NEW KINGDOM, 19TH-20TH DYNASTY, 1295-1069 B.C.

Carved of white limestone and brightly painted in the style of a New Kingdom coffin, this lid of an anthropoid model coffin would have probably covered a smaller limestone mummiform funerary figure of the same individual nestled within its base (now missing). The owner’s portrait is sensitively modeled, with a striped wig and crossed arms, the hands of which emerge from an enveloping floral collar. The white body is defined by yellow bands bearing a hieroglyphic inscription. The vertical column identifies the owner as “the Servitor in the Place of Truth, Amun[…],” a title which identifies this individual as one of the craftsmen attached to the artisan’s community at Deir el-Medina. The remaining horizontal and vertical bands of inscription provide spells recited by the goddess Nut and associate the deceased with the four sons of Horus. A similarly decorated example in Cairo was found in the tomb of Sennedjem at Deir el-Medina (TT 1), an intact burial at the time of its discovery (see pl. XVII in P. E. Newberry, Funerary Statuettes and Model Sarcophagi). Sennedjem was an artisan responsible for work on the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, the father of Ramesses II. Another example belonging to Sennedjem is now in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (see p. 4 in B. Porter and R.L.B. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Text, Reliefs, and Paintings, second edition, vol. 1, 1). Based on the similar style and on the surviving traces of his name, it is conceivable that this lid could belong to the “Servitor in the Place of Truth” Amuneminet, whose limestone model coffin and shabti are now in the Hirshhorn Museum (see L. Troy, "Ancient Egypt in our Midst," AnthroNotes, vol. 33, no. 1, 2012, p. 18).