Funerary Mask

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This fragment has the characteristics of coffins created in Akhmim in the second half of the first century BC and the early part of the first century AD. It is created from mud and straw, and like female coffins in that group shows the deceased wearing a great large floral crown bound with a ribbon, a straight Egyptian wig, and on the shoulder a vertically striped/pleated garment. On the basis of inscriptions on some Akhmim coffins, the female coffins such as the museum's appear to be representations of the deceased as Hathor. Their dress represents the Egyptian pleated knotted dress that seems to have developed associations with Isis/Hathor.

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