The Coffin of Djedmonthuiufankh in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden, vol. 1: Technical and Iconographic/Iconological Aspects.

• Author: ASTON, D. A.
• Position: Review

The Coffin of Djedmonthuiufankh in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden, vo. 1: Technical and Iconographic/ Iconological Aspects. By RENE VAN WALSEM. Egyptologische Uitgaven. vol. 10. Leiden: NEDERLANDS INSTITUUT BOOR HET NABIJE OOSTEN, 1997, Pp. xix + 475 (text); pp. xxiv + 56 (166 plates). HFI 185.

Despite the book's impressive size, this is, as the author continually stresses, only the first of a projected two part study, the second of which has not yet been completed. Essentially this is a slightly revised version of the author's doctoral thesis submitted in 1988, in which his subject was the coffin Leiden ANM 18 (= M3) of the God's Father of Amun, Djedmontuefankh, whom he plausibly identifies with the man of the same name who appears in Theban Tomb A.18 (p. 313). The result is probably the most detailed publication of a single museum object anywhere in the world--no less than 316 pages are devoted to an analytical description of this particular coffin and its similarities or differences to all other known coffins of a like type.

Egyptian coffins, particularly those from the Twenty-first Dynasty, are undoubtedly familiar to us all, and through the works of Andrej Niwinski (21st Dynasty Coffins from Thebes [Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988]) and John H. Taylor (Egyptian Coffins [Aylesbury: Shire Publications, 1989]) can be conventionally divided into four distinct types. The latest of these are characterized, among other aspects, by painted representations of so-called mummy-braces, or in van Walsem's terminology, "stola," on the exterior lid. It is to this type that the coffin of the Djedmontuefankh belongs, and the book under review gives a very detailed insight into all technical and iconographical aspects of such coffins. Van Walsem plausibly argues that all coffins of this type were manufactured during a short timespan of around fifty-five years between 975/ 970-921/916 B.C. (pp. 357-58).

Reviewing a book which is only part of a projected whole is always slightly difficult, since apparent drawbacks may be explained in a later volume. However, I have only one complaint about the splitting of the work into two parts. While the parallels quoted by van Walsem certainly sound true--and indeed it is evident that a great amount of scholarship has gone into the production of this book--the reader is often unable to check the author's research owing to his annoying use of shorthand numeration for other coffins of this...