Egyptian coffins stand out in museums' collections for their lively and radiant appearance. As an involucre of the mummy, coffins played a key-role by protecting the body and at the same time, integrating the deceased in the afterlife. The paramount importance of these objects and their purpose is detected in the ways they changed through time. For more than three thousand years, coffins and tombs had been designed to assure in the most efficient way possible a successful outcome for the difficult transition to the afterlife. This book examines twelve non-royal tombs found relatively intact, from the plains of Saqqara to the sacred hills of Thebes. These almost undisturbed burial sites managed to escape ancient looters and became adventurous events of the Egyptian archaeology. These discoveries are described from the Mariette's exploration of the Mastaba of Ti in Saqqara to Schiaparelli's discovery of the Tomb of Kha and Merit in Deir el-Medina. Each one of these sites unveil before our eyes a time capsule, where coffins and tombs were designed together as part of a social, political, and religious order. From the Pre-dynastic times to the decline of the New Kingdom, this book explores each site revealing the interconnection between mummification practices, coffin decoration, burial equipment, tomb decoration and ritual landscapes. Through this analysis, the author aims to point out how the design of coffins changed through time in order to empower the deceased with different visions of immortality. By doing so, the study of coffins reveal a silent revolution which managed to open to the common men and women horizons of divinity previously reserved to the royal sphere. Coffins thus show us how identity was forged to create an immortal and divine self.

Cross-referencing visual depictions with the more meagre archaeological record, this study presents a typology of this significant artefact. It examines the ritual uses of the amulet, and discusses its symbolic place in Egyptian theology, drawing on the work of Jan Assman.

This volume, edited by Rogerio Sousa, is part of the scholarly ferment which has wheeled around the subject of 'coffin' during the last twenty years. Its magic and religious evaluation identifies it from time to time as body container, but at the same time substitute body for the deceased, a maternal womb in which the regeneration will occur, a microcosm, tomb, funerary temple, as well as a conduit to the dead, a powerful tool activated by means of the Opening of the Mouth ritual. -From the Foreword, by Alessia Amenta In February 2013, the Symposium Body, Cosmos and Eternity: the Symbolism of Coffins in Ancient Egypt convened at the historical building of the University of Porto to debate conceptual frameworks underlying the contemporary study of Egyptian coffins. Rising from the close association with the depiction of the mummified body, the anthropoid coffins soon absorbed a rich mythological imaginary related to the constellation of Nut, the mother goddess of the sky supposed to give birth to Osiris, and evolved continuously, integrating larger and more complex sets of beliefs, mirroring the increasingly bolder use of coffins in the funerary rituals. It was this complex set of beliefs involving the coffin that we proposed to explore in this series of symposia. Following our original purpose, the studies presented in this volume display an excellent overview on the new trends of research on coffin studies, with diverse contributions concerned either with symbolism or social significance of coffins, museums collections or archaeological finds. These studies superbly showcase the richness of coffins as documental sources for the study of Egyptian religion, economy and society.