Literature

The most common type of coffin during the Middle Kingdom took the shape of a rectangular box with lid. The mummy inside was placed on his left side, facing east, his head behind two painted magical eyes which were supposed to enable him to behold the rising sun, reborn daily. The long horizontal inscriptions were prayers to Anubis (god of embalming) as preserved in this fragment, and to Osiris (god of the dead), for offerings of food and drink and other items necessary for survival in the afterlife.

The inscriptions are the work of a careful scribe and illustrate the quality of hieroglyphic palaeography in the Middle Kingdom. This example is to be read from left to right and will have encircled the upper section of the coffin. For complete coffins with similar painting see the mid-12th dynasty coffin of Senbi, from Meir, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, acc. no. 1914.716. Also see the coffin of Nekhtankh: J.H. Taylor and N.C. Strudwick, Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt. Treasures from The British Museum, Santa Ana and London 2005, p. 45, pl. on p. 45.