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Nevine el-Aref – Ahram Online
A 17th dynasty anthropoid coffin containing a mummy, a mud-brick offering chapel and a pile of mixed materials from funerary equipment, have been unearthed by a Spanish-Egyptian archaeological mission in Draa Abul Naga necropolis on Luxor’s West Bank.
Mission director, José Galán, explained that these objects were unearthed during excavation work carried out in the area located in front of the open courtyard of Djehuty’s tomb (TT 11).
The coffin measures 1.75 by 0.33m and was carved in wood cut from a single sycamore tree trunk, then coated with a whitewash and painted in red.
Inside the coffin a mummy of a 15- or 16-year-old girl resting on her right side. The mummy is in a bad conservation condition.
The mummy is wearing two earrings in one of her ears, both with a spiral shape and coated with a thin metal leaf, maybe copper.
She had two rings, one made of bone and the other with a blue glass bead set on a metal base and tied with string. Four necklaces tied together with a faience clip were found around the chest.
A small coffin made of mud was found. It is still closed and tied together with string.
A wooden ushabti wrapped in four linen bandages was found inside the coffin. The ushabti figurine and one of the linen bandages are labelled in hieratic text identifying its owner, “The Osiris, Djehuty”, who lived under the 17th dynasty (c.1600 BCE).
In the same area, inside a funerary shaft, a pair of leather sandals were found together with a pair of leather balls tied together with string, also dating to the 17th dynasty.
“The sandals are in a good state of preservation, despite being 3,600 years old,” Galán noted. He added that they are dyed in a vivid red colour, and engraved with various motifs showing god Bes, goddess Taweret, a pair of cats, an ibex and a rosette.
From their decoration and size, he said, the sandals probably belonged to a woman, and also the balls, which were used by a woman for sport or as part of a dancing choreography, according to daily life depictions in Beni Hassan tombs of the 12th dynasty.
