A limestone lintel, likely from Saqqara, inscribed for the Overseer of Craftsmen Tjenti. The prepared surface of its outer face carries a panel of sunk relief depicting Tjenti, wielding a staff in his left hand and a kerchief in his right, seated on a couch beside his wife, Niankhhathor. Both figures wear wigs, his short and hers long, and long close-fitting tunics. Before them are two lines of hieroglyphs containing the offering formula. The lintel can be dated to the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2510–2370 BC), with many close parallels known from Giza and Saqqara. The main dating criterion is the offering formula. The history of the lintel is rather long and complicated. It was first recorded by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (MSS. Wilkinson dep. e. 68), author of The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians and the most celebrated British Egyptologist of his generation, during his last visit to Egypt in 1856. At that time, it was in the possession of Dr Henry William Charles Abbott, a British medical practitioner and collector. The next reference to the lintel is in 1892, when it was recorded by the Danish Egyptologist Jens Lieblein (1892, p. 571 [1407]) as being in the Amherst Collection. William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst, First Baron Amherst of Hackney, had a large collection of Egyptian antiquities that were displayed at his home of Didlington Hall. While at Didlington Hall, the Scottish Coptologist Walter Ewing Crum copied the full inscription in a notebook, which was subsequently given to Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner who deposited it the archives of the Griffith Institute in Oxford (Gardiner MMS 28.66.18). The Amherst collection was sold at auction in 1921, with the lintel being purchased by Messrs Spinks, who were then the foremost dealers of Egyptian antiquities in London. Four years later in 1925, the lintel was purchased at auction by Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome before eventually arriving in Swansea in 1971.

Lieblein, J. 1892. Dictionnaire de noms hiéroglyphiques en ordre généalogique et alphabétique: publié d'après les monuments égyptiens, vol. 4. Christiania; Leipzig: Brögger & Christie; J. C. Hinrichs. [p. 571, nr. 1407] Porter, Bertha and Rosalind L. B. Moss 1981. Topographical bibliography of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, reliefs and paintings III: Memphis. Part 2: Ṣaqqâra to Dahshûr, 2nd, revised and augmented ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Griffith Institute. [p. 762]