Merit's Beauty Case

Glass was still new and precious in Egypt when this case was packed for the tomb. Workshops there had been making small glass vessels for less than a century, since the reign of Thutmose III, probably with glassmakers brought back from the Near East. They were used to hold costly oils and scents. Among the jars inside this case, most of them alabaster, are a few of coloured glass. A slim tube of blue glass, trailed with white and yellow festoons, held kohl, the black eye paint made from soot and antimony that shielded the eyes from the sun and helped against infection, and a little stick to apply it. Traces of ointments and fat-based creams are still in the jars.

The museum's own record simply calls it a beauty case. Writers on the tomb assign it to Merit, whose few possessions were placed beside her bed, and they describe her toilet box as painted to look like inlay and inscribed with funerary texts. The case has a flat double lid, and the inside is divided into compartments that hold each jar in place.