Coffins

The style of the wooden coffins varies considerably throughout the dynasties. The earliest examples are rectangular, unpainted, with a short inscription cut on the lid, and also round the four sides. On the lid was a human face, made of pieces of wood pegged on. In the XIth and XIIth Dynasties the shape was still rectangular, with decorations in stripes of gaudy colours, or in the case of better ones, inscribed inside and outside with chapters from the "Book of the Dead" in hieratic. We also find coffins with human faces at this period. Isis and Nephthys are represented in some part of the decorations very often kneeling, and seeming to embrace the coffin with their wings. Later, about the time of the XIXth Dynasty, the decorations became very elaborate. The coffin took the shape, more or le , of the mummy, with a well-modelled face, having the eyes let in in some harder material, and wooden hands cro ed over the breast. The mummy was enclosed in two, three, and even four elaborately painted coffins. The texts record the titles of the deceased, also chapters from the "Book of the Dead." The scenes represent the deceased adoring the gods. These coffins were varnished with a thick yellow varnish. Coffins of XXIInd to XXVIth Dynasties have scenes of the weighing of the heart in the judgment hall of Osiris, and pictures of the *Ba* (q.v.) visiting the body. After this period the art degenerated. The lids were fastened on with wooden dowels, the places where these were inserted being plastered up and painted over.