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The Coffins of Maatkare

    The mummy of Maatkare was found contained within a nested set of two coffins. She had also been covered by a coffin board. Unlike the intact outer coffins of Neskhons and Isiemkheb-D, Maatkare's outermost coffin showed signs of minor damage. Its gilded right hand was missing and some type of decoration had been removed from just above the forehead, where three distinct holes appear indicating that something had once been attached to the portrait mask at this position (see below.) The inner coffin and coffin board sustained more extensive damage, and the hands and portrait masks of both have been completely removed. This pattern of damage might indicate that the burial of Maatkare had been disturbed on two separate occasions. The first set of thieves had probably targeted only the inner coffin and coffin board for petty pilfering. They probably had been members of the burial party who originally interred Maatkare, and hoped to hide all signs of their pilfering beneath the intact lid of her outer coffin. At some later date, perhaps a second set of thieves only had time to remove the forehead element and one of the two gilded hands. Perhaps their plundering had been interrupted and they had been forced to stop before managing to remove the other hand and the gilded portrait mask. However, it is equally possible that the two missing decorative elements from the outer coffin lid had accidentally dropped off when Maatkare's coffins and mummy had been placed in DB320.
   Rogerio Sousa (in GCSS p. 62) calls attention to the fact that Maatkare’s hands are depicted as clenched on her outer and inner coffin lids and mummy board. In the predominantly patriarchal society of ancient Egypt, clenched fists symbolized masculine power and (starting in the 19'th Dynasty) were normally reserved for the coffins of high status males, whereas the hands on the coffin lids of females were usually represented as having the fingers fully extended (see Lapp and Niwinski, AGS, 54f.) Sousa interprets the clenched hands on Maatkare’s coffin lids as “a bold statement of social status.” (GCSS, ibid.)
   Sousa points out additional features of the coffin that indicate the elevated social position of Maatkare. The finely braided hair depicted on the wig is unusual in "Yellow" 21'st Dynasty coffins and is only found in burials of the highest status. The vulture headdress that frames Maatkare's face is another distinctive status symbol. Sousa believes that the three holes visible on the headband immediately above Maatkare's forehead indicate that a golden vulture's head flanked by two uraeus serpents had once adorned the headdress. This type of decorative element (which became more common on stola coffins later in the 21'st Dynasty) would have been reserved only for exceptionally important individuals in Maatkare's time. A similar vulture headdress may also have been depicted on the inner coffin lid of Maatkare-Mutemhet's mother, Duathathor-Henttawy, but extensive damage to the coffin makes this uncertain. (Source Bibliography: AGS, 54f; CCR, 82ff.; DRN, 201, 207, 213; GCSS,50, n. 280; 51, 53f., n. 321; 62.) Source Abbreviation Key

Black and white photo of Maatkare's outer (left) and inner (right) coffin
lids from Georges Daressy's Cercueils des cachettes royales (Cairo, 1909.)
Click to enlarge.