Anthropoid "Stola" Coffin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This coffin was not commissioned by a specific individual, but was made for general sale and was never inscribed for its eventual owner. Its inscriptions and decoration are of a type very common in Thebes during the late 21st and early 22nd Dynasties, and the whole was intended to have a lavish effect. The details of the enormous necklace that extends from the shoulders, covers the arms, and fall to the tops of the thighs were painted with care, and the shiny varnish applied over the background of the coffin and the raised red and blue decorations were meant to suggest the shimmer of gold and precious stones. The exposed hands hold cylindrical objects that would, in real examples, have held documents or amulets. The red bands hung around the neck represent mummy braces (see for actual examples 22.3.306a, b), which are characteristic of this period. The scenes covering the lower part of the body show the deceased with various gods. It has been suggested that the box does not go with the lid.

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