Anthropoid ceramic coffins
ancient Egyptian burial customs
Anthropoid ceramic coffins of the Late Bronze Age Levant are coffins with human features that date from the 14th to 10th centuries BC. These coffins have been found at Deir el-Balah, Beth Shean, Lachish, Tell el-Far’ah, Sahab, and most recently in the Jezreel Valley in 2013. The coffins show Egyptian influence in the Ancient Near East and exhibit many Egyptian qualities in the depictions on the face masks on the lids. The lids can be separated into two artistic categories, the natural and grotesque, and the bodies are separated into type A, tapered from the shoulders, and type B, cylindrical. The graves contain wealthy funerary offerings from a variety of origins from Cyprus, Mycenae, Egypt, Phoenicia, and Canaan. The graves appear to be originally reserved for Egyptian officials and then later became a part of Canaanite and Philistine culture.
History
The anthropoid clay coffins are generally believed to have been a product of the First Dynasty in Egypt that were gradually disseminated to other regions and peoples. They were one of several forms of burial practised by Sumerians at Ur and the Egyptians. There is some disagreement about the social and economic associations of this form of burial among scholars.
Burial customs used by the Egyptians include inhumation, clay coffins, and tombs with stairways and vaulting. Clay coffins are often associated with the poorest graves in Egyptian society, though not always in Levant.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anthropoid ceramic coffins” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.