, as though Ptahemwia had moved elsewhere. We may never know whether he lived long enough for the young prince to have remembered him in later life.

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