The false door of Neferiu

A false door of the royal sealer Neferiu. Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art The Egyptological term ‘false door’ is long established but misleading. Although an accurate descriptor of an architectural feature that does not, in fact, lead anywhere in the physical world, such a ‘door’ is probably better conceptualised as a threshold into – and a conduit between – the world of the living and the realm of gods and the divinised dead. Attested chiefly from Old Kingdom private tombs, false doors are known also from both royal and elite contexts throughout the pharaonic period. This example belongs to a man named Neferiu, a royal sealer, and probably comes from the important late