Box Coffin and Rope

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The earliest receptacles for the human body were large lidded baskets made from bound reeds (rather than woven fibers) or pottery containers. Before long, craftsmen began to fit short pieces of lumber together with a variety of carpentry techniques to make wooden coffins to fit the body in the contracted position that was common into the early part of the Old Kingdom. This early example was made from the wood of the tamarisk, a tree common to the Nile Valley. The sides, lid, and floor are constructed of narrow planks held together with tenons. These were slipped into a channel in the frame to form housing joints and the frame was then pegged together. An earth-toned plaster was applied to the exterior surface to smooth over imperfections in the wood and fill the spaces between the planks. The long sides of the coffin are enhanced with a niched pattern meant to imitate a palace facade and thus identify the coffin as the house of the deceased. The lid is vaulted, as became traditional for many outer coffins and sarcophagi; this represents the roof of the per nu, the national shrine of Lower Egypt. The accompanying rope could have been used to lower the coffin into the tomb or to secure the lid to the box.

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