"A Japanese archaeological team has discovered three painted wooden coffins in Egypt, including two from the little-known Middle Kingdom period dating back more than 4,000 years. The sarcophagi were found in tomb shafts in the vast Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said Saturday. . . . While the vast cemeteries have yielded numerous discoveries from the Old and New Kingdoms, artifacts from the Middle Kingdom of around 2,000 BC are comparatively rare. One of the Middle Kingdom coffins, inlaid with black glass, was found inside a brilliantly painted outer box and dedicated to a man called Sabak Hatab. The other sarcophagus was for a woman named Sint Ayt Ess. The third, which dated back to the New Kingdom's 18th dynasty of around 1,500 BC and contained a mummy, was colored black and decorated with images of the four sons of the god Horus."
See the above page for the full story, which has a photograph of one of the coffins.
Another photograph, showing a beautifully painted anthropoid coffin is at
http://tinyurl.com/ytd4g9 (smh.com.au)
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