Inner anthropoid coffin of Hapiankhtifi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This mummiform coffin was found nested inside two larger rectangular coffins (see 12.183.11a and 12.183.11b). Inside was the mummy of an middle-aged man, now in the Peabody Museum at Harvard. It is made of wood covered with linen to which was applied a thick coat of black pitch. Both the gilded face and tripartite wig, which was overlaid with rows of black faience inlays, identify the deceased as divine. The long trapezoidal beard is of a type previously reserved for royalty, and the extensive broad collar is modeled in stucco that has been painted red, green, and black with stripes of gold foil between the rows. Developed during the Middle Kingdom, as an extension of the funerary mask, the mummiform coffin represents a new type of receptacle for the body. It would have been placed on its side so that it could look out of the wedjat eyes painted on both of the rectangular coffins in which it was enclosed.

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