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Highly Important Falcon Mummy & Sarcoph

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:15,000.00 USD Estimated At:15,000.00 - 20,000.00 USD
Highly Important Falcon Mummy & Sarcoph
Carved wood anthropoid mummy case, with falcon&#39;s head, gessoed and with extensive polychrome. The head with nicely painted facial markings, a lappet wig in blue-gray with jeweled ends, and a beaded broad collar. Garment motifs include: paired falcon heads with solar discs at his shoulders; two djed pillars, one with flanking uraeii; a ba bird towards the feet;and finally, over the feet are seven vertical hieroglyphic registers, alternating in blue and creme. The coffin back painted in a light tan-ocher color, with single register of glyphs along the back. The mummy with simple wrappings, with painted facial details and applied eyes -- with some splits and flaking &#40;mostly at the beak, and one shoulder&#41;. The coffin paint with a few small areas of loss, mainly on the top of the head. Some very trivial fading in spots, but overall with very minimal wear to paint, the colors quite bold and pristine, and probably 90 per cent intact. The coffin base is little warped, but the fit is good. For being out public view for over a half century, with an absolute minimum of paint touch up &#40;perhaps to a few glyphs at the feet&#41;, this is an extraordinarily fresh artifact, becoming less and less seen in today&#39;s market. Height: 19-1/2&#34;. A museum quality display piece. <I><BR>Northeast U.S. Private Collection, said to have been purchased in Cairo in the early 1950&#39;s, during the time of the Farouk palace sales, and was cleared for relaese by the Cairo museum at that time. For the falcon, cf. especially one seen online at: &#34;Life Beyond the Tomb: Animal Mummies,&#34; in the &#39;Australian Museum Online&#39;; the mummy dated to the Greco-Roman Period &#40;332 BC-392 AD&#41;, in the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden.<BR><BR>As noted before, there was a large trade in mummified animals, especially in the Late Period. They were offered to pilgrims to be placed as votives in temples of the god to whom the animal was sacred. Saqqara was one of the largest centers for this practice in Egypt. Of course benefactions were expected from the donations. Often falcon mummies were given to the falcon god Horus for remedy or relief of some disease. <BR>Under the sands of Saqqara archaeologists discovered a large cemetery complex devoted to interred animals. From the terrace of the temple built by Nectanebo II two galleries tunnel their way into the rock, one for the burials of baboons, and the second for falcons. In that part of the cemetery known as the &#34;falcon gallery,&#34; there are miles of tunnels holding more than a million mummified falcons dating from 300 BC. to 200 AD. Interestingly, the quality and type of burials of the falcons varied greatly -- some elaborate jars were found to hold a few bones wrapped with linen, while others showed elaborate wrapping. Not all birds found were falcons though, some ibises have been noted, while some larger pots even held mummified vultures.</I>