Coffin of the Lady of the House, Iineferty

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Mistress of the House Iineferty was quite elderly by ancient Egyptian standards — seventy-five years of age or older — at the time of her death. She was buried in an anthropoid wooden coffin that shows her as a slender mummiform figure wearing a tripartite wig with a flora fillet and a wide floral collar over a long mantle. Her arms are crossed over her chest, with her hands open and palm flat. A figure of the sky goddess Nut, wings outstretched in a protective embrace, is depicted across her abdomen. The scenes painted on the front of the lid, some of which are copies of scenes on the walls of the tomb, show her worshiping gods and being venerated by two of her sons, Khonsu and Ramose. The sides of the coffin were covered with lines of funerary text and representations of the Four Sons of Horus (the deities associated with the separately mummified viscera). Other objects in the collection that were discovered in the same tomb can be viewed here.

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