Coffin of the DjedBastetiuefanch
| Coffin of DjedBastetiuefAnch | |
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| material | Sycamore wood |
| Dimensions | H. 176 cm; W. 49.5 cm; T. 42 cm; |
| origin | El-Hibeh, Middle Egypt |
| time | Late period |
| place | Hildesheim , Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum , PM 1954 |
The Egyptian collection of the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim contains the mummiform (that is, mummy-shaped) coffin of a priest (with the title “God's Father”) called DjedBastetiuefanch from the late period (26th – 27th dynasty, 664–404 BC) . Chr.)
Location
In the spring of 1912, the Egyptologist Hermann Junker carried out an experimental excavation in El-Hibeh on the concession and account of Wilhelm Pelizaeus . The excavation site is in northern Middle Egypt near the city of Beni Suef in the 18th Upper Egyptian Gau (Falkengau) on the eastern bank of the Nile. Hermann Junker discovered a shaft grave with over 20 painted mummy-shaped coffins, which are now in the Egyptian museums of Cairo, Vienna and Hildesheim . The five Hildesheim coffins came into the possession of Wilhelm Pelizaeus through the division of the finds, who handed them over to his hometown Hildesheim. The coffin of the DjedBastetiuefanch is particularly interesting because it shows a detailed sequence of scenes from the embalming ritual. In this level of detail, this is very unusual and rare. The coffin is made of sycamore wood with a polychrome painted cover of linen primed with plaster . It is 176 cm high, 49.5 cm wide and 42 cm deep.
Description and state of preservation
Since the early days there were coffins made of terracotta , wood or stone , which were usually cuboid ("box coffins ") to protect the deceased . The mummy shape of the coffin did not develop until the Middle Kingdom . In the Third Intermediate Period (approx. 1076–723 BC), after the end of the New Kingdom, the wall decorations that had been customary in the graves of the nobles were no longer carried out. The religious scenes shifted, as it were, from the walls to the coffins and there, in close proximity to the dead, fulfilled their purpose as protection and help on the way to the afterlife. The deceased DjedBastetiuefanch, who became Osiris through the ritual of the dead , wears the long, braided beard of the gods, curved at the bottom. His red-brown painted and broadly designed face shows a look slightly upwards. A broad flower neck collar with falcon head ends covers his chest. Underneath, a winged scarab , symbol of the sun god ( Chepri ) who appears in the morning, spreads its wings wide, an indication of the hoped-for rebirth. The area below is covered with scenes that are arranged in six registers one above the other. Two more registers follow, turned upside down, on the foot of the coffin. The scenes in the six registers on the top front of the coffin contain excerpts from the embalming ritual that was performed on every dead man who could afford it.
To understand the embalming or burial ritual, read the scenes from bottom to top. The corpse is cleaned in the first and second register, ie viewed from below. It is shown as a black filled silhouette of an unclothed human body, which, according to Egyptian ideas, resembles the representation of the shadow . In two different scenes, purification priests pour liquids over the dead, preparing the body for embalming. In the field of view above, three priests are led by a fourth, wearing a mask of the jackal-headed god Anubis , to a stretcher with striding lion legs. The dead person lies on it (with a headrest on his neck) on stylized plants that allude to the regenerative power of Osiris as the god of vegetation . In the third register, another priest with an Anubis mask bends over the already bandaged mummy, which is now lying on a lion bier with her legs at rest. Under the stretcher there are two sacks, presumably with baking soda, which was essential for drying out the corpse. In the left part of the picture the finished mummy can be seen on a larger stretcher. Below her are the four canopic vessels that were used to hold the separately prepared entrails . In the fourth register, four priests and three women offer a dead sacrifice at a cult site with a sacrificial plate , a scene that can be at the beginning or at the end of the embalming ritual. In the fifth register there is a ship procession, perhaps the crossing from the embalming hall to the necropolis, under the protection of three gods, whose standards (emblems) are carried in front of the ship. In the top, sixth register, there are the four sons of Horus , the protective gods of the internal organs or the canopic jars used for their burial, flanking the sacrificial cult site (similar to the fourth register). At the edge of the picture, right and left, the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, the sisters of Osiris, spread their wings protectively. The two upside down registers on the foot of the mummy show DjedBastetiuefanch as a falcon-headed mummy over a sloping base (as the now divine appearance of the god of death Sokar ), in front of whom his unnamed wife mourns. Four priests with gods standards move away from this scene. Above that, the mummy of the DjedBastetiuefanch (now with a crown of horns and feathers and a human face with a beard as "Osiris") receives a dead sacrifice from a priest with an Anubis mask, a ritual priest (with papyrus in hand and a feather crown on his head) , as well as a priest with the adze for the symbolic mouth opening in his hand. On the far left, the grieving widow of DjedBastetiuefnach can be seen again.
In summary, the scenes from the burial ritual are reproduced on the mummy coffin, such as the cleaning of the corpse, the mummification by Anubis, the laying in of the dead and a procession with standard bearers. A decorative band, a so-called color conductor, surrounds all image fields. On the front of the pedestal, two sphinx figures (with a royal beard and a royal Nemes headscarf ) have found a place as protective forces. The three other sides of the pedestal are inscribed with the name and title of the owner of the coffin and a short formula for prayer. Along the side edges of the coffin, two colored ladders each frame the image of a multiple coiled uraeus snake , which, as a magically effective protection, “seals” the coffin. The snakes are crowned with the white crown of Upper Egypt (right side of the dead person) or with the red crown of Lower Egypt (left side). On the outer coffin floor is a large goddess in a long, net-like robe with a sun disk and an ostrich feather on her head between two god emblems (again as “colored ladders”). Presumably it is Imentet, the personification of the West (although the symbols also bring to mind Maat, the daughter of the sun god). It is flanked by the hawk-shaped god Sopdu , the “Lord of the East”, who perches on a papyrus stem, and by the standard of the jackal-shaped god Upuaut , the “opener of the ways”, who shows the dead the way into the underworld. In this way, the mummy in its coffin was optimally protected by numerous divine powers on its dangerous journey through the underworld.
literature
- Hans Kayser : The Egyptian antiquities in the Roemer-Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim in the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim, Verlag Cramm de Gruyter & Co .; Hamburg 1966 p. 100
- Günther Roeder u. Albert Ippel : The monuments of the Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim . Karl Curtius Verlag, Berlin 1921, p. 99
- Bettina Schmitz : T1 coffin of the Djed-Bastet-iuef-anch . In: Arne Eggebrecht (ed.). Search for immortality, the cult of the dead and belief in the afterlife in ancient Egypt, Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1990, pp. 28–31. ISBN 3-8053-1292-X
- Renate Germer: The secret of the mummies: Eternal life on the Nile . Prestel Verlag, Munich u. New York 1997, ISBN 3-7913-1782-2 p. 18, fig. 2.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim; inventory number PM 1954