The coffin lid

Inside the inner room of the Museum, to your right as you enter, you can see the coffin lid standing vertically on the right-hand side.

Reaching the afterlife safely was a dangerous business, and the ancient Egyptians made sure that the deceased had the best start in the afterlife. Besides the careful embalming of the body, the dead were accompanied by prayers and incantations. One important prayer is found written in hieroglyphic script [< hieros, sacred + glypho, to engrave] on the lid of the sarcophagus.

“Words said by Osiris. Words said by Hapt: I am the son of Osiris.
Words said by Qebehsenuf: I am the son of Osiris.
Words said by Salkit: I am the son of Osiris.
Words said by the lord of the necropolis: I am the son of Osiris.
Words said by Osiris. Words said by Imseti: I am the son of Osiris.
Words said by Neith: forever consort of all the gods.
Words said by the one who is in the divine sanctuary, who plies the rivers.
Obeisance to Osiris, the lord of Abydos, the priest of Akhmom
with the title ‘Of the Mother of the god, Yarat-Hor-Ru [it.t.Hr-r-w]’,
whose father bore the same title, born of the lady Na-Menkh-imen-djed.
O you four baboons, seated before the barque of Ra,
who make justice decent to the Lord-of-All,
who judge the poor and rich alike,
who appease the divinities with the flame of your mouth,
who give divine offerings to the gods
and funerary offerings to the ancestral spirits,
who thrive on justice and feast on right, and who are without deceit,
for whom wickedness is an abomination:
destroy my evil, blot out my offences!
May your companions experience no harm;
grant that they may enter into that other world,
that I may go into Ro-stau,¹ that I may cross over all the mysterious pylons of the West, and that then I may be given Shenes-bread …”

The dead were also accompanied by amulets to safeguard them on their way. A small faience scarab was found on the mummy of our Yarat-Hor-Ru (in showcase E7).

¹ Ro-stau is the cemetery at Abydos, but comes to mean also the passage in the tomb that leads to the “other world”.