Coffin Fragment

1973.1.643

Information

Right fist from an anthropoid (human-shaped) coffin, holding an object that may be folded cloth, a short stave or a document case (‘mekes’). The front is naturalistically formed with trace of a thin application of plaster, perhaps painted red. 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). CONDITION NOTE (1998): incomplete,dry, surface loss, surface dirt, chipped, splitting.