Sarcophagus of the Hathor Priestess Henhenet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Henhenet was one of several females who were buried in shaft tombs beneath the platform of King Mentuhotep II's temple at Deir el Bahri. Her massive sarcophagus is made of several limestone slabs set on a sandstone base. They were originally held together by metal straps strung through holes on the inside. Around the sarcophagus box are inscriptions, which were first painted green, then outlined in black on two sides; the third side was started but left unfinished. The lid had first been inscribed in sunk relief for another of the females called Kawit, over whose name Henhenet’s was added in green paint. Like the sarcophagus, the lid is made of separate slabs. Each of its three parts is pierced by two holes through which suspension ropes were slotted for lowering the piece into place. When found, there was still a wooden coffin inside the sarcophagus; within this was Henhenet's robbed mummy. According to Edouard Naville, the excavator, she was "lying on the cloth wrappings. Her hands and feet are small and delicately formed, her hair short and straight." The mummy was sent to Cairo in 1923. It was studied there by Dr. Douglas Derry, who concluded that Henhenet had been about 21 years old when she died in childbirth.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art