Lintel depicting King Amenemhat I flanked by Nekhbet, Horus, Anubis, and Wadjet

In the pictureA king sits at the center of a long horizontal limestone slab, flanked by the falcon-headed Horus, the jackal-headed Anubis, the vulture goddess Nekhbet and the cobra goddess Wadjet. Hieroglyphs are painted above and between the figures in vivid red, blue and yellow. It is 1.7 meters long and weighs more than 180 kg.

BackgroundA lintel is the stone laid horizontally above a doorway, and this slab sat above a door of a temple of Amenemhat I. The four deities stand for kingship, the protection of the dead, and Upper and Lower Egypt respectively, showing the king protected by the gods of the whole country. Egyptian reliefs rarely keep this much paint, which gives a sense of how splendid the original temple must have been.

Puzzle tipThe image is extremely wide, so the pieces come out flat. Place the heads of the four deities (falcon, jackal, vulture, cobra) and the king in the center first to set up five pillars, then fill in the hieroglyph pieces between them by color. The straight pieces along the top and bottom edges form the frame. 48 pieces is a good fit.