Middle Coffin of Kha

This coffin shows Kha the way he hoped to wake in the afterlife, as a wrapped figure with a living face. Over black resin, the face, the long striped wig and the broad collar the Egyptians called usekh are modelled in plaster and covered with gold leaf. The gold bands that run down the lid and across it copy the strips of linen that held a shroud in place. Here every band carries a prayer, to the sky goddess Nut, to Thoth, to the jackal god Anubis and to the four sons of Horus, the gods charged with keeping the dead whole.

Two more goddesses guard the ends. Nephthys is drawn on top of the head and Isis under the feet, the sisters who mourned Osiris in the myth.

This is the second of Kha's three nested coffins, the one that sat inside the black outer shrine. When it was uncovered, flower garlands still lay around its neck, and the museum keeps one of them in its collection.