Rogério Sousa – “The genealogy of images: Innovation and

tradition in coffin decoration (21st Dynasty)”

Centro de Investigação Transdisciplinar, Cultura, Espaço e

Memória

In the late Ramesside Period and especially during the 21st

Dynasty, coffin decoration increased in complexity and
innovative solutions, particularly in the context of the Theban
necropolis.

The strong innovative nature of these objects raises important

methodological questions for their study and description. Starting
with the morphological and iconographical study underwent on
the coffins and mummy-covers of the Sociedade de Geografia de
Lisboa uncovered in Bab el-Gasus, we will present in this paper
the main guidelines of the iconological study of a particular
section of the coffin: the central panel of the lid.

This section of the lid was decorated with a very stable pictorial
scheme. In spite of that stability, this scheme was the object of
constant renovation and reinterpretation. We will briefly expose
some of the main trends detected either in the style or in the
iconographic “lexicon” that was used. This will lead us to review
some of our epistemological perspectives on Egyptian
iconography.

With this study we intend to highlight the “genealogical” nature

of the innovations detected on coffin decoration. Particularly in
the 21st Dynasty, innovation is a matter of tradition.
Alain Dautant – “Third Intermediate Period Coffins in
Museums of South West France”
Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, University of
Bordeaux

A systematic and detailed study of Egyptian coffins of the

Third Intermediate Period preserved in the museums of
South West France is underway. These coffins arrived in
France in the nineteenth century through antique dealers and
collectors.

The Itneferamun’s coffin (Musée d'Aquitaine, Bordeaux) is a

good specimen of the Theban yellow-type coffins of the
early 21st Dynasty. The lid of the internal stola-type coffin of
Djedmut (Museum Histoire Naturelle, La Rochelle) certainly
belongs to one of the masterpieces of the Gregorian Egyptian
Museum, Vatican (late 21st/early 22nd Dynasty) The
Inamunnayesnebu’s coffin (Musée Georges-Labit, Toulouse)
is the missing link between the coffins of her parents
exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(25th Dynasty). A few other published and unpublished
coffins (21st-26th Dynasty) will be shown.
Luís Manuel de Araújo – “Egyptian Coffins in
Portugal”

FLUL, University of Lisbon

Among the more than one thousand Egyptian objects in

Portugal are ten coffins covering a historical period that
goes from the 21st Dynasty (X century BC) until the
Ptolemaic Period (III century BC). Nine are made of
painted wood, one is made of cartonnage, and four of
them still retain the respective mummies.
Rune Nyord – “Body and cosmos in Middle Kingdom
coffins”

Christ’s College, Cambridge

Middle Kingdom coffins with their extensive programmes of

decoration and inscription constitute a rich source for studying
Egyptian mortuary conceptions. Over the last decades this material
has been the subject of a number of detailed studies, including two
typological studies (Willems 1988; Lapp 1993) and a number of
monographic case studies of individual coffins (Willems 1996;
Meyer-Dietrich 2001, 2006). This surge of interest has gone a long
way towards elucidating the religious, and especially ritual, context
of the coffins. Nonetheless, certain significant questions are still left
open, so that for instance the exact relationship between coffin and
ritual is understood rather differently by the two authors of the coffin
cases studies cited. Similarly an object such as a coffin is open to a
number of different interpretive approaches (e.g. as medium for
image and writing, as space, as habitat, as inherently connected to –
or even notionally part of – the dead body), some of which are still
deserving of further exploration. This presentation takes up some of
the open questions and seeks to address them from a number of
different perspectives, complementing traditional philological and
iconographical approaches with ontological and material culture
perspectives drawn from archaeology and anthropology.
René van Walsem - "Architectonisation of coffins and ´divinisation` of
their owners in the Third Intermediate Period"

University of Leiden

One of the first well preserved coffins dating to the 4th dynasty unambiguously
shows that it represents a building, i.e. an architectural entity, in partcular the so-
called "false door" motif. Apart from completely blank coffins and sarcophagi, the
motif remains popular during the entire Old Kingdom, but already in the beginning of
the 6th dynasty wooden coffins start to appear showing two human eyes on the
exterior at the head-end. Later they are combined with the "false door" motif, which
became the most popular outer decoration during the Middle Kingdom. In short, a
limited "anthropomorphisation" of the architectural outer and inner coffins. Inside,
however, since at least the reign of Sesostris III the mummy itself lay in a completely
mummyshaped innermost coffin - developed from separately maskes covering the
head and an increasing part of the body. Via the rishi-coffins of the Second
Intermediate Period, the entire set of coffins/sarcophagi definitely represents the
antheropomorphic mummy, culminating in the late 18th-early 19th dynasty in
coffins/sarcophagi representing the owner in his daily official clothing, in fact
denying death/the ultimate physical state - i.e. a mummy - of the owner and complete
absence of architectonical attributes, apparently because they were considered as
incompatible with the human shape. During the development from the Ramesside
polychrome anthropomorphic shape to the yellow coffins up to the (late(r)) 21st
dynasty, slowly minor architectonic attributes start surfacing again, reaching their
apex in the so-called "stola" coffins. These show an abundance of architectonic
features and iconography, originating from both private as well as royal tomb and
temple sources, turning the now anthropomorphic coffin (set)s once more into a
(generally) well-balanced combination of archictectural entities with
anthropomorphic ones. In my lecture I will illustrate this latter development with
several examples of the stola coffins.
Kathlyn M. Cooney – “Ramesside and 21st Dynasty
coffins as Instruments of Social Power: Symbols of
Ideological, Economic, Political, Military and Sexual
Powers”

University of California, Los Angeles

Looking at the ancient Egyptian coffin as a social

tool recognizes the anthropological notion that the dead did
not bury themselves. Coffins were used by the living and the
dead to place themselves within a social gradient. Ritual use
was the raison d’être of an Egyptian coffin. Like the wall
decorations in royal Valley of the Kings tombs, the mass of
iconography and text applied to these wooden body
containers accompanied and concretized complex rituals.
Rituals were believed to protect and transform the deceased,
allowing him or her to move and breath and to find his or her
way. Rituals were thought to divinize the dead, allowing him
or her to transcend the impermanent human self. But these
rituals were also meant to be displayed to the public in the
material form of a coffin set. The nesting coffins thus
granted the deceased a materialized place in society,
witnessed by all participants at the funerary ritual. In this
talk, I will discuss how 19th, 20th, and 21st Dynasty coffins
were used to define social place and social powers.