A meticulous study of the social, economic, and religious significance
of coffin reuse and development during the Ramesside and early Third
Intermediate periods
Funerary datasets are the chief source of social history in Egyptology,
and the numerous tombs, coffins, Books of the Dead, and mummies of the
Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties have not been fully utilized in
this regard, mostly because the data of this time period is scattered
and difficult to synthesize. This culmination of fifteen years of coffin
study analyzes coffins and other funerary equipment of elites from the
Nineteenth to the Twenty-second Dynasties to provide essential windows
into social strategies and adaptations employed during the Bronze Age
collapse and subsequent Iron Age reconsolidation.
Many of the Twentieth to the Twenty-second Dynasty coffins show evidence
of reuse from other, older coffins, as well as obvious marks where
gilding or inlay have been removed. Innovative vignettes painted onto
coffin surfaces reflect new religious strategies and coping mechanisms
within this time of crisis. Advances in mummification techniques
meanwhile reveal an Egyptian anxiety about long-term burial without
coffins as a new style of stuffed and painted mummy was developed for
the wealthy, and a complex coffin style emerged due to long-term burial
without painted tomb chapels.
The first part of this book focuses on the theory and evidence of coffin
reuse and the social collapse that characterized the Twentieth and
Twenty-first Dynasties, while the second part presents a collection of
photo-essays of annotated visual data for about a hundred Egyptian
coffins, most of them from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
