Coffin of Nebetemqis

In the same decades as the tomb of Iti and Neferu, Asyut in Middle Egypt stood on the other side of a civil war. Its governors were loyal to the kings of Herakleopolis in the north, and their own tomb inscriptions describe campaigns against Thebes. Asyut held out as one of the last strongholds of the northern kingdom, until the Theban king Mentuhotep II took the city and went on to reunite Egypt. This coffin comes from the cemetery of Asyut, and the museum dates it, like Iti's tomb, to between 2118 and 1980 BC.

It was made for a woman named Nebetemqis, and it is a plain rectangular box of wood and plaster, with a single band of hieroglyphs running along its side. At one end of that side a pair of eyes is painted. In coffins of this time the body was usually laid on its left side, with the head behind the eyes, so that the dead woman could look out through them towards the east, where the sun rose and offerings were brought.