History, geography and science

This catalogue brings together coffins from the 21st to the beginning of the XXII dynasty kept in the Louvre Museum. With an unequalled iconographic richness, these coffins are characterized by the yellow background on which the decoration takes place and by the varnish that totally or partially covers this decoration. In all, five complete sets including outer and inner coffins and mummy cover, two incomplete sets, seven inner caskets, three inner vats, three mummy covers, one fragment of an outer vat and four faces are on display.
The chronological evolution of this type of coffin, the history of the collection and the important question of their reuse are addressed in the long introduction. Numerous drawings and extensive photographic coverage illustrate the commentary in which the décor of each coffin is fully described and analyzed. The list of all the inscriptions (names, titles, epithets, extracts from funerary books, hymns and formulas, etc.) and their translation complete the description. Each set or casket is dated and located as accurately as possible within the chronological period. The results of the numerous analyses of materials (wood, polychromy and varnish) are the subject of a chapter that feeds into a concrete reflection on the materiality of these monuments, their manufacture and the practices of the workshops. Several indexes accompany this new book, which presents one of the richest collections of yellow-bottomed coffins preserved outside Egypt.

French

732 pages
Co-publishing Editions Khéops / Louvre éditions