Coffin or sarcophagus
The word sarcophagus comes from Greek and means something like flesh-eating, referring to a kind of stone said to consume bodies. In archaeology it generally means a large stone container for a body, while coffin refers to a smaller case, often wooden. Egyptian burials often combined both: a body in one or more coffins placed in an outer stone sarcophagus within the tomb. The design of these containers changed considerably, and they preserve texts and images that help explain Egyptian ideas of death.
Early boxes
In the earliest periods, bodies were buried in pits, sometimes in baskets, mats or wooden boxes. By the Early Dynastic period, wooden coffins had appeared for elite burials. In the Old Kingdom, a rectangular stone sarcophagus became a mark of high status. The granite sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid of Khufu is a plain, lidless box, built with great precision and left without inscriptions. Some other Old Kingdom examples were decorated in a pattern known as palace facade, with recessed panels that resemble the walls of a royal building. This suggests the coffin was thought of as a house for the dead.
Rectangular coffins of the Middle Kingdom
Officials of the Middle Kingdom were commonly buried in rectangular wooden coffins. The sides were painted with false doors, offering lists and a pair of wedjat eyes on one side, placed so the occupant could look out toward the world of the living. The inside was often covered with Coffin Texts, the spells copied from the Pyramid Texts and expanded, together with maps of the afterlife. These coffins were as much a source of knowledge as a container: the dead person lay inside a written guide to the other world.
The anthropoid form
The anthropoid, or human-shaped, coffin appeared in the late Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period, and became the dominant type of the New Kingdom. It follows the outline of a mummy, with a head, shoulders and feet, and often a face with a wig and a beard. The idea was to give the dead a lasting body, close to the Egyptian idea of the person as a god-like figure, an Osiris.
One distinctive early type is the rishi coffin, from the Seventeenth Dynasty, around 1600 to 1550 BCE, mainly in the Theban area. The name comes from the Arabic for feather, since the surface is painted with a feather pattern that is usually read as wings protecting the occupant.
Nested coffins
In the New Kingdom, wealthy individuals were buried in a set of coffins fitted inside one another and sometimes inside a stone sarcophagus. The most famous set belongs to Tutankhamun. His mummy lay in an innermost coffin of solid gold, weighing about 110 kilograms, inside a second and third coffin of gilded and inlaid wood, all inside a quartzite sarcophagus. The sarcophagus corners were carved with winged goddesses who protected the body. The whole assembly was placed within a series of gilded wooden shrines.
Other royal examples show different choices. The alabaster, or calcite, sarcophagus of Seti I, now in London, is covered in fine incised and inlaid scenes of the Book of Gates. Such pieces show how the stone container could be a work of art as well as a protective shell. Some later royal sarcophagi in the Valley of the Kings took the form of a cartouche, the oval ring that encloses a king’s name.
Decoration and meaning
Coffins were highly symbolic objects. Several features recur:
- Nut, the sky goddess, is often painted on the inside of the lid or the base, so the dead rests within the sky and can be reborn like the sun.
- Protective gods and goddesses, such as Isis and Nephthys with outstretched wings, appear on the surface.
- Vignettes and spells from the Book of the Dead or related texts guard the body.
- Colours were chosen for meaning: gold for the flesh of gods, blue for the heavens and for lapis lazuli, green for rebirth, black for the fertile Nile soil and for Osiris.
- Offering formulae name the owner and ask the gods to provide for them.
The inscriptions provide names, titles and family relationships, so a coffin can identify who was buried and sometimes how people described themselves. Fine decoration is also a source for art history and workshop practice.
Materials and workmanship
Wooden coffins were often built from imported timber, such as cedar from the Levant, since Egyptian trees were smaller and of poorer quality for large planks, and from local sycamore fig and tamarisk. Carpenters pegged and joined planks, covered the surface with plaster and painted it, and sometimes added a resin varnish that darkened with age. Stone sarcophagi required quarrying and shaping hard stone, such as granite, quartzite and basalt, and expert craft in carving. Work on this scale drew on skills also seen in temple architecture, where hard stone was cut and finished with similar care.
Later periods
During the Third Intermediate Period, Theban coffins were often highly decorated in a style with yellow-varnished surfaces and dense scenes, and some individuals were buried in several nested cases made of cartonnage and wood. In the Late Period, stone anthropoid sarcophagi were popular among wealthy people, some inscribed with long extracts from older funerary texts, a revival of ancient forms. In the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, coffins combined Egyptian and Greek styles, and mummy portraits painted on wood were placed over the face in some areas, notably the Fayum. Egyptian forms eventually declined with the end of the old religion.
Reuse and robbery
Coffins were sometimes reused, and recycling was common. In the Twenty-first Dynasty, priests moved royal mummies from their robbed tombs into hidden caches and sometimes placed them in coffins that had been made for others. This means a coffin label may not match the body inside, a reason for cautious study. Many sarcophagi were also broken or emptied by ancient robbers or later collectors.
What they offer historians
Coffins and sarcophagi are among the most informative Egyptian objects. They show how religious ideas changed, how artisans worked and how people wished to be remembered. They also provide evidence about trade, such as imported wood. Modern work uses imaging and wood analysis to study construction and dating without damaging the object. Together with the mummies and burial goods they held, they remain central to understanding Egyptian beliefs about death, as discussed in studies of Egyptian afterlife beliefs.