Nymphaea: a visual survey on ancient egyptian yellow coffins

Abstract

Yellow coffins form one of the largest and more intriguing corpus of Egyptian body containers. In terms of pictorial decoration, they excel in quality and levels of complexity, forming a unique art historical phenomenon. This book proposes an innovative approach to the examination of the visual culture displayed in these objects with a view not only to carry out an ‘iconographic mapping’ of the repertoire used in the several components of the yellow coffins but also to understand how and why they evolved along the 21st Dynasty. Ultimately this examination helps us to unravel the several layers of meaning displayed in these objects and to foresee the sociopolitical role they played in the Theban society of the 21st Dynasty. Besides theoretical insights, this book provides useful methods to stimulate researchers in exploring yellow coffins by themselves, by giving them objective tools for dating the compositions and understand the significance of a given coffin within the broader context of the yellow corpus.