Conserving the Amarna coffins

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With photographs

Since 2006, the Amarna Project has been investigating a cemetery for the non-elite of Akhenaten's city. One remarkable discovery has been a group of six decorated coffins. Most are anthropoid-style, bearing on their walls scenes of figures bearing offerings and columns of hieroglyphic text, executed in a creamish or yellow paint on a dark background, with details added in red and blue. Despite their unprepossessing appearance, it is perhaps impossible to overestimate the significance of these objects. The only decorated non-royal coffins found in over 100 years of excavation at Amarna, they form a remarkable new source for the study of the funerary beliefs of Akhenaten’s citizens.