Tag Archives: Philadelphia Museum of Art

A closer look at our stola coffin lid

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In my last post about this late 21st/early 22nd stola coffin lid, I referred to it as eye candy.

Overall before treatment image of the stola coffin lid, L-55-16B

Overall before treatment image of the stola coffin lid, L-55-16B.

This coffin is beautiful, and we could discuss how nice it is to look at all day. But in this post, I’m going to focus on some of the more subtle, somewhat less-attractive (but perhaps even more interesting) features that I’ve discovered about this coffin lid as I’ve begun to work on it. In fact, on Friday I spent awhile discussing some of these details with a group of conservators and interns from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). As I mentioned in my last post, although this coffin has been on long-term loan to us since the 1930s, it still technically belongs to the PMA, so I am carrying out my treatment in close consultation with one of their objects conservators.

Penn Museum conservator Alexis North (far right) discusses a cat mummy with the PMA conservators and interns.

Penn Museum conservator Alexis North (far right) discusses a cat mummy with the PMA conservators and interns.

I always appreciate the opportunity for professional exchange, and I was happy to be able to discuss my plan, including materials and approaches with them. This discussion energized me to get started with the treatment, and that is exactly what I did, almost as soon as they left.

One thing that I noticed in my initial examination is that this coffin lid has been worked on before. There are residues of old adhesives in areas, including an adhesive mixed with a sawdust-like material, especially around the foot of the coffin.

Adhesive residues on an area of exposed wood.

Adhesive residues on an area of exposed wood near the foot.

I have seen these same types of repairs on at least one other coffin in our collection, and while there is no documentation of them, I am suspicious that this treatment was carried out in our museum soon after we acquired this coffin, but long before our conservation lab was established 49 years ago.

The foot of the coffin has another type of repair as well – there are 2 brackets that are held on with screws on the underside of the foot, apparently to secure some of the wood components. This whole area moves when handled, so the brackets and screws will have to come off so that I can better assess what is going on.

Detail of the foot of the coffin, showing the brackets used in an old repair.

Detail of the foot of the coffin, showing the brackets used in an old repair.

There is some very powdery material associated with areas of damage, especially on the face, which appears to be partially due to deterioration of the mud plaster, but also may be due to insect activity. I’ll have to investigate this further over the course of the treatment.

Detail of the powdery material near the left eye.

Detail of the powdery material near the left eye.

And then there are some materials included in the mud plaster, including some course linen threads and even a leaf, which I am documenting as I work to clean the surface.

Detail of a detached piece of mud plaster with linen thread inclusions.

Detail of a detached piece of mud plaster with coarse linen thread inclusions.

L-55-16B_detail7

Detail of an area of damage, which exposes a small corner of what appears to be a leaf caught in the mud plaster.

The next time I post images of this coffin lid, it should be a lot cleaner, as I plan to complete the initial surface cleaning within the next week. More soon about this, and other observations and developments in the treatment.

 

Observations of a stola coffin lid

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As if there is not enough up here (see our recent post about the Egyptian storage move and associated conservation work), this week we brought another quite large object into the lab, and it might be my new favorite object up here.

The lid of our yellow stola coffin

The lid of our* yellow stola coffin

This is the lid that belongs to the late 21st/22nd Dynasty yellow coffin base which we recently treated here in the Artifact Lab. Due to its previous location in storage, I hadn’t been able to take a close look at it until this week. Now that I’ve gotten to spend a few days with the lid, I’ll tell you that it’s total eye candy. If you were impressed by the painted decoration on the base, the lid will give you even more to get excited about.

I only just started to examine and document the lid and I will continue to update the blog as I work on this object, so today I’m just going to mention a few things about it, and some of my favorite details so far.

First of all, you may have noticed that I referred to this as a “stola” coffin in the image caption above. The term “stola” refers to the narrow red band depicted on the coffin that encircles the neck and crosses over the chest and over the oversize collar. Both the presence of the stola and the oversize collar have been recognized as distinctive of the late 21st/early 22nd Dynasty (see other examples and explanations here and here, and special thanks to Dr. Kara Cooney at UCLA for information as well).

The figure depicted on this coffin used to have a beard, which is now missing, but there is a hole in the chin indicating that it was once there.

Detail of the hole in the chin

Detail of the hole in the chin

The arms are depicted as being crossed over the chest and the hands are made of separate pieces of wood. The hands on this coffin are clenched and I have read that this is reserved for male coffins while females are depicted with hands open and lying on their chests. I’m assuming the fisted hands mean that this coffin belonged to a man, but I’ll have to check with our Egyptologists to confirm, since I cannot translate any of the text myself. I also really like the fact that the thumbnails are painted in:

Detail of the left hand

Detail of the left hand and thumb

What else can I say about it? Well, it is beautifully painted and also varnished just like the base with a yellow-colored pistacia resin. This pistacia resin causes many of the areas painted blue to appear green:

Much of the blue lines on the wig appear green, but in areas where there is no varnish, you can see the blue color of the paint.

Many of the lines on the wig appear green, but in areas where there is no varnish you can see the blue color of the paint.

There is a thick layer of dust on the surface of the coffin, but I can tell it’s going to clean up well. Check out the embossed details in this raking light image, which were built up with gesso:

Detail of the embossed designs on the central part of the lid

Detail of the embossed designs on the central part of the lid

This is going to be a fun object to work on! I’m looking forward to getting started with the treatment.

* I should clarify that this coffin technically belongs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) but has been on long-term loan to us for nearly a century. We received this coffin as part of an exchange of objects between our 2 institutions in the 1930s. I am carrying out the treatment in close consultation with the conservators at the PMA.