Discovered plastered into a niche in the southern passageway of the mastaba of the Governor Isi at Edfu, the 13th Dynasty stela of the brewer Userhat is an important testament to the longevity of the popular cult of the deified Isi, an official of early Dynasty 6 (ca. 2345-2323 B.C.) who is here depicted as the object of cult of the owner of the stela and his wife Merithor-Sherit. Some ancient Egyptian individuals who were seen for whatever reason after their deaths as extraordinary people were accorded a divine status and received popular veneration, including Isi of Edfu, Heqaib of Elephantine, and the better-known and longer-lasting cults of Imhotep and Amenhotep, son of Hapu. Isi is here named as “Isi the Protector” in the caption adjoining his figure, while he is additionally mentioned at the conclusion of the stela’s text as the “living god Isi.” The incised decoration of the lunette features two recumbent Anubis jackals on shrines on either side of an ankh-sign. Below, Userhet and his wife present a table of offerings to the deified Isi. The style of carving is reminiscent of stelae from Abydos, and it is known that some stelae discovered in the same context were carved there and brought secondarily to Edfu (see M. Marée, “Edfu Under the Twelfth to Seventeenth Dynasties: The Monuments in the National Museum of Warsaw,” British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and the Sudan 12, 2009, pp. 31-92.

Translation:
“An offering that the king gives to Horus of Edfu and [Osiris] who is in the midst of Edfu. May he give an invocation-offering of bread and beer, cattle and fowl, alabaster and linen, incense, unguents and all things for the ka of the first of his family, the most successful of his tribe, the brewer of the shuyet-drink Userhat. If it is true that that a good character is effective for the one who acts according to it, then I will be a Follower of Horus and of Isi the living god.”