Sarcophagus Fragment

19th-20th Dynasty – Ramesside 1300-1100 BC

Provenance:
Italian Private Collection (P.)
Collection B. C. (London)
2002 Galerie D. (Brussels)
French Collection

The fragment is from the curved head end of the box (i.e. not the lid) of a pink granite anthropoid sarcophagus made for an important official of the Ramesside Period, c. 1300-1100 B.C. As it is usual at the head end, there is a figure of the goddess Nephthys; she is named by the hieroglyphs above her head. She was one of the four goddesses who protected the dead and is depicted with arms outspread in a protective gesture. Her sister goddess Isis would have been shown at the foot end. Nephthys is flanked by a very large tit or Girdle of Isis amulet to the left and a djed pillar on the right, both offering further protection and the hope of regeneration to the deceased. The remains of a column of hieroglyphs at the left edge were part of a speech by one of the other protectors of the dead who would also have been depicted but standing along the long sides of the box. These would have been the Four Sons of Horus plus Thoth and Horus. Such text is in columns to imitate the transverse bandages on the mummy itself.
Hard stone anthropoid sarcophagi for non-royal Egyptians are a feature of the Ramesside Period and the date is confirmed by the figure of Nephthys which exhibits the attenuated legs and high waist with which females of the period were depicted.