The Coffins of Sen and Gua: A discussion of the layout of the interior and exterior decoration, exploring the connection between the inner and outer coffins of two Middle Kingdom individuals

Abstract

The Coffins of Sen (Sn) and Gua (Gw3), four Middle Kingdom coffins of high officials of the Hare Nome, have been part of multiple studies since their arrival at the British Museum in 1899. These rectangular Middle Kingdom coffins of Egypt are richly decorated with extensive detailed objects in polychrome, ornamental painted texts and Coffin Texts (CTs). While being practical funerary items they are a deeply personal reflection of life and death and they have multiple meaning on a social, economic, ideological and religious level. The practice of having multiple coffins for an individual is known across ancient Egyptian history, though the meaning and function is not fully understood. Therefore, a clear gap in these studies has been the interaction of the decoration between the inner and outer coffins. It had been determined that there was no functional variance between multiple coffins across the whole corpus of Middle Kingdom Coffins; despite this conclusion, the objective of this thesis is to explore the spatial structure of the decoration and texts within these four coffins of the Middle Kingdom, two from each individual. This is enables us to understand how these layouts and patterns compare between the inner and outer coffins of each ensemble, in particular, examples of layering of features and themes, and significant differences. The comparison of the two sets will aid in the understanding, on a smaller scale and specific to these two contemporary individuals, how multiple coffins could be conceptualised.