The paper scrutinizes written sources on
large-scale food donations in the Denderite nome
during the First Intermediate Period, paying special attention to their contexts – the official statuses of the owners of these inscriptions, the peculiarities of their monuments, etc. Such data cast a
new light on incentives for boasting about lavish
food donations in Denderite autobiographies.
While the owners of the inscriptions in question
have relatively humble official positions, their
funerary monuments appear to be very expensive
by the Dendera cemetery standards of the time.
The author argues that these Denderites emphasized their generous food donations primarily to
justify their moral entitlement to their monuments,
which would otherwise have appeared far too
sumptuous for the persons not belonging to the
administrative elite.