Unpublished anthropoid wooden coffin of pa-di-Wsir from Giza no. 485 h stored in the museum of civilization magazine”

Abstract EN

During the Late Period, from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty onwards1, wooden coffins had similar shapes, and the flat bottom of the sarcophagus served only as a support, not as a mother's container, for it was now covered with a much more convex lid2.

Figural representations became less numerous, replaced either partially or completely by long texts, these were excerpts from the Saite version of Book of the Dead, which were written on the lid in vertical columns, some of the lids after the Saite Period also have carved decorations3.

Wood was an expensive material in Egypt, although some trees such as palm and almond grew along the banks of the River Nile, these both had slim trunks and produced soft wood, which made them unsuitable for making coffins.

Hard wood had tobe imported from countries such as the Lebanon4 and transported to Egypt by sea and then along the river, to make the coffin, the wood was cut into planks, using metal tools, which were first made of copper, then bronze and later iron5.

As technology advanced, so did the skills of the carpenters and joiners, who developed sophisticated methods of holding the coffin together using dowels