Embalming Coffin

Discovered in the courtyard of the much earlier temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, this coffin was part of an embalming cache. It had been filled with mummification materials— including bags of natron and sawdusts—and placed at the bottom of a shallow pit. Large pots were packed around it, and it was then covered by layers of straw, several mats, garlands, and a broken frame made of papyrus and palm sticks. This material is thought to have been made sacred through its contact with the body and its use in the process of ritual transformation.

The coffin itself takes the form of a sah, a body transformed through embalming. It is undecorated, covered with only a preparatory layer. The name Khaemhor is written on the left shoulder in a script called abnormal hieratic. This is the name of several high officials of the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. The shape, with no arms or hands shown and the feet resting on a shallow pedestal, suggests a date in the early 26th Dynasty; this, combined with the fact that the Book of the Dead of "Khaemhor C," son of Remaakheru, was found not far from this cache, suggests that the coffin belonged to this man.