Coffin Fragment
55.82.86
Information
Left hand rom an anthropoid (human-shaped) coffin. The front is naturalistically formed but the back surface is a flat plane. Hands on anthropoid coffins were carved separately and would have been pegged in place on the coffin during the manufacture process. This construction technique is characteristic of coffins made in the late New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period and Late Period (about 1100 BC – 715 BC). John Garstang's team excavated about 250 tombs at "Beni Hasan South" near the mouth of the gorge of the Speos Artemidos in 1904, but this work is less well recorded than that of the earlier shaft tombs he excavated at Beni Hasan.
CONDITION NOTE (1998): Incomplete, one finger and thumb damaged, splitting, drysurface dirt, remains of pigmentation