In this contribution, I will lay out detailed evidence for reuse of coffins in the Egyptian Museum of Florence coming from the Second Deir el Bahari Cache of Bab el-Gasus and dating to the 21st and early 22nd Dynasties. It was at this point in history when the whole of the Mediterranean region went through a massive economic and social collapse, seeing the fall of the Mycenaean, Hittite, Ugaritic and other civilizations. This regional event did not bring about Egypt’s fall, but it did bring with it disruptions in Egypt’s centralized government, economic systems, agriculture, trade networks, not to mention an influx of Sea Peoples and Libyans in mass migrations. Government systems in the north of Egypt faltered, while in Thebes people moved on without a king, relying only on a decentralized High Priesthood of Amun to maintain order.2 The material culture of the Theban region is a testament to this moment in history.
Coffins are social documents, recording social place, gender, spending ability, geographic place, commodity availability, craft details, and religious information. Coffins can reflect human reactions to all sorts of changes in the environment and within human systems, including reactions to scarcity and crisis. In fact, using coffins to gauge the severity of a social crisis might be a better indicator than official texts with a state agenda of cracking down on opportunists or presenting an image of control. During the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, Egyptians with disposable income were meant to have a nesting coffin set made—for their death, for their display in the funeral cortège, transformation in burial rites, and, ostensibly, for their use in the hereafter in perpetuity. When the ancient Egyptians entered a period of scarcity and collapse, they were loath to abandon the physicality of their coffins, and Theban elites in particular continued their materialist understanding of funerary practices creating coffins with brightly painted polychrome decorations. How did the Egyptians maintain coffin production despite scarcity of resources, known to us from other texts and sources?
When I first started my dissertation in 1999, I set out to find all examples of Ramesside coffins in museums in Europe, North America, and Egypt. There were only about 80 examples, including small fragments,3 and this, despite the fact that the first part of the Ramesside Period was characterized by prosperity, including empire building, the astounding construction program of Ramses II, the apex of the Deir el Medina craft production in the Valley of the Kings, and intensive funerary commissions by elites in Western Thebes. Despite the evidence for significant elite funerary production from the reigns of Ramses I to Ramses III, very few coffins can be attributed to the 19th Dynasty and even fewer to the 20th Dynasty. Where have all the Ramesside coffins gone? It was Andrzej Niwiński who first suggested that many such coffins were actually reused in the ensuing 21st Dynasty4 when social and governmental systems decentralized and when evidence for economic scarcity is everywhere in the written and archaeological record, but there was no systematic study of the topic of reuse.
Identifying reuse on later coffins of the 21st Dynasty can be very difficult. Unless one is specifically looking for it, reuse can hide in plain sight, partly because we consider coffin reuse aberrant and do not expect to see it, but also because the Egyptians became very skilled at creating new coffins out of old. The reusers of the Bab el-Gasus coffins had become particularly adept at reusing so that new, updated decoration blended into the old colours, even if two decoration styles occurred on one and the same coffin surface.
Mine is the first study to systematically identify evidence of coffin reuse in any time period in ancient Egypt and the findings continue to surprise Egyptologists. Because we are moving from a phase of prosperity to one of scarcity in the 21st Dynasty, the study of coffin reuse must view trends as they change over time and employ a large dataset. The larger the dataset, the more reliable the study’s conclusions about trends of reuse will be. Thus, I set out with an interdisciplinary team of experts to examine as many coffins of the 19th–21st Dynasties and early 22nd Dynasty as possible, looking under breaks in the plaster for older decoration, examining the spots where personal names were written for evidence of re-inscription, carefully checking for out-of-fashion wooden modeled feet or forearms underneath the current plaster surface.
There were many ways to reuse a coffin. Sometimes, only the old name was removed and a new one added. Many other coffins indicate that craftsmen updated funerary pieces in a piecemeal fashion, keeping some elements and re-working others—retaining an older style wig, for example, covering it over with blue paint only, but updating the collar and lower body. Or, in other cases, I have been able to identify forearms and elbows as older Dynasty 19 coffin modeling that was retained and then covered over with later 21st Dynasty design. Some coffins show signs of having been changed from female type (with earrings, flat hands, and breasts) to masculine type (with a striped headdress, fisted hands, and a beard). Other coffins show that they were scraped down of all old decoration before new plaster and paint were applied; I can only see this technique if the craft specialists left remnants of the old decoration.
Thus far, I have found only one 19th Dynasty coffin that might possibly have been reused (the inner coffin of Katebet in the British Museum5); it shows a change in gender, from a male wig to a female. No other signs of modification are visible on the coffin, and this could very well be a mistake in the coffin production, rectified in the decoration phase, or a reuse that occurred later in the 20th or 21st Dynasties. None of the other 19th Dynasty coffins have shown any evidence of reuse; that is, they were not made from reused 18th Dynasty or earlier 19th Dynasty coffins. Once we move to the 20th Dynasty coffins, however, the evidence immediately shifts towards an increased rate of reuse. The ensuing 21st Dynasty follows the same pattern of reuse in Egyptian coffins.
Table 1
Coffin Reuse on all examples analyzed up to 2015, by country—242 Coffins Total
|
Rate of reuse for 20th–22nd Dynasty |
Reuse score |
TBD |
Reuse % |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
coffins analyzed thus far |
|||||||
|
Museum/institution |
Coffins |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
||
|
Berlin, Germany, Ägyptisches Museum |
15 |
8 |
3 |
1 |
3 |
1 |
46.67 % |
|
Bodrhyddan, UK |
2 |
2 |
100 % |
||||
|
Bristol, UK, City Museum and Art Gallery |
4 |
2 |
2 |
50.0 % |
|||
|
Brussels, Belgium, Musée Royaux d’ Art et d’ Histoire |
12 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
6 |
1 |
66.66 % |
|
Copenhagen, Denmark, Copenhagen Nationalmuseet |
11 |
5 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
54.54 % |
|
|
Copenhagen, Denmark, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek |
1 |
1 |
100 % |
||||
|
Cortona, Italy, Museo dell’Accademia |
2 |
2 |
TBD |
||||
|
Edinburgh, UK, National Museums of Scotland |
5 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
60 % |
||
|
Exeter, UK, Royal Albert Memorial Museum |
1 |
1 |
0 % |
||||
|
Florence, Italy, Museo Archeologico |
17 |
4 |
2 |
1 |
10 |
76.46 % |
|
|
Houston, TX, USA, Houston Museum of Natural Science |
1 |
1 |
0 % |
||||
|
Leeds, UK, City Museum |
2 |
2 |
0 % |
||||
|
Leiden, Netherlands, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden |
14 |
5 |
3 |
1 |
4 |
1 |
57.14 % |
|
Liverpool, UK, Merseyside County Museum |
4 |
3 |
1 |
100 % |
|||
|
London, UK, British Museum |
33 |
15 |
11 |
1 |
6 |
54.54 % |
|
|
London, UK, Petrie Museum |
1 |
1 |
100 % |
||||
|
Manchester, UK, Manchester University Museum |
1 |
1 |
100 % |
||||
|
New York, NY, USA, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
24 |
7 |
6 |
9 |
2 |
62.5 % |
|
|
Paris, France, Musée du Louvre |
31 |
10 |
7 |
8 |
6 |
68.24 % |
|
|
Perth, Scotland, UK, National Museums of Scotland |
2 |
2 |
100 % |
||||
|
Stockholm, Sweden, Stockholm Medelhavsmuseet |
4 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
50.0 % |
|
|
Swansea, UK, The Wellcome Museum |
1 |
1 |
100 % |
||||
|
Turin, Italy, Museo Egizio |
20 |
6 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
1 |
65.0 % |
|
Vatican City State, Museo Gregoriano Egizio |
17 |
9 |
1 |
1 |
5 |
1 |
41.17 % |
|
Vienna, Austria, Kunsthistorisches Museum |
15 |
1 |
7 |
7 |
93.34 % |
||
|
Warrington, UK, Warrington Museum & Art Gallery |
2 |
2 |
100 % |
||||
|
Totals |
242 |
82 |
55 |
19 |
77 |
10 |
65.85 % |
|
Totals for reuse with high confidence |
19 |
77 |
39.67 % |
||||
Thus far, I have seen about 250 coffins in person—documenting them photographically and examining them for reuse. The rate of evidence for reuse for coffins analyzed thus far in the twenty-six museums I have visited stands now at about 65 % (Table 1). In other words, about 65 % of the 21st to early 22nd Dynasty coffins show evidence that they were reused for another deceased individual. Even if I remove those coffins for which there is only a suspicion of reuse, the rate comes in at almost 40 %. Furthermore, I suspect much of the reuse in this time period of crisis and economic scarcity is still cleverly hidden. If I could scan underneath the plaster and see older plaster layers (all but impossible with current X-Ray technology) or perform Carbon-14 dating of the wood and expose the reuse of old lumber, or do CT scans and look for remnants of reused lumber, like older mortis and tenon joins, hidden in the wood interior, I suspect that the evidence of reuse would be much higher. Technical examinations have shown “clean” coffins to have actually been made of reused coffin wood. The late 20th or early 21st Dynasty coffin of Nespawershefyt in Cambridge,6 for instance, showed no obvious evidence of reuse to me in person, but a CT scan revealed older mortis joins hidden inside the carpentry of the inner coffin.7
My analysis is art historical in its foundation: careful in-person examination with a variety of light sources, usually a basic white light, but sometimes benefiting from Infra-Red Imaging (for the area where the personal name is inscribed, in particular), UV light (for examination of varnished surfaces) and, thanks to Elsbeth Geldhof’s help, digital microscopy (which can show multiple layers of painted decoration if there is a break in the surface decoration). I have also performed Carbon-14 dating on a few coffins in the dataset, one example being a stola coffin in a private collection, now on display in the Houston Museum of Natural Science,8 indicating that part of the coffin wood is 19th Dynasty in date, much older than the early 22nd Dynasty date of its decoration according to the accepted stylistic typologies.9 My art historical-visual analysis of this Houston coffin revealed no evidence of reuse, but the technical examination proved the use of older wood, thus providing a circumstantial marker in favor of the practice of coffin reuse. The wood was many hundreds of years older than the late 21st Dynasty style, too great a difference to be explained away by ancient oversized trees, and its use may be a sign of coffin, or at least timber, reuse. Both the Houston and Florence coffins seem made of non-imported woods, probably acacia and sycamore fig, respectively, and were probably made of timber cut from much smaller trees than a centuries-old cedar from the Lebanon. In other words, I suspect that if Carbon-14 could be applied to the entire dataset, then the rate of timber, and probably also coffin, reuse from mid-20th Dynasty to early 22nd Dynasty would again be much higher than 65 %.
The Florence coffins under examination below come from Bab el-Gasus and provide an excellent opportunity to view one coffin group’s patterns compared to the larger dataset. The Florence Bab el-Gasus coffins actually show 100 % reuse, an astounding number that provides clues into how much coffin reuse was actually happening in Thebes during the early Third Intermediate Period. The larger Bab el-Gasus reuse percentage is 85 %, and I suspect it has only not reached 90 % or higher simply because of poor access to many coffins, hampered by their location in museum vitrines, thus limiting my close up examination.
1 Methodology
In Table 1 above, I have graded my own confidence in the evidence for coffin reuse from 0 to 3, 0 being the number assigned to coffins with no evidence of reuse, 1 the number assigned when only circumstantial evidence can be found, 2 the assigned number when there is stronger evidence, and 3 when there is obvious and conclusive proof of reuse on a given coffin. As my research has developed, I have also included a 0.5 when there is just a bare suspicion of reuse, when the evidence is not strong enough for even a score of 1. The number on the bottom right shows that approximately 65 % of the coffins examined thus far show reuse, a much higher proportion than I envisioned when I set out to find the lost Ramesside coffins seven years ago.10
In June 2011 and then again in June of 2015, I examined all yellow coffins currently in the Egyptian Museum of Florence, in order to elucidate different methods of reuse. I excluded most fragments, preferring to look at complete pieces. Of the 18 coffins I examined in Florence, 8 come from the Bab el-Gasus. All of these Florence Bab el-Gasus coffins show evidence of reuse, but of those, only 6 of them showed strong evidence. In all, about 80 % of the available coffins in the Egyptian Museum of Florence showed reuse, which is much higher than the overall rate of 65 % and nearly as high as the Bab el-Gasus rate of reuse of 84 %. I think it is the high preponderance of Bab el-Gasus coffins which raised the overall rate of reuse of 21st – early 22nd Dynasty coffins in Florence.
I am grateful for my up close access to these coffins in storage in Florence, which allowed me to document and prove such a high rate of reuse. Indeed, I suspect that most, if not all (!) Bab el-Gasus coffins will show some evidence of reuse if the appropriate access for study is gained and the appropriate technology applied.
The reasons for this high rate of reuse are many. First, we are dealing with a time period of economic scarcity, and while pigment and varnish seems to have been available to Theban elites, wood was a limited commodity. It is highly likely that the only way to procure a transformative coffin for one’s loved one was by reusing a coffin (or coffin wood) from the family tomb, or by buying a reused coffin at a craft installation of some kind. Second, many of the Florence coffins find their origin in the Bab el-Gasus cache, and these pieces also show higher evidence of reuse than the 21st Dynasty coffin assemblage as a whole. This Bab el-Gasus group of Theban Amun priests participated in decorative reuse—updating styles of older coffins, gender reuse—changing the gender of a coffin from male to female or vice versa, name reuse—changing the name and sometimes also the title to match the new owner, often keeping the rest of the decoration the same.
Sometimes there are structural markers of older Ramesside coffins, like the body undulations of a 19th Dynasty coffin of the deceased female in daily dress, or of the masculine plaster relief tripartite tiered wig, which have been painted over with 21st Dynasty Solar-Osirian decoration. The amount of reuse as gender modification is so pervasive amongst the Bab el-Gasus cache owners that I would argue for the reuse happening largely in the context of the family, as a legal and opportunistic practice in which the family burial chamber was used for the raw material of the next family member, male or female. If one were buying a masculine coffin on the open black market, from stolen coffins, there would not be so much gender modification visible in the Bab el-Gasus cache. Changes in coffin gender are a testament to the family’s struggle to bury their dead using, it seems, one coffin set that had to be changed as necessity demanded. The pervasive Bab el-Gasus coffin reuse also suggests the priority of short term ritual use over long term coffin ownership. This, it seems, was the agenda for most Egyptians burying their dead in this time of material scarcity. The amount of varnished blank spaces for names even suggests that a kind of short term coffin use or rental was practiced (although direct proof in the form of receipts for such rental has never been found).
Long story short: when faced with scarcity, the only moral solution for the ancient Egyptians was to take their ancestors out of their coffins, bringing these coffins to a craft workshop for redecoration, ideally updating the coffin style and adding the name and title of the new deceased individual to be contained in the object. The Theban priests in the Bab el-Gasus cache were no exception to this rule. Indeed, they seem to have been vertitable masters of the art of coffin reuse.
Identifying coffin reuse is a challenging business and includes finding pigments under plaster layers and varnish under paint layers, or by observing inconsistency between a coffin’s poor quality decoration and the fine quality wood from which it was built. This article will, I hope, elucidate what evidence for reuse can look like—from the most obvious examples to the most circumstantial, giving other researchers a chance to correct and supplement my work, which I must point out is a moving target and research in progress. My tables and graphs are always changing as I improve my research techniques, gain better access to a particular museum’s coffins, or add more samples to my data set. Despite my subjective eye, some evidence of reuse is beyond doubt. It is my hope that this research will provide a better idea of how the Egyptians covered their tracks when they were reusing a coffin and what they felt was absolutely necessary to change when using the coffin again for a new occupant.
By the same token, I must reiterate that our current 21st Dynasty coffin typology11 is needlessly complicated, precisely because of reuse—because craftsmen often took shortcuts, keeping older decorative or structural elements, blending them into new elements, only updating what was really necessary. Thus, a given coffin might have a 19th Dynasty wig style but a mid-21st Dynasty collar and pectoral, or 19th Dynasty modeled feet and 21st Dynasty yellow background decoration. The practice of coffin reuse results in a mélange of styles, making typological seriation a complicated endeavor.
Even though he was the first to suggest that most Ramesside coffins were reused in the ensuing dynasties, Niwiński rarely saw reuse clearly in the coffin record. Ironically, instead of identifying the reuse visible on a given coffin, Niwiński often concluded that what he was seeing represented archaism instead and that the Egyptians were referring back to earlier fashions.12 Perhaps it is because I wrote my first book The Cost of Death on 19th and 20th Dynasty coffins that I am often able to see older decoration styles and modeling, even in fragmentary form, as just that—evidence of older coffins underneath later reuse actions. For example, if a 21st Dynasty coffin has a wig that was out of fashion by that point in time and more in line with a 19th Dynasty type coffin, then I am more liable to conclude that this coffin was reused and that the craftsman retained the older wig.
The data for reuse will be analyzed according to set. If a coffin and mummy-cover were found together, they are analyzed here together as a set, with the knowledge that some coffins may have been put together by dealers, rather than by the ancient funerary specialists.
2 Coffin Data from the Egyptian Museum of Florence
2.1 The Outer Coffin (Florence 8523) of Ankhefenkhonsu, from A.60—Reuse: 3
I did not identify a complete coffin set for this individual as Niwiński has in his catalogue (outer coffin, inner coffin, mummy-cover). The accession number of 8523 only applies to one outer coffin, as far as I can tell. The coffin seems made of local wood, likely acacia or sycamore, but no testing was done to determine species.
The coffin was certainly reused. There is evidence of decorative reuse and name reuse, suggesting a multiple reuse. The name Ankhefenkhonsu is written in red paint only, despite the surrounding polychrome inscription, a clear indication that the name was added at a later time (Fig. 157). The name is found on the coffin case’s left side at the foot end. It is also clear that craftsmen erased a previous inscription to add the name Ankhefenkhonsu. There are traces of a red line underneath the ankh-sign in the name, and there is evidence of an old Egyptian blue inscription in the infrared photographic examination. It is likely that there was polychrome text here before the name was inscribed in red—probably the name of the previous owner rubbed away in a reuse action.
The coffin was reused and reinscribed for Ankhefenkhonsu, and there may have been another one or two even older reuses, betrayed by 1) older polychromy underneath the current striped blue and white headdress at back of head on the lid and 2) older modeling at the forearms indicative of a 20th or early 21st Dynasty coffin, instead of the late 21st Dynasty coffin we see in the surface decoration. There are clearly two plastered polychrome layers visible. The later plaster layer is a thick mud plaster, and the earlier layer is a thin white layer. The thick mud plaster is visible on the case as well, suggesting that the decorative modifications of the coffin case go with the headcloth modifications as well.
The plaster at the head end of the lid shows an older plaster surface with red and yellow colours (paint and possibly varnish). There is definitely another polychrome layer underneath the striped blue and yellow headcloth (Fig. 293). Indeed, the orpiment of the headcloth has a very different florescence when compared to the orpiment of the usekh-collar, suggesting different times of execution, different workshops, and different pigment mixtures for the headcloth and usekh. Maybe the mud plaster of the case matches the mud plaster of the wig. The usekh-collar was applied onto a fine white plaster with huntite, which was applied over a thick mud plaster layer. Microscopic examination by Elsbeth Geldhof shows that the headcloth was painted over the usekh-collar, suggesting that the headcloth was changed for a later user while retaining the older collar. We were unable to ascertain definitively if the headcloth was painted over the varnish of the colour, but it seems likely.
Interestingly, there is a spot of damage on the wood on the lid at the back of the head, and decoration (stripes of the headcloth) was applied into the concavity, suggesting reuse of a piece that was roughly stripped down or damaged in transport. Overall, the plaster applied to the surface of the coffin is very thick, as one often sees on coffins with decorative reuse. The face is built up almost entirely of plaster, a modification ostensibly allowing the reuse of the coffin lid.
The coffin lid betrays earlier coffin modeling because it shows forearms and shoulders carved from the wooden surface, a feature of earlier coffins, but not later 21st Dynasty examples (Figs. 144–303). The fisted hands show holes, to hold sacred emblems, a feature more associated with earlier coffins as well (Fig. 145). The usekh-collar is quite long (20 cm under the fisted hands) and indicative of a later 21st Dynasty date for this decorative layer, going about 20 cm under the fists (Fig. 303). Given the modeled arms and given that the collar is the oldest known decorative layer on this coffin, it is likely that there was at least another older decorative layer before what is visible now. I would suggest that this coffin was constructed in the 20th Dynasty or early 21st Dynasty to be reused with new decoration in the late 21st Dynasty.
Furthermore, the lid ledges are flat and unfinished, while the case has a stepped ledge. This is clearly indicative of reuse, suggesting that lid and coffin were not made for one another originally and that the case is likely older than the wood in its construction.
There is a beard hole visible underneath the chin, fitting with the masculine fisted hands.
2.2 The Outer Coffin (Florence 8524) of an Anonymous Woman from A.15—Reuse: 3
This outer coffin shows multiple reuse in the form of decorative reuse, gender modification, and a blank space for the owner’s name.
The lid shows the gender modification from a masculine coffin to a female coffin quite clearly: Earrings and breasts were added in plaster (Fig. 13). The hands seem to have been changed as well, from masculine fisted hands to female flat hands. The beard hole was covered by plaster, now currently a raised area with the diameter of a peg hole underneath the chin. The area for the name on the lid’s feet is blank and varnished over, creating a possible “parish coffin” that could be reused multiple times for short-term owners who had their name inscribed over the varnish, to be easily wiped away after the funeral proceedings with a damp cloth (Fig. 17). The title and inscription were changed to match a female coffin (Wsi̓r mꜥꜣt ḫrw ḏd.s hꜣ mwt Nwt …).
The case sides were modified as well to show a woman in the two-dimensional offering scenes. She is wearing the same blue dress throughout, and no name of the deceased owner is visible (Fig. 294). The modifications for the gender change are also visible at the neck area where the usekh-collar was repainted. The application of paint is messier here, but the artisan tried to match the floral decoration of the existing collar. When the artisan changed the headdress and earrings and collar, he smoothed plaster over the surface of the hair and collar and thinly scraped it to the outer edges of the collar. Some of this plaster has cracked, and the decoration underneath is visible. The artisan tried to match the older floral decoration at the sides of the lid, so that he did not have to redo the entire surface. It is interesting the craftsmen would try to save and match older decoration, if possible, taking the time to match the old surface, instead of redecorating the whole thing. This technique is easiest to see on the lid’s right side, where the new plaster of the headdress was applied to cover the old usekh-collar.
The coffin was used at least once before the gender modification. At the back of head on the lid’s left side is painted plaster of an older striped headdress about 1 cm underneath the present painted plaster. These are likely the blue and white stripes of an earlier 21st Dynasty coffin, probably a man’s coffin.
2.3 The Anonymous Outer Coffin (Florence 8525) from A.56—Reuse: 3
This outer coffin lid shows decorative reuse (gender modification) and blank spaces for the name of the owner in multiple locations, including lid and lid side inscriptions; the title wꜥb n i̓mn sš n _____ is visible on the coffin feet and side inscriptions (Fig. 295). Niwiński mistakenly says this coffin is for an anonymous Chantress of Amun in his catalogue. The fact that the blanks were all varnished over suggests it could have been meant to serve as a communal coffin for the Theban priesthood. We were unable to do any infrared photography of these blanks because the coffin needed to remain on the museum storage shelf for conservation reasons.
The coffin lid’s gender modification was from a woman to a man. This is clearly visible at the back of the head where blue stripes of a masculine headdress were painted over and around the pre-existing female head garland. Elsbeth Geldhof established this with microscopic photography. Why they kept the head garland on a masculine coffin is not clear, but it was integrated with the striped headdress. There is no other evidence of a pre-existing female headdress except for the head garland, and we should suppose that it was chiseled away in preparation for the new masculine owner.
Masculine ears were added in plaster (a female coffin would have covered the ears with a blue headcloth), and a beard strap was added in blue over the varnish of the face. There are no remnants of breasts, suggesting that they removed them when they changed the hands. The decorative surface of the chest was completely updated for the man’s coffin, it seems.
Interestingly, the wig lappets betray a high curve in sections as would be seen on a 19th Dynasty coffin. No Carbon-14 dating was performed, but it would be the ideal way to test the theory that this 21st Dynasty coffin was originally a 19th Dynasty coffin.
2.4 The Anonymous Inner Coffin (Florence 8526) from A.60—Reuse: 3
This inner coffin is clearly reused. First, the lid and case do not fit; the lid is too wide on the coffin’s left side. The outline of the head does not fit, especially on the left side; there is also a huge gap near the feet, with a 4 cm overlap here, too much for even the worst of wood warping (Fig. 296). It is likely that the lid and case belonged to two separate coffins originally and that they were brought together opportunistically during a previous reuse. Second, there are markers of a Ramesside coffin. The case may be 19th or 20th Dynasty in its original construction and decoration as it shows an earlier style of decoration and betrays at least two hieroglyphic hands (ostensibly the second added during a reuse event). Third, there are remnants of a gender modification. The coffin lid shows a female, but the coffin has added earrings and breasts, and a modified wig. Third, there is evidence of name reuse. This is probably a triple reuse, at the least. The wꜥb n i̓mn title mentioned by Niwiński in his catalogue was not visible to me during my examination.
The coffin case is almost certainly Ramesside in style with a figure of Thoth at the head end. The interior of the case has a dark red background and a large figure of a goddess of the West, another marker of an earlier 21st Dynasty coffin. The case shows an inscription for a nbt pr šmꜥyt n i̓mn ꜣḫ-pw(?). The lid likely belonged to another, older coffin, and there are remnants of older style of decoration on the lid below the lappets: a Nut figure and a winged khepri that have been retained and around which new, updated decoration was added.
2.5 The Inner Coffin (Florence 8527) and Mummy-Cover (Florence 9530) of Khonsumes from A.22—Reuse: 3
This coffin set shows reuse as a set and as individual pieces, including decorative reuse, name reuse, gender modification, and markers of the Ramesside Period. The coffin set was decorated for a man, but quickly redecorated for a woman by just adding earrings and changing the hands, but not redecorating the striped masculine headdress. The hands on the coffin have been lost, but the modification is still visible in the painted plaster substrate where they have fallen away because the outlines of the decoration match fisted male hands rather than flat female hands (Fig. 297). The oblique angle of the added flat female hands was similar on both inner coffin and mummy-cover. The wings of a heart scarab are positioned under the hand addition. Indeed, it seems that the added female hands were placed at an oblique angle to keep as much of the original decoration as possible.
Interestingly, the artisans retained the striped masculine headdress, believing added earrings and flat hands to be enough for the modification. No changes were made to the carving or paint of the face plate. No breasts were ever added to coffin or mummy-cover. The coffin also retains the masculine name and title, despite the gender modification to female, on the lid’s side inscriptions. The title and name of the masculine owner is preserved on the coffin lid’s left side, along a text column near the feet: sš n pr i̓mn nswt nṯrw ḫnsw(-ms). Although the coffin was redecorated for a woman, I can’t identify her name having been added anywhere. The two-dimensional depictions of the male deceased were also not changed on the lid or case sides.
The modeled arms on the coffin suggest a Ramesside or early 21st Dynasty construction for the inner coffin, suggesting at least two reuses of this coffin. The wood is probably local, joined together from small pieces of what is likely acacia or sycamore fig.
The mummy-cover shows that a new feminine title of nbt pr was added in a different, lower quality, hand. This is the only place that a new title was added to the entire set, suggesting perhaps that there was more funerary ritual focus on the mummy-cover at this time period. The flat hands were attached obliquely by the reusing artisans (Fig. 298), a similar feature to the inner coffin (although the hands have fallen away from the inner coffin). Earrings are painted over the striped headcloth of the mummy-cover, just like the coffin. It seems clear that the coffin and mummy-cover were decorated to match one another, ostensibly for a man named Khonsumes, and that they were then reused together for a woman and bear similar features of that reuse, including oblique hand placement to save decoration on the chest.
2.6 The Inner Coffin (Florence 8528) and Mummy-Cover (Florence 9534) from A.15—Reuse: 2
This inner coffin and mummy-cover are almost certainly reused, showing probable decorative reuse in the form of gender modification, plus blank spaces for a name with a generic female title (Fig. 299). The inner coffin also shows a beard hole despite the fact that it is a woman’s coffin. The checkered wig and earrings were possibly added later. The lower legs may have been updated, but this needs further examination. Indeed, the coffin lid betrays two levels of quality in the draftsmanship: the long collar is carefully and expertly applied, but the lower body’s painted decoration is crudely applied. It seems certain that the collar and the lower legs were painted by two different craftsmen, perhaps at two different times in the coffin’s use. The legs of the coffin lid have a very thick layer of plaster, perhaps modifying older and outdated coffin modeling, again an uncorroborated detail.
The title of the coffin owner is inscribed as nbt pr smꜥyt n i̓mn nswt nṯrw _____, with a blank for the name. The title and blank appear in many places. This varnished blank would have provided the perfect surface for a coffin reused time and time again.
The mummy-cover with accession number 9534 is not in Niwiński’s catalogue, but it belongs to the same coffin as 8528. It betrays the same differing quality levels of draftsmanship between collar (high quality) and lower legs (low quality). The same high plaster relief seems to have been added to the lower part of the mummy-cover, but like the coffin lid, it has not been substantiated that this lower leg decoration was changed in a reuse event. It is also possible, though not definitive, that a beard hole was covered over with plaster, as on the inner coffin. Like the inner coffin, the mummy-cover may have the addition of a new wig, breasts, and earrings.
Both coffin and mummy-cover seem to have a modern varnish, resulting in a very shiny surface, but this has not been corroborated in material science studies. The usekh-collar is really nicely done with detailed, fine painting work, but the lower part of the lid seems coarse and with lots of plaster. I suspect they plastered over the lower part of the coffin and repainted it. There is a great deal of high plaster relief on the lower lid, but not carefully done.
3 Conclusion
In conclusion, the close examination of a group of coffins for evidence of reuse is both hyper-detailed and broadly anthropological. The catalogue of evidence is necessary for other researchers to check my work and, if that is even possible, see through my eyes. Detailed conservation information is necessary so that Egyptologists know what analysis has technical examination behind it, and what is supported by visual examination alone. Once all the evidence is described and analyzed, however, we are left with a percentage of coffin reuse that is on point with the 21st Dynasty coffin dataset as a whole—almost 60 %—and if we could examine these coffins with more technical methods, the percentage would certainly be higher. And then we are left with the surprise that there is so much evidence for a human behavior that the Egyptians themselves never talked about in a positive way and obviously tried to cover and veil. This high percentage of reuse speaks to the time of crisis and material scarcity, yes, but it also speaks to a communal agreement that coffin reuse was the best possible way to deal with this practical problem.
In the ancient textual record, tomb robbery and funerary arts reuse were discussed either in a punitive context (as in the Tomb Robbery Papyri13) when people are being interrogated and tried, or it was purposefully veiled (like in the Late Ramesside Letters or the Deir el Medina inventory texts).14 But the fact that 100 % of the Florence Bab el-Gasus coffins were reused suggests that just about everyone in ancient Thebes who could afford a coffin was engaging in this practice to transform and protect their dead relatives. We just have no direct written evidence of it. But why would anyone have written down that they took a family ancestor out of her coffin, moved her mummy to a corner of the tomb, took the coffin out of the tomb, redecorated it with appropriate and fashionable decoration, and used it for another relative? This was unseemly behavior, best kept disguised.
For most of its history, Egyptology has looked upon tomb robbery and funerary arts reuse as aberrant, regressive, and abnormal. Documents like the Tomb Robbery Papyri have reinforced that mindset. In their literature, the Egyptians themselves repeatedly describe the ideal (read: “normal”) burial situation as a stone house in which the ancestors reside for eternity, supported by income-producing lands set aside in an endowment to pay for priests and provisions in perpetuity. However, in the last two decades, many Egyptologists have looked to the entire ‘life cycle’ of a tomb, pointing out that tomb robbery and reuse were not only a part of necropolis life, but that tomb robbery had been practiced since the beginnings of ancient Egyptian complex society, a reality of which the Egyptians themselves were well aware.15
The rate of reuse on these Florence coffins allows us to understand that the ancient Egyptians saw funerary transformation as their priority. Once the dead had benefited from the coffin materiality in ritual, both public and private, the coffin did not absolutely have to remain with the dead. This longer term agenda—perpetual ownership by the dead—was usually prohibitively expensive and only possible during times of plenty. Inevitably, times of crisis, like the 21st Dynasty—hit any civilization, and it is during these lean years that accumulated materiality could be recommodified and reused.
Table 2
Coffin Reuse in Bab el-Gasus: coffins from the Museo Archeologico, Florence, Italy
|
Accession no. |
Coffin type |
Coffin part |
Dating |
Provenance |
Name(s) of deceased |
Title |
Reuse score |
Type of reuse |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
8523 (among others) |
Outer coffin |
Case + Lid |
Mid to late 21st Dynasty |
From the tomb of Bab el-Gasus, found in Deir el-Bahari in 1891, presented by the Egyptian Government in 1893 |
Ankhefenkhonsu; Niwinski has Ankhesenmut the usurper |
3 |
Decorative reuse, name reuse |
|
|
8524 (among others) |
Outer coffin |
Case + Lid |
Mid 21st Dynasty |
From the tomb of Bab el-Gasus, found in Deir el-Bahari in 1891, presented by the Egyptian Government in 1893 |
Anonymous |
Chantress of Amun |
3 |
Multiple reuse, decorative reuse, gender modification, blank space for name |
|
8525 |
Outer coffin |
Lid |
Late 21st Dynasty |
From the tomb of Bab el-Gasus, found in Deir el-Bahari in 1891, presented by the Egyptian Government in 1893 |
Anonymous |
Chantress of Amun |
3 |
Blank space for name |
|
8526 (probably) |
Inner coffin |
Case + Lid |
Early to mid 21st Dynasty |
From the tomb of Bab el-Gasus, found in Deir el-Bahari in 1891, presented by the Egyptian Government in 1893 |
Kar (according to Niwinski) |
Priest of Amun |
3 |
Multiple reuse, decorative reuse, name reuse, gender modification, markers of Ramesside coffin |
|
8527 |
Coffin |
Case + Lid |
Early to mid 21st Dynasty |
From the tomb of Bab el-Gasus, found in Deir el-Bahari in 1891, presented by the Egyptian Government in 1893 |
Khonsumes (I don’t see a re-inscribed name, but Niwinski notes the usurper’s name is this.) |
3 |
Decorative reuse, name reuse, gender modification, markers of Ramesside coffin |
|
|
8528 |
Inner coffin |
Mid 21st Dynasty |
From the tomb of Bab el-Gasus, found in Deir el-Bahari in 1891, presented by the Egyptian Government in 1893 |
Blank Name |
Mistress of the House, Chantress of Amun |
2 |
Blank name with generic title, decorative reuse, gender modification, blank space for name |
|
|
9530 |
Mummy board (belonging to 8527) |
Early 21st Dynasty |
Bab el-Gasus |
Khonsumes (I don’t see a re-inscribed name, but Niwinski notes the usurper’s name is this.) |
3 |
Decorative reuse, name reuse, gender modification |
||
|
9574 |
Mummyboard |
Mid 21st Dynasty |
Bab el-Gasus |
2 |
Gender modification |
Figure 293
(Inv. 8523) The plaster applied to the surface of this coffin is very thick, as is common on coffins with decorative reuse.
Figure 294
(Inv. 8524) The case sides of this coffin were modified to show a woman in the two-dimensional offering scenes, evidence of gender modification for reuse by a woman.
Figure 295
(Inv. 8525) The title wꜥb n i̓mn _____ is visible on this coffin’s feet and side inscriptions. The fact that the blank spaces for a name were all varnished over suggests it could have been meant to serve as a communal coffin for the Theban priesthood.
Figure 296
(Inv. 8526) The lid and case of this coffin do not fit; the lid is too wide on the coffin’s left side. The mismatched lid and case likely indicate reuse.
Figure 297
(Inv. 8527) The modeled arms on the coffin suggest a Ramesside or early 21st Dynasty construction for the inner coffin, suggesting at least two reuses of this coffin.
Figure 298
(Inv. 9530) The flat hands on this mummy-cover were attached obliquely by the reusing artisans, a similar feature to the inner coffin (although the hands have fallen away from the inner coffin).
Figure 299
(Inv. 8528) The title of the coffin owner is inscribed as nbt pr smꜥyt n i̓mn nswt nṯrw _____, with a blank for the name. The title and blank appear in many places. This varnished blank would have provided the perfect surface for a coffin reused time and time again.
Reeves 1990. See also Taylor 1992.
Cooney 2007. This research focused mainly on Theban coffins, but I have added many more 19th and 20th Dynasty coffins from northern contexts to the growing list, which appeared in Cooney 2018. See also Cooney 2017.
Niwiński 1988, 57.
BM EA 6665, cf. e.g. Dawson, Gary 1968, 52 and 145.
E.1.1822, cf. e.g. Niwiński 1988, 133–134, no. 56.
Strudwick, Dawson 2016, 182–189, #26.
Maclean 1901.
Some of the wood used for the Houston coffin lid (4 samples) is significantly younger than 950 BCE, dating to early 22nd Dynasty, on point with the stola coffin decoration and indicating that Egypt was finally seeing new wood cultivation after the years of scarcity during the 21st Dynasty. The coffin case, however, shows dates that are about 300 years older than those of the lid (from two different samples). Either the coffin case was made of wood from the centre (i.e. the oldest part) of a very large tree that was felled more than 300 years earlier, or it is recycled wood. The latter explanation is the likeliest, given that this wood was likely native. Thanks to John Southon of University of California at Irvine who conducted the carbon dating.
I worked with the 21st Dynasty coffins in the Royal Cache from Deir el Bahari (tomb DB320) in December of 2016 and there the reuse rate was 100 %.
This typology is based on Niwiński 1988. For more discussion of Dynasty 21 coffin typologies, see Van Walsem, 1993; Cooney 2014.
For example, the inner coffin of Tamutmutef (Turin 2228, CG 10119a–b, 10120) has a lid with the female deceased holding one arm bent against her chest and the other flat on her thigh, while the contours of her body are carved out of the surface wood. Niwiński (1988, 172) dated this coffin to the late 21st Dynasty in his catalogue, while I see the coffin as a reused 19th Dynasty female coffin type that once showed the deceased female in daily dress, with arms holding ivy or convulvus leaves, repainted with a yellow Osirian decoration typical of the 21st Dynasty (see Cooney 2011, 34–36). Indeed, Niwiński (1988, 79–80) creates a new type (Type IV-c) for female owners of this type of coffin, seeing it as archaizing. I feel it is safer to see this not as an archaizing type, but as an opportunistic reuse of an older style when craftsmen are taking shortcuts and not redoing a coffin completely. In addition, we can and should date the construction of a given coffin separately from its decoration.
Peet 1930.
For discussion thereof, see ibid. and Cooney 2015, 79–90.
Baines, Lacovara 2002. Näser 2008.