Eternal rest could last a surprisingly short time in ancient Egypt.
Surprising research, revealed for the first time in an exhibition opening next week at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, exposes that many were buried in new and decorated coffins, patched together from pieces of older coffins; some made only a few generations earlier.
“How long did immortality last? This research raises many interesting questions which we can’t yet answer,” said curator Helen Strudwick. “Did people know, when they chose their coffins, that they were secondhand? Were recycled coffins cheaper?”
The raw materials can only have been obtained by tomb robbers, who most likely would have removed the original occupants, whose families would have paid a large sum for the coffins and the painted inscriptions promising a good afterlife.
Most Egyptian tombs found by archaeologists have been robbed at some point. It had been assumed that the thieves were targeting the gold jewellery and gemstones and other precious objects buried with the dead. The new research raises the intriguing possibility that the coffins themselves were as valuable as any of the contents.
Strudwick wonders how widespread and organised the trade was, and whether the coffin makers kept a stock of broken up coffins at the back of the workshop.
Some of the coffins were evidently bought off the peg and personalised with elaborate inscriptions naming and praising the dead, while others incorporating recycled material were high-status objects commissioned in life. A set of coffins made for Nespawershefyt, chief of scribes at the temple of Amun-Re at Thebes, covered in painted decoration and inscriptions, were made years before his death and later altered to promote his achievements – yet the x-ray and CT scans show that they include parts of at least one older coffin, and were pieced together from many bits of wood, with older dowel and mortise holes carefully filled. Wads of linen, clay and straw were used to pack other splits and gaps.
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