© Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University. Photo by Peter Harholdt.

ClassificationsAncient Egyptian Art

Coffin Board

Place CreatedEgypt, Africa

CultureEgyptian

PeriodThird Intermediate Period, Dynasty 21

Date1076-944 BCE

MediumWood, gesso, pigment

Credit LineCharlotte Lichirie Collection of Egyptian Art

Dimensions64 x 14 9/16 x 3 9/16 in. (162.6 x 37 x 9 cm)

Object number1999.001.012

Label TextCoffin boards were a feature largely confined to the Twenty-first Dynasty and evolved out of the mummy masks and elaborate body covers of the New Kingdom. The coffin board looked like, and served as, a secondary lid and was covered with depictions of god and amuletic devices to protect the mummy, which rested underneath it.

This beautifully preserved example depicts a female in a full wig wearing a jeweled broad collar with falcon terminals and pectorals of winged scarabs. Her arms are rendered as crossed and wearing beaded bracelets and the fingers of her folded hands are bedecked with rings.

The sky goddess stretches across the middle of the board, and two columns of text, a standard offering formula, run below. The inscription enumerates several epithets of Osiris and requests offerings on behalf of the deceased. The name of the deceased is not included, which was frequently the case on coffins manufactured or purchased at the last minute.

The text is flanked by images of Osiris, Sokar, ba-birds and udjat-eyes. With the appearance of cartonnage coffins in the Twenty-second Dynasty and later, the ungainly coffin board disappears and is ultimately replaced by intricate bead networks that appear on the mummy in the Twenty-fifth Dynasty and later.
Exhibition HistoryMCCM Permanent Collection Galleries, January 2000 - Spring 2001
MCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, September 2001 - Present
Published ReferencesPeter Lacovara and Betsy Teasley Trope, The Realm of Osiris (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2001), 47.

ProvenanceEx coll. Niagara Falls Museum, Niagara Falls, Canada. Purchased by MCCM from William Jamieson (1954-2011) [Golden Chariot Productions], Toronto, Canada.

Status

On view

Collections