Unpublished Akhmimc coffin of Nesmin son Irheru, one of Hurghada museum's collections

Faik, Mohamed; Shaikh Al Arab, Walid; Fahim, Tamer; Khater, Mohamed

doi:10.21608/ijhth.2023.371357

Unpublished Akhmimc coffin of Nesmin son Irheru, one of Hurghada museum's collections

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Tourism Guidance Department, Faculty of Tourism and Hotels, Fayoum University, Fayoum, Egypt

² College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sharjah; Tourism Guidance Department, Faculty of Tourism and Hotels, Fayoum University, Fayoum, Egypt;

10.21608/ijhth.2023.371357

Abstract

The authors present in this paper the first publication of Nesmin's coffin from the collections of the Hurghada museum. This coffin was discovered in Akhmim by the French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero in 1893. It was never sold, so in 1916 it was transported to Cairo and exhibited in the Egyptian Museum under code No (TR 6.9.16.2). After that, it was transferred to be preserved in the Hurghada Museum in 2020 under No (TR 6.9.16.2 SR4/11350). This artifact is an example of a Ptolemaic Period Egyptian coffin that is artistically and technically superb. The inscriptions on Nesmin's coffin were translated and interpreted, and these texts were compared to similar ones on other coffins from the same site (Akhmim). From the inscription's characteristic stylistic and palaeographic qualities, the language and faults found in the text, and the titles and epithets of Nesmin, the authors concluded that this coffin dates back to the Ptolemaic period. More precisely, the likely dating of the Hurghada coffin can be narrowed down to the end of the third or the beginning of the second century B.C.

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