Sarcophagus of Dioskourides
Unknown · Reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor, 180-145 BC
A mummy-shaped sarcophagus two metres high, cut from dark green greywacke, shows a man in a tripartite wig and a curled false beard, a pectoral on his chest. The exterior is covered in scenes in sunk relief: winged serpents, the ba bird of the soul with spread wings, Isis and Nephthys, a scarab, the four sons of Horus, two jackals of Anubis, a goddess in a tree giving drink to the dead man and Anubis holding the mummy upright. Inside the lid and the box the goddesses of the West and of the sky, Imentet and Nut, stand naked with Hathor headdresses to embrace the body. Look at the fineness of the cutting in such a hard stone.
The texts include funerary formulas and a personal biography of the owner, Dioskourides, who lived in the reign of Ptolemy the Sixth Philometor in the second century before Christ. His Greek name and Egyptian burial sum up the mixed elite of Ptolemaic Egypt. The sarcophagus came from the collection of Antoine Clot, known as Clot Bey, the French physician of the Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali, and was bought by the Louvre in eighteen fifty-two.
Did You Know? Dioskourides bore a Greek name and served Greek kings, yet he chose to be buried as a pharaoh's subject of old, wrapped in the full apparatus of Egyptian funerary religion.
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