“Egyptian Sarcophagi”
Gabrielle Cuebas
HUA 101
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Egyptians are well known for their belief in reincarnation and the high regard they
show for the deceased and their transition into the afterlife. It was usually people of high
rank, like pharaohs and nobles, which received the greatest services for their burial,
because the common people could not afford special tombs or mummification. Very
significant in Egyptian funerals is the sarcophagus, or coffin, of the deceased, how it is
decorated, and what is done with their bodies and personal belongings. Things are also
done after the final burial. The Metropolitan Museum of art has an excellent exhibition of
Egyptian artifacts from different eras. The section I focused on was the middle kingdom,
which is between 1802–1640 B.C. I came across several interesting sarcophagi and
artifacts that were left behind with them.
Sarcophagi “are almost always made of stone, limestone being the most popular,
but sometimes of granite, sandstone, or marble.”1 The tomb I found, which is shown on
the title page, is very elaborate. There are hieroglyphics with different meanings all over
the coffin. The meanings varied from a request to the gods for abundance in the afterlife,
such as for food, water, shelter, weapons and things of the sort. Inside the sarcophagus
the body is lying on its left side, in its body shaped encasing, with the head facing east “to
the sun-god and the "realm of the living"2, as shown in picture A below. Something
interesting on the bottom right of the coffin, at level with the mummy’s head inside, is a
pair of painted eyes with a doorway beneath them, which is close up in picture B. The
meaning of these eyes is so that the deceased can have sight into the passage ahead of
them. The painted door is also known as the “false door … that allowed gods or the
deceased to interact and link with the living world.”3
The second sarcophagus I saw was buried with the deceased’s belongings, which
looked like a kind of spear or other weapon, along with some jewelry, as seen in picture
C. “Personal belongings were usually placed in the tomb … assist the dead in their
journey into the afterlife.”4 Picture D is a beautiful body coffin I encountered, which was
most likely a “thin layer of gold over a plaster base”,5 which one could only assume was
for a pharaoh or wealthy person.
The feeling that I got from seeing these sarcophagi is not a mournful one.
Normally when I see coffins I get a gloomy feeling because it is associated with death.
Looking at these sarcophagi is different. For one thing, they are highly decorative and
beautiful. I cannot begin to imagine the time it took to hand paint the symbols on the
wood. The Egyptians spent a lot of time and effort to make sure that the deceased made
the correct passage into the afterlife. A good example of that is when they mummify the
dead to preserve their bodies. The form of the body coffins is an ideal shape of the body
with the face boldly painted on with a lot of details. The form of the sarcophagus is very
simple, which is nice because all the decorations give it its beauty.
Images
A)
B)
C)
D)
Notes
1
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Sarcophagus
http://www.maat-ka-ra.de/english/maat_ka_ra/sarco_c.htm
3
http://touregypt.net/featurestories/falsedoors.htm
4
http://www.crystalinks.com/egyptafterlife.html
5
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/coffins.htm
2