This part of the display is devoted to the funerary cult that occupied a very important place in the Egyptians’ world-view. The items on show here date from the Late Period in the history of Egypt and represent a burial ritual that took shape in the course of long evolution. The priest Padiiset, whose mummified body can be seen in the central display case, lived in the second half of the 7th century BC. His burial complex included three anthropomorphic wooden sarcophagi. The innermost coffin is displayed in the case on the right, the middle and outside ones in the end-wall case at the start of the hall. The sarcophagi repeat the shape of the wrapped mummy. We can easily make out the wig and an artificial beard. The face has open eyes. The entire surface is filled with polychrome painting, both images and funerary texts – a standard offering formula and excerpts from Chapters of the Book of the Dead.
In some early burials, a mummy could have a case (cartonnage) or else a “mummy board”, usually very carefully decorated, was placed on top on it. The cartonnage was made in the shape of the mummy from scraps of linen stuck together with plaster or resin and painted. An example is provided by the case made for a woman named Rama.
Here too there are alabaster canopic jars that were used to store the entrails of an embalmed body with lids in the shape of the heads of the sons of Horus. The wooden chest bearing a depiction of a jackal, the sacred animal of the embalmer-god Anubis, would have held ushabti figures.
The display in the case includes papyruses carrying texts and images from the Book of the Dead. The left-hand fragment of a scroll is devoted to the chief test of the deceased in the afterlife – the Judgement of Osiris.
The exhibits in the case opposite are grave goods and ritual objects.
