“Stola” Coffin of an Unnamed Man

This coffin was not commissioned by a specific individual, but was made for general sale and was never inscribed for its eventual owner. Its inscriptions and decoration are of a type very common in Thebes during the late 21st and early 22nd Dynasties, and the whole was intended to give a lavish effect. The details of the enormous necklace that extends from the shoulders, covers the arms, and falls to the tops of the thighs were painted with care, and the varnish applied over the background of the coffin, along with the raised red and blue decorations, was meant to suggest the shimmer of gold and precious stones.

The exposed hands hold objects known as mekes, which perhaps represent document cases, and were intended to convey the legitimacy of the owner's position and status. The red bands around the neck, known as "stolas," represent mummy braces (see, for actual examples, 22.3.306a, b), which are characteristic of this period. Scenes covering the lower part of the body depict the deceased in the company of various gods. It has been suggested that the box may not originally have belonged with the lid.

Inside the coffin was the skull of a young man who died around the age of twenty. On the right half of the frontal bone was a depressed fracture, thought to have been from a blow. The lesion showed signs of healing, and was judged to have taken place two or three years before the young man's death.