volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

358 The Painted Coffins of Al-Barshah.
but from Palestine, Syria, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia.
The catalogue of the royal scarabs alone fills a large
and fairly thick volume.^
During the Directorate of de Morgan the natives discovered
a group of very fine tombs of the Xllth dynasty
at Al-Barshah, and, as already stated, I obtained two fine
rectangular coffins from them in 1895. Under an arrangement
which I made with the Service of Antiquities the
natives cleared out another group of tombs, and so brought
to light a very important collection of inscribed coffins
and funerary furniture. The insides of the cof&ns were
found to be covered with series of texts in the hieratic
character, taken from the Recension of the Book of
the Dead which was current in the Xlth and Xllth
djmasties and earlier, and from a valuable but littlekiaown
funerary composition, which has been called
the "Book of the Two Ways." Above these texts
are to be seen beautifully painted pictures of all the
objects which were offered to the deceased during the
recital of the " Liturgy of Funerary Offerings." On
the bottoms of the coffiais are coloured vignettes of the
Elysian Fields, and the River of the Tuat, and of other
parts of the Land of the Dead, with many rubrical
directions. As there was no coffin resembling these
in the British Museum, with the exception of that of
Amamu (No. 6654), I secured three of the largest and
most complete of the outer coffins, several of the smaller
inner cofftns,^ and the accompanying wooden coffers
with all their " Canopic " jars, several funerary modelboats
with their crews complete, models of cattle, etc.
The strange pottery with its curious designs and
decorations which the natives began to dig up in the
neighbourhood of Abydos and Nakadah in 1892 soon
attracted the attention of archaeologists and roused
^ See Hall, H. R. H., Egyptian Scarabs, etc., in the British Museum,
vol. i, Royal Scarabs, London, 1913. Mr. Hall has catalogued the
whole collection, and the appearance of the other volumes is awaited
with lively interest.
" Brit. Mus., Nos. 30,839, 30,840, 30,841, 30,842, 34,259, etc.