Egyptian Mummy and Coffin of Di-Khnoum
Late Period, first millennium BC
In a dimly lit case in the Life Science Hall lies a painted wooden coffin shaped like a human body, its lid covered with bands of hieroglyphs and images of gods, and beside it the wrapped mummy it once held. The inscriptions name the dead person as Di-Khnoum, and the style of the painting places the burial in the later centuries of ancient Egypt, in the first millennium before Christ. The coffin is about one hundred and seventy centimetres long, roughly the height of the person inside. It is the only ancient Egyptian burial on permanent display in Taiwan and draws a steady crowd of school groups.
Look at the painted face, with its wide dark lined eyes and gold coloured skin that identifies the dead as one of the gods, and follow the columns of hieroglyphs down the lid, which record prayers for offerings and the name of the deceased. The scenes show the winged goddess Nut spreading protection, the four sons of Horus who guard the organs, and the judgement of the dead. The museum shows the mummy in the context of its galleries about the human body, using scans and X rays to explain how the embalmers removed the organs, dried the body in natron salt and wrapped it in linen.
The museum bought the coffin and mummy in 2002 from a collector in France, an Egyptologist of Chinese descent, specifically so that it could be studied and shown permanently. Research on it has included CT scanning to determine age and health without unwrapping. A memorable detail is the name itself: Di-Khnoum means something like given by Khnum, the ram headed god who shaped people on his potter's wheel.
Did You Know? CT scans let the museum look inside the wrappings without disturbing them, revealing the person's age and even the state of their teeth.
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