Surviving King’s Coffins from the Royal Theban Cache TT 320: Seqenenre Tao, Thutmose I, Thutmose III, and Ramses II

The Theban Tomb 320 burial cache discovered at Deir el Bahari revealed a number of king’s coffins used to rebury kings and priest-kings. These coffins had been stripped of gold and other valuables before reuse, providing evidence that kings’ burials were systematically recommodified. Most kings were not reburied in their own royal coffins. The surviving king’s coffins suggest they were regilded even after gold sheeting and inlay was removed, probably for display of some kind. Such gilding was later removed in the 22nd Dynasty. The stratigraphy of these New Kingdom royal coffins thus preserves a series of contradictory actions, including recommodification and reuse to source scarce and necessary valuables, restoration to broadcast care and ritual attention for the ancestor-kings, and finally stripping of valuables after that display potential had run out. This talk will include material analysis of the surviving kings’ coffins along a timeline of changing social conditions to examine contradictory actions of reuse, restoration, display, and recycling.

Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. Cooney’s research in coffin reuse, primarily focusing on the 21st Dynasty, is ongoing. Her book Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in Ancient Egypt and the Theban Royal Caches will appear in the coming year with American University Press in Cairo. This research investigates the socioeconomic and political turmoil that has plagued the period, ultimately affecting funerary and burial practices in ancient Egypt. This project has taken her around the world over ten years to study and document more than 300 coffins in multiple collections, including Cairo, London, Paris, Berlin, and Vatican City. Her latest books include: When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, published in 2018 by National Geographic Press; and The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World, which appeared with National Geographic Books in 2021.

This is a hybrid event, you can join either via Zoom (link below) or at Uppsala University, room Engelska Parken 22-0031.