Abstract:

This article illustrates the variety of coffin decoration and the texts that were implemented on the wooden anthropoid found by the Egyptian mission through the latest excavation at the necropolis of Philadelphia. Most of these coffins were made from local wood that could still be found in the arid desert surrounding the site. Nevertheless, one could notice that the artistic canons of these coffins are somehow like other coffins dating to the early Ptolemaic period found in other archaeological sites in Fayoum. Based on this either a workshop in Philadelphia was meant to manufacture and decorate these coffins and illustrate them with the religious text and scenes that we are going to discuss in this article either with or without the deceased name and his titles. The eleven wooden coffins which are presented here have localized features that reflected mainly in the unusual orthography in writing words, which may be due to not all the people at this period were still familiar with the hieroglyphic script, in addition to the influence of the cryptography on the texts of this period.