Coffin Fragment

Left hand from an anthropoid (human-shaped) coffin with extended fingers. The front is naturalistically formed with a thin application of plaster painted glossy red (varnish?) The back surface is a flat plane. A dowel hole passes through the thickness. 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). Like similar coffin fragments from the Robert de Rustafjaell collection it has an annotation in blue (place collected?). It was most probably purchased at Sotheby's, London, 19-21 December 1906 lot 411D "A large number of Masks, Hands, and other parts of wooden Mummy cases; mostly painted in colour". CONDITION NOTE (1998): Incomplete, several fingers missing, dry, adhesive on surface, surface loss, surface dirt.