volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

380 Additions to the British Museum Collections.
Want of space makes it impossible for me even to
mention here the less important objects which I secured
for the British Museum (even though they merit special
notice and a fuller account -than they have received in
the Annual Reports), still less to describe the difficult
circumstances under which they were obtained. I therefore
pass on at once to summarize briefly the additions
which good fortune enabled me to make to the British
Museum collection of sarcophagi and coffins, both stone
and wood, and mummies. Among the stone sarcophagi
may be mentioned those of Tehuti-hetep (XlXth
dynasty), Uahabra
(XXXth dynasty).
(XXVIth dynasty),
The sarcophagus of
and Qem-Ptah
the last-named
is covered inside and out with texts and vignettes
from the funerary composition known as Am (or Ami)
Tuat. Of the sarcophagi and large coffins the most
important are : (i) The rectangular wooden coffins,
both inner and outer, from Al-Barshah ; the insides of
these are covered with texts and vignettes from the
ancient Recension of the Book of the Dead which was
current under the Xlth and Xllth dynasties. (2) The
rectangular wooden coffins of the same period from
Asyut and Beni Hasan.
anthropoid coffins of the
(3) Several
XlXth and
brightly painted
XXth dynasties
from Thebes. (4) The magnificent gilded coffin of the
priestess-princess Hent-Mehit, of the XXIst dynasty.
(5) Several anthropoid wooden coffins of the XXVIth
dynasty from Akhmim. (6) The painted wooden anthropoid
coffin from the Oasis of Khargah, of the Roman
Period.
It was unfortunately impossible to
mummies for whom these cofiins were
obtain
made,
all
for
the
the
natives always have looked upon mummies as their
own peculiar perquisite ; and they have always broken
Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria, London, 1799 ; Cailliaud, Voyage d
I'Oasis de Thebes, etc., Paris, 2 vols., 1822-1824; Edmonstone, A
Journey to Two of the Oases of Upper Egypt in the Year 1819, London,
1822; Hoskins, A Visit to the Great Oasis, London, 1837; RoUfs,
Afrika Reise, Berlin, 1869; Brugsch, Rdse nach der Grossen Oase,
Leipzig, 1878.