Padiamenet was a doorkeeper to a temple, and also a barber. We know this from the hieroglyphic inscriptions on his mummy case.
The largest scene on the coffin shows Padiamenet dressed in a long, white robe, adoring the god Osiris.
Padiamenet had very decayed teeth. He must have suffered with terrible toothache.
This is the coffin of Tjentmutengebtiu, otherwise known as Tamutin or Tamut.
She was between twenty-five and forty years old, and was a priestess in the great temple at Karnak.
The painted face on a coffin is a very idealized portrait. It often bears little resemblance to what the person actually looked like.
Scientists at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia have imagined what Tamutin actually looked like, based on measurements of her skull!
Studies of Tamutin’s mummy have shown fatty buildup in her arteries, probably from eating too much goose and drinking too much Egyptian beer. She may have died of a heart attack or a stroke, brought on by her rich diet.
“Mummies were real people with real lives. They are not monsters. They are not ghosts. They are the preserved bodies of Egyptian people who lived thousands of years ago. People who laughed, sang, hung out with their families and looked after their pet cats. People like us, in many ways.”
Here is one of the mummies currently in the British Museum. The varnish on the case turned black over time, but the museum has cleaned the black coating off the case’s face and hands, and also cleaned a strip down the front to reveal the mummy’s name: Tjayasetimu.
Although the case is adult-sized, the occupant is a little girl no more than eight or nine years old. She lived more than three thousand years ago and she was a singer in the royal choir.
Tjayasetimu used to sing in a beautiful temple beside the river Nile. When she died, her parents paid for her body to be mummified. They thought that if they preserved her body carefully, she would be able to use it in the afterlife. The embalming priests removed her organs and packed her body with a special kind of salt to dry it out. Then they filled the body with sand and sawdust and wrapped it in painted bandages.
In Victorian times, people opened mummy cases and unwrapped the mummies inside, often as an act of public theatre. These pre-YouTube unboxing extravaganzas may have been exciting, but they were also ghoulish and tasteless, as well as completely destroying the mummy.
The curators at the British Museum have not opened Tjayasetimu’s mummy case. Instead they took the case to a hospital and put it in a powerful scanning machine. This way, we can see Tjayasetimu without disturbing her.
Her face has delicate lips, a pointy chin and shoulder-length hair. Some of her adult teeth were coming through, but not many.
Children hardly ever got into the royal choir, which means that Tjayasetimu must have had a truly angelic voice. She was a genuine child star.
Read more about Tjayasetimu here on the British Museum’s website.
The coffin of Naktankh plays an important role in my book The Ancient Egypt Sleepover. It is not always on display in the British Museum, but you can see lots of similar Old Kingdom coffins with the painted eyes facing east.
My book contains a simplified hieroglyphic version of the name Naktankh, but the coffin has a more complicated version (above). Can you spot this version of his name on the coffin itself?
The message in hieroglyphs along the top of the coffin is called the ‘offering formula’. You can see it on most Old Kingdom coffins.
Transliteration and translation
ḥtp-dı͗-nsw
An offering given by the king
3sir nb ḏḏw ḫnt(y) – ı͗mntw
(to) Osiris, the lord of Djedu, Khentyimentu,
ntr ʿ3 nb 3bḏw
the great god, the lord of Abydos,
dı͗=f ḫt nb(t) nfrt wʿbt
That he may give everything good and pure:
ḫʿ m t ḥnḳt
thousand of bread and beer,
k3 3pd šs mnḫt
oxen, birds, alabaster, clothing,
ʿnḫt nṯr ı͗m
upon which a god lives,
n k3 ı͗m3ḫ(y)
For the ka of the revered,
nḫt-ʿnḫ m3ʿ-ḫrw
Nakhtankh, True of Voice.
Finally, Nebamun himself! This is the most famous of the Nebamun murals and shows him hunting in the marshes. He is standing up in a papyrus boat, spearing fish and throwing sticks at birds. Again, Nebamun’s life is shown to be utterly perfect. The weather is glorious. His adoring wife and daughter are with him. He is catching fish and fowl left right and centre.
Look how skilful the artwork is. I love the expression on the face of this fish.
The eye of Nebamun’s ginger cat was decorated with a splodge of real gold. Lean in close and you can still it glinting.
Remember ‘Belzoni the Great’, the circus strongman who brought the head of Ramesses II back to England? He brought back hundreds of other artefacts, too, including these paintings from the tomb of Nebamun.
Ancient Egyptian craftsmen painted beautiful scenes all over the walls and ceilings of their most important tombs, then sealed them shut. The paintings were intended not for human eyes but for the Egyptian gods and for the spirit of the dead person. Belzoni did not care about that. He and his men used saws and chisels to rip great chunks out of the walls of Nebamun’s tomb chapel.
These colourful pictures of Nebamun’s life show him living a happy life, healthy, wealthy and wise. Today’s scene depicts a fabulous banquet with well-dressed guests, piles of food, skilful musicians and saucy dancers. Nebamun and his wife were on the far left of this scene, but that part of the painting is now lost. That’s what happens when you tear enormous chunks out of a three-thousand-year-old plaster wall.
This painting shows Nebamun’s herders bringing the cows for counting. Like all tomb paintings, the ones in this tomb chapel show the owner as healthy, wealthy and wise, and generally living his best life.
Two hundred years ago, nobody knew how to read hieroglyphs. Even Egyptians had forgotten the meaning of those strange symbols written and chiselled by their ancestors.
A French man called Jean-Francois Champollion was the first to crack the code of hieroglyphs. The key was the Rosetta Stone, which contained the same message written in three different languages, including hieroglyphs. Jean-Francois used the language he did know (Greek) to decipher the one he didn’t (hieroglyphs).
This block statue of Sennefer came from a temple on the west bank of the River Nile. It is one of the most handsome block statues ever made by the Ancient Egyptians. Look how finely carved and polished Sennefer’s face and hands are.
Sennefer was the mayor of Thebes during the reign of the pharaoh Thutmose III. His name was written with just two hieroglyphs, like this:
Sennefer was buried in a stunning tomb with beautifully painted walls. If you go to Thebes in southern Egypt, you can visit it for yourself.
Here is a painting of Sennefer’s wife presenting him with symbols of life and power. Can you spot Sennefer’s name among the hieroglyphic writing in this painting?
