Outer Coffin Inscribed for Tabakmut

Tabakmut was one of the last burials in the main chamber of Tomb MMA 60. His anthropoid coffin set was relatively complete, with this outer coffin, an inner coffin (25.3.11a, b), and a mummy board (25.3.12), but no other equipment was included in his burial. The ready-made, stock coffins, with their false beards and fisted hands, are of the kind designed for men, and the mummy found inside was that of a male, twenty-five to thirty years old. However, the name Tabakmut, added in blue over the varnish in two places on the vertical inscrpitions, is typically female. Tabakmut had no titles, and there was no equipment other than the coffins included in his burial. In addition, the quality of his mummification was mediocre, thus he was clearly of lesser status than some of the other inhabitants of the tomb.

The head of this coffin is covered with a striated tripartite wig, with a hole under the chin for a now-missing beard. The excavators believed that a "plunder's wedge" found in the Pit was Tabakmut's beard, modified and used to pry open coffins. Tabakmut's fisted hands emerge from an elaborate floral collar that covers his shoulders and chest and stretches to his abdomen; this style suggests a date for the set in the later 21st Dynasty. Below this, scenes of the adoration of Osiris cover the lid. On the sides of the box are scenes related to the gods of the Netherworld.

The decoration inside the coffin is on a background of deep red, with the details of the figures varnished. In the center, flanked by three symmetrical rows of mummiform deities, is the Goddess of the West protected by uraeus cobras. Above her, inside the head of the coffin, is a human-headed ba bird with its wings outstretched.

Credit: Rogers Fund, 1925