Image Resource Bank

Image Gallery |  8 of 15

This elaborately decorated cartonnage mummy case of the woman Meresamun is painted with figures intended to ensure rebirth and life after death. Meresamun's prayer is to two trinities of solar and underworld deities, and the combination of these multiple gods (with further epithets) is addressed simply as the single “he” - marking a significant theological development in Egyptian religion. This "pantheism" is attested for a few men of this period, but Meresamun is the first woman known to have such a prayer.

The style of the coffin and her title, “Singer in the Interior of the Temple of Amun,” suggest that she lived in the Theban (modern Luxor) area soon after the end of the New Kingdom. Her title indicates she held an important position in the bureaucracy of priestesses of the state-god Amun. Many women who held this title were known to come from the best families of Thebes, and some of them served as attendants to the ruling family.

Mereruka and His Wife, Watetkhethor

Name: Mummy and Coffin of Meresamun

Material: Cartonnage, Pigment, Human Remains

Size: 160 cm (5 ft 2.4 in)

Date:  ca. 946-712 BCE, Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty 22

Place of Origin: Luxor, Egypt

Location: Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago, Illinois

Source, Registration#, and Publication: Oriental Institute Museum, 10797. Teeter, Emily, Treasures from the Collection of the Oriental Institute, Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2003. p. 75-77

Janet H. Johnson

Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Egyptology