Human Remains; Canopic Box of Nesshutefnut

Shrine-shaped box for the internal organs of a mummified male named Nesshutefnut, a priest of the god Horus. On the lid the god of embalming Anubis is shown as a jackal. On the sides, the four sons of Horus who guard the internal organs can be seen. On the front, Thoth and Re-Harakhti open the “double doors of the horizon”. Along the height of the box are two inscriptions. On the back is painted a djed pillar, the symbol of Osiris, god of the dead, with a human head, and arms grasping the royal symbols of the crook and flail. The wrapped internal organs inside have now turned to a brown lumpy powder with fragments of bandages. There was originally a painted wooden figure of a hawk pegged on the lid but this is now missing. The burial of Nesshutefnut was excavated in 1905 by the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology. John Garstang, Harold Jones and a team of 80 others spent three months excavating the site of Hissaya, a burial place used in the Ptolemaic and Roman Period, mainly by priests of Horus from the temple city of Edfu, which is 20km to the north of the site. Most graves in the cemetery had been robbed, except for the burial of Nesshutefnut. Placed beside the coffin was a canopic chest, a painted wooden stela and a statue of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris.