Side Panel from the Coffin of Amenemope (c. 976–889 BCE): Art, History and Details

Side Panel from the Coffin of Amenemope (c. 976–889 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Look closely at both sides of this panel. It is a part of a coffin made for a priest named Amenemope (say: ah-men-em-oh-pee). The inside of the coffin shows a priest in the world of the living, preparing Amenemope and his wife, Taditkhonsu (say: tah-deet-khon-soo), for their journeys through the underworld. The priest uses tools to open the mummies’ mouths so that they can eat and speak in the afterlife. The outside of the coffin shows scenes of Amenemope in the underworld, using the senses restored to him by the ritual. What do you think these images tell us about how Egyptian people envisioned life after death?

Object facts

• Title: Side Panel from the Coffin of Amenemope
• Date: c. 976–889 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, Thebes, Third Intermediate (1069–715 BCE), Dynasties 21–22
• Type: Funerary Equipment
• Technique: gessoed and painted sycamore fig
• Dimensions: Overall: 60.4 x 41 x 6 cm (23 3/4 x 16 1/8 x 2 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - Third Intermediate
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1921.1029

Collection credit

The Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 8, no. 9 (1921): 138-41.
• "1992 Annual Report." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 6 (1993): 215-95.
• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.