He probably contributed labor or grain tax to the provincial administration.

His community’s relationship to the state was organized through the nome system — the administrative districts into which Egypt was divided, each with its own officials who reported upward through the bureaucratic hierarchy to the central court at Memphis.

His burial in a rock-cut tomb, modest as it was, was consistent with the religious beliefs of the Old Kingdom: the importance of proper interment, the maintenance of the ka (the vital spirit or double of the person) through funerary provisions, the expectation of a continued existence in the afterlife that mirrored the organization of life on earth.

The ceramic vessel in which he was buried served as a container for the body in the same way that larger and more elaborate coffins served the same function for the elite — both expressed the same fundamental belief that the body needed to be preserved and properly housed for the afterlife to be accessible.