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 a thin application of plaster painted yellow with details in a dark pigment. The back surface is a flat plane. A dowel hole passes through the thickness of the hand. 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, two holes, some splitting, damage to thumb, some loss of decoration, surface dirt, rectangular label adhered to surface (white with ornate blue border with ink annotation 1391).

Coffin Fragment | National Museums Liverpool

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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 a thin application of plaster painted yellow with details in a dark pigment. The back surface is a flat plane. A dowel hole passes through the thickness of the hand. 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, two holes, some splitting, damage to thumb, some loss of decoration, surface dirt, rectangular label adhered to surface (white with ornate blue border with ink annotation 1391).

Coffin Fragment

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