Undecorated Coffin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Discovered in the courtyard of the much earlier temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, this coffin was part of an embalming cache. It had been filled with mummification materials, including bags of natron and sawdust, and placed at the bottom of a shallow pit. Large pots were packed around it, and then it was covered by layers of straw, several mats, garlands, and a broken frame made of papyrus and palm sticks. This material was made sacred through its contact with the body and its use in the process of a ritual transformation. The coffin itself takes the form of a sah, a body transformed through the process of embalming. It is undecorated, covered with only a preparatory layer. The shape, with no arms or hands indicated and the feet resting on a shallow pedestal, suggests a date in the 25th or early 26th Dynasty. For more on this coffin, see this online article.

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