These two brightly painted panels each contain a
train of three deities, two of which are well
preserved in each panel. Each of these deities is
identically attired in a tightly-fitting raiment
decorated with a red-X. That X-shaped design
imitates “suspenders,” which are habitually found
on the lids of coffins of the period. This motif
replicates the leather “mummy suspenders”
which were routinely included as part of the
burial equipment of the time. Additionally, these
deities hold bolts of linen cloth, either naturally
white or dyed red, in their hands, and these
allude to the mummy bandages with which the
mummy placed within this sarcophagus was
wrapped. Their headdresses are all uniformly
painted blue, perhaps in imitation of lapis lazuli.
The deities are depicted standing up a tri-
colored, rectangular ornament which represents
a serekh, originally depicting the crenellated
façade of a palace, but which, with the passing of
time, came to represent symbolically any sacred
precinct, such as the tomb in which the deceased
was interred.
Two of the deities are human-headed, and three
serpent-headed. They belong to a college of
funerary deities whose number is vast and whose
spheres of influence are only imperfectly
understood by modern scholars. The
hieroglyphic labels confined to a single
horizontal row across the top of each panel are
identical, and perhaps associate the deities with
the sun god Re, to judge by the fragmentary
nature of the beginning of each of these labels.
The labels then continue to identify the deities in
the most generic way possible, combining them
all together under the single rubric, “The gods
who are in heaven.” Not one, therefore, is
named.
The panels, dated to the Third Intermediate
Period, provide an interesting window into the
arcane nature of ancient Egyptian funerary
practices at a time when the deities of Egypt
appear to have been without number. Their
complex mythological roles and functions mirror
the complexities of mummification of the period,
because the art of the embalmers during the
Third Intermediate Period represents the apogee
of their craft. Never before and never after were
Egyptian mummies so carefully prepared with
such exacting attention to detail.
References:
For the suspenders, see, John H. Taylor, Egyptian
Coffins (Aysnesbury, Bucks 1989), pages 43 and
46; these myriad deities are encountered on both
papyri and sarcophagi of the period, see, A.
Niwinski, 21st Dynasty Coffins from Thebes
(Mainz am Rhein 1987) and idem, Studies on the
Illustrated Theban Funerary Papyri of the 11th
and 10th Centuries B.C. (Göttingen 1989).
- Dr. Robert Steven Bianchi
Dimensions of right panel:
Height 27.37", width 8.75", depth 1.25"
Dimensions of left panel:
Height 26.75", width 8.75", depth 1"
