AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD FUNERARY ENSEMBLE

THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD, 21ST DYNASTY, 1070-945 B.C.

Details

AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD FUNERARY ENSEMBLE
THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD, 21ST DYNASTY, 1070-945 B.C.
Comprising a coffin lid and trough, and a mummy-board, all brightly painted with an abundance of iconographic representations and texts, the lid anthropoid, depicting the deceased, wearing a striped tripartite headcloth crowned with a fillet centered by lilies, the arms crossed and covered by an immense floral broad collar, exposing only the separately-made hands, extending outward, two seated animal-headed deities below, an inscription on the right side, reading: "invocation-offerings," the decorative elements arranged below in six registers, the principal scenes with some details in relief, as follows: a (restored) kneeling goddess between vignettes of Osiris between Isis and Nephthys, with inscriptions, reading: "A Royal Offering Formula" and "invocation-offerings," Isis with an identifying inscription, a row of uraei above wedjat-eyes flanked by the Four Sons of Horus seated, centered by a (restored) scarab with a solar disk, a row with two sets of the Four Sons of Horus centered by a (restored) scarab in a solar barq, a row with the goddess Nut kneeling with her wings outstretched, a row with Ba-birds, the decoration on the feet prepared to be seen from above, with Isis and Nephthys kneeling; the exterior of the trough with vignettes arranged in panels, separated by ornamentation, the top edged with pairs of uraei with single plumes in between, the sides identically-rendered from top to bottom, with the divine triad, Isis standing before Osiris, falcon-headed Horus behind, with a caption, reading: "A Royal Offering Formula (to) Osiris, Lord of Eternity, Foremost of ," Isis standing behind seated Osiris, both with identifying inscriptions, winged Isis and Nephthys flanking the sacred site of Abydos supported by two uraei, with a similar text as above repeated, two figures, one with the crown of Upper Egypt and one with the Crown of Lower Egypt, an inscription before each, reading: "A Royal Offering Formula...," each standing before an offering table holding a crook and a flail, the Four Sons of Horus holding mummy wrappings, before the solar barq with a scarab, and a Hathor-Cow with a wedjat-eye above; the interior of the trough with Osiris holding a crook and a flail on the bottom, with an inscription, reading: "A Royal Offering Formula (to) Osiris," the interior sides of the trough painted red and littered with stars, the top with a Ba-bird, following below on each side in four registers, top to bottom with three underworld deities, two sets each of two of the Sons of Horus, and symbols related to Osiris; the mummy-board designed to conform to the coffin lid, emulating the form of the mummy, similarly depicted as the lid, with a striated tripartite headcloth adorned with a lily-fronted fillet and a large multi-strand broad collar, a horizontal panel with a solar disk propelled by a scarab, flanked by uraei and wedjat-eyes, reticulated patterning below representing a net-like shroud of beads, with a single column of text down the center, reading: "A Royal Offering Formula (to) Osiris, Lord of [Eternity]... Su-em-wia-Atum(??)..."
Coffin: 73¾ in. (187.3 cm.) long (3)

Provenance

M. Gustave Posno, a Dutch jeweler living in Cairo in the second half of the 19th century; thence by descent through the generations to his great-grandson R.A. Posno.
Archéologie, Piasa, Paris, 28 September 2004, lot 245.
Private Collection, U.S.

Literature

A. Dautant, Cercueils jaunes des XXI et XXII dynasties dans les collections françaises, Bordeaux (forthcoming).

Sale room notice

Please note the additional provenance information:
A. Dautant, Cercueils jaunes des XXI et XXII dynasties dans les collections françaises, Bordeaux (forthcoming).

If you wish to view the condition report of this lot, please sign in to your account.

View condition report

Lot Essay

This coffin is one of a well-known class of luxury coffins made for the High Priests of Amun and their families during a period when those priests controlled Southern Egypt from Thebes. It is rare for the mummy-board to survive with the coffin. The wood from many ancient burial ensembles were exploited as fuel for locomotives and simple home use in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The composition of this mummy-board falls into a class described by S. Ikram and A. Dodson (pp. 173-174 in The Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity). They note that "boards continued frequently to cover mummies to the first part of the Twenty-Second Dynasty; their design, however, precisely followed that of contemporary coffins with few features specific to them. An exception is the so-called 'rhomboid' patterning, perhaps imitating bead nettings, that is found over much of the surface of some mid/late Twenty-First Dynasty mummy-board." Just such a rhomboid patterning is found on this mummy-board.

More from Antiquities

View All