I would like to focus on an exceptional coffin located in the National Museum of Scotland. Because it contains a depiction of Isis and Nephthys, that well deserves a mention. 1. Some Information about the Coffin of “Qurna Queen”. Flinders Petrie discovered in 1908 the coffin of Qurna Queen in the Egyptian village of Qurna […]
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In this post I would like to focus on two wooden sculptures of Isis and Nephthys. They are nowadays in two different museums; one is in the Art and History Museum of Brussels and the other one in the Museum of Fine Arts of Budapest. Although they are noadays separated it sems quite clear that […]
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The artists in ancient Egypt used the bending hair for drawing body movements. The Egyptian artists in Amarna could also depict hair in a more plastic and less rigid way. In fact that followed one of the identity signature of the art of Amarna: more dynamic and natural. And maybe there were a contribution from Amarna to traditional iconoraphy on that subject.
Continue reading →Egyptian coffin was a good surface for decoration. And usually this decoration was quite standard. For example, goddess Nut was depicted on the chest of the mummy, or also on the inside part of the cover, some moments of the funerary ceremony were included in the laterals… Isis and Nephthys in the Egyptian Coffin. It […]
Continue reading →Ancient Egyptian archaeology is plenty of small remains which are big in information. For instance the ushabti of Pay and Repit is a small artifact, which goes unnoticed but has a deep message about the sexual stimulation of the dead, a very important aspect of the ancient Egyptian funerary ritual. In Egypt there are also […]
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The Senet game of Ancient Egypt was a board game for leisure in common life, which also had its funerary side. It was present in the wall decoration and was part of the funerary equipment. According to it, the deceased played against the death and once he or she achieved the end of the board […]
Continue reading →Recently we posted about the decoration on the upper register of the funerary mask of Artemidora. In it, we could differentiate two main elements: to the mourning ritual (related to the osirian legend) at both ends of the scene and the solar resurrection in the center. Lower Register. This part of the funerary mask present […]
Continue reading →We know how important was the decoration on the corpse in Ancient Egypt. The egyptian artist selected the most effective iconography for the benefit of the deceased. Among the most requested images were those of the two mourners Isis and Nephthys. Because, in their role of mourners of Osiris, guaranteed the mummy’s resurrection. We have […]
Continue reading →The both sides of the mummy was a good place for strategical iconography. At first sight, it seems that the Egyptian artist did not spend many sources in the decoration at right and left of Artemidora. It is about a very minimalist image consisting just in three golden appliqués of Osiris being flanked by Isis […]
Continue reading →Isis and Nephthys are the most preeminent figures on the decoration over the mummy of Artemidora. Over the wrappings of the feet, two appliqués of gold depicted these two goddesses Osirian and Solar features. Isis and Nephtys are not identified with any inscription but we know their identity because they appear in a typical mourning […]
Continue reading →Looking carefully at the decoration on the mummy of Artemidora we can discover the intentions of the artist.
Continue reading →Let’s start with that: women were crucial in Ancient Egypt for the dead’s resurrection. The rite of the professional mourning ritual in ancient Egyptian funerals was based on the Osirian theology. That happened becasue in the belief of Ancient Egypt the dead (Osiris) was regenerated thanks to aid of his wife/sister Isis (and by extension […]
Continue reading →The artists of Ancient Egypt had a particular conception of perspective, which affected in the way they depicted groups of living beings and amounts of things. In our last posts we saw how in Ancient Egypt the funerary scene of Osiris being flanked by Isis and Nephthys was usually depicted with the two mourners of […]
Continue reading →Cartonnages in Ancient Egypt were used over the wrapped mummy mainly for mummy masks and some important parts of the body. The cartonnage of Irtirutja in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York dates from the Ptolemaic period. In it one can see how the artist of Ancient Egypt dedicated this technique for covering some special parts of the mummy. […]
Continue reading →The most evident proof of the importance in Ancient Egypt of Isis and Nephthys in a rebirth process is in the Books of the Day and Night, which describe the journey of the sun god through the sky. According to the thought of Ancient Egypt, especially during the New Kingdom, Nut was the goddess of […]
Continue reading →The religion of Ancient Egypt developed during the New Kingdom sophisticated religious texts, which combined the solar theology with the Myth of Osiris. As a consequence, the art of ancient Egypt included in its corpus of images a new solar-Osirian iconography. As we saw in the previous posts, the artists of Ancient Egypt started painting […]
Continue reading →It was a fact, that the ancient Egyptian corpus of images needed an iconography for expressing the union of Re and Osiris. And little by little in this iconography Isis and Nephthys, the two mourners of Osiris, became essential. In the XIX Dynasty the ancient Egyptian artists conceived some of the most famous images of […]
Continue reading →One of the main challenges for priests and artists in Ancient Egypt were to combine the osirian and solar cosmogonies in the funerary literature and iconography. The two main pillars in the belief of resurrection in Ancient Egypt were the myth of Osiris and the solar theory. The central aspect in the first one was the […]
Continue reading →In the last post it was considered the role of Nephthys in the religion of Ancient Egypt. It is a fact that Nephtys was a very important goddess in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Isis needed her help for granting the resurrection of Osiris; they both Isis and Nephthys formed a perfect team. But it is also a fact […]
Continue reading →There is a scene of the Book of the Dead from the tomb of Ay, in which are depicted on the solar boat the gods of the Heliopolitan cosmogony and the Myth of Osiris (apart from Seth): Re-Horakhty, Atoum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Horus…and out of the boat Nephtys stands alone apart from her […]
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