Coffin of a Woman

The Gamhud coffins were decorated by artisans with varying skills and experiences. While some of them are of fairly good workmanship, many of them, like this one, do not belong to the most finely crafted pieces but are in a provincial style: their decoration is rather simple, while the inscriptions exhibit scribal errors and confusions, implying that some of the Gamhud artisans did not understand the texts they were painting on the coffins. This coffin was decorated by such an artisan inexperienced in hieroglyphic writing: the offering formula covering the lower part of the lid is corrupted, while the name of the deceased is not indicated.
The light-coloured face is flanked by a heavy wig. The chest is covered by a large wesekh-collar showing a geometric design, and below this, the kneeling figure of the goddess Isis spreading her wings in protection of the deceased can be observed. Then follows the scene with the wrapped mummy resting on a lion-shaped funerary bier, with four canopic jars underneath containing the embalmed internal organs of the deceased. Under the mummification scene are five vertical columns. The middle one contains a short and inaptly written text of an offering formula. The legend is flanked on each side by a column of red discs and a column of red and blue zigzag design, typical iconographical motifs of the Gamhud coffins. The damaged pedestal is decorated with two jackals, representing the funerary god Anubis, facing each other.