Description:
In the largest scene, four goddesses tow a papyrus boat across a body of water indicated by a rectangle filled with rows of zigzags, for water. The boat holds a central figure of the god Osiris, flanked by the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, identifiable by their headdresses. Atop the prow and damaged stern of the boat are ba-birds, representing the soul of the deceased. Also present are cobra emblems, supplying protection. The scene ends with a base line corresponding to a preserved edge of the original panel. The decoration on the rest of the fragment, other than a protective cobra with a long tail, is oriented perpendicular to the scene just described. The remaining features include part of the wing of a winged goddess whose image would have stretched across the mummy’s chest, and immediately below that a small standing goddess from a central scene, now otherwise missing. The once-central elements are framed in a checkerboard design, below which are two fragmentary bands depicting divinities consisting of two standing goddesses and below them a lion-headed and an ibis-headed deity, both seated with the knees drawn up. Another long scene, balancing the goddesses towing the funerary boat, would have completed the panel.
Label Text:
A shortage of wood led the Egyptians to introduce coffins made of plaster-stiffened linen, called cartonnage. Those who could afford it had an inner and outer coffin, both elaborately painted. Under Greek rule in the Ptolemaic period, the funerary equipment was simplified. A mask, foot coverings, and small panels of decorated cartonnage were often affixed to the mummy wrappings before the ensemble was encased in a single coffin. As the period wore on, the small panels were consolidated into larger ones, as in this example. Cartonnage panels continued into the Roman period, though other practices soon came into play.
Beliefs surrounding the funerary god Osiris, who died and was brought back to life, evoked hope for an afterlife, and so the dead came to be identified with him. Here the figure of Osiris is a stand-in for the deceased and the ritual of the god’s funeral may loosely reflect ceremonies for the human to whose mummy this panel was attached. Blank labels, shown as rectangles of contrasting color, accompany most of the figures, a holdover from a time when every figure would be identified with hieroglyphic text.
Diana Wolfe Larkin, June 2014
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1918.6.1 |
