Egypt, Late Dynastic period, ca. 712 to 332 BCE. A pair of brightly painted cartonnages - plastered layers formed into panels to line the inside of a sarcophagus or used as mummy decoration. These particular examples are all from one coffin, and are clearly from a coffin that was for someone in the middle class. Custom mounted and framed. Size of chest piece: 6.7" W x 12" H (17 cm x 30.5 cm); Size in frame: 14.5" W x 32" H (36.8 cm x 81.3 cm)

These painted strips are made of gesso (a mixture of chalk, pigment, and gypsum) over wide linen strips. Using a plastered surface like this formed a more stable surface for painting. The paintings are brightly done, with traditional Egyptian funerary symbols, and contain no hieroglyphs. The wider of the two panels was probably laid over the chest area, symbolically forming necklaces with a twin serpent design. The other panel has profile sketches of four gods, including Horus, Anubis, and Sobek, with Sobek wearing the sun disk that signifies connection to Ra and pharaonic power. By the time of the Late Dynastic period, the elaborate funerary rituals and furniture of the Egyptian grave had become an industry, mass produced, and given to, for the first time, the non-elite. While on the one hand, this signaled a decline in these religious practices and a simplification of motifs and artwork, it also represented a democratization of death, opening up access to privileged religious and afterlife-ensuring rituals to many more members of the society.

Provenance: Ex-Private European collection acquired before 1975

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