By Hala Afifi, Safa Abd El-Kader Mohamed Hamed, Samia Mohamedy, Michael Dawod
ABSTRACT
In the Police seizures museum, Citadel, Egypt, there are large numbers of the refundable objects, a lot of them undated. So, this study focuses on dating a fragment of a refundable wooden Egyptian coffin lid based on its technology and typology through multi-analytical techniques. The coffin lid was examined by visual investigation, optical microscope, Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and EDAX, FTIR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. These investigations were carried on to identify the used wood, preparation layers, pigments and modern interventions. With the use of this information we tried to date this piece in accordance to the previous studies concerned with the coffin construction techniques through ages. The results showed that the stratigraphy of this coffin lid corresponds to the stratigraphy of the yellow coffins, which appeared at the 18th Dynasty (1575-1307 BC) and ending suddenly at the first half of twenty-two Dynasty (~945-840 BC), according to general similarities of shape, structure and coloring.
