Shirt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This folded length of cloth is a shirt made of fine, closely woven linen. The stripes in the fabric are created by slightly darker warp threads. The width and distribution of the stripes is not uniform suggesting that the effect is accidental - perhaps a function of aging. The shirt had been folded and then stuffed around the top of one of the jars in Hatnefer's canopic chest (36.3.53). It shows no signs of wear and appears to have been new when it was used as part of Hatnefer's funerary preparations. A linen sheet had been stuffed in above the shirt, and a dark, oily liquid had been poured over it. In a few places this liquid seeped through to the shirt, causing its fabric to became dark and brittle.

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