Ancient Egyptian coffins

Ancient Egyptian coffins were funerary boxes used to contain a corpse or mummy for burial or entombment during the Pharaonic period (c. 3150 BCE – 30 BCE) of Egypt. Coffins were an important part of Ancient Egyptian funerary practices. These body containers were thought to protect and transform the deceased, acting as a portal between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Only the elite of Ancient Egypt (perhaps less than 5% of the population) could afford a coffin of their own. Those with somewhat less wealth perhaps used coffins as shared temporary ritual objects of transformation without being buried in them, while the lower classes were interred in linen shrouds, palm-rib wrapping or nothing at all to enclose their corpses.

Royalty and the very wealthy sometimes utilized nested sets of funerary containers and protection rather than stand alone coffins. For instance, Tutankhamun's mummy was found in his tomb inside an inner golden coffin, a middle coffin and an outer coffin, which were all inside a granite sarcophagus, a pall on a frame and four shrines. Ancient Egyptian coffins came in two basic forms – rectangular (box shape) and anthropoid (human shape). Both types were generally made from wood, but for anthropoid coffins alternate materials such as stone and cartonnage were sometimes used.

Imported Lebanese cedar was the preferred wood type for high elite coffin construction throughout pharaonic history, with local varieties such as the sycomore fig used by those upper class Egyptians unable to afford or access high quality imported timber (sometimes decorated to imitate the Lebanese cedar they were unable to access).