Wahibreemakhet’s tomb

The sarcophagus was sold to the museum by the well-known merchant Giovanni d’Anastasi. It was part of the first group of antiquities that he sold to the museum. A. Villing, ‘Wahibreemakhet at Saqqara: The Tomb of a Greek in Egypt’, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 145-2 (2018), 177. Included in this group was a collection of so-called shabtis also belonging to Wahibreemakhet. An example of one of these shabtis can be seen in fig. 3 H. Schneider, Shabtis : an introduction to the history of ancient Egyptian funerary statuettes with a catalogue of the collection of shabtis in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden (Leiden, 1977), 165-166.

The sarcophagus was sold to the museum by the well-known merchant Giovanni d’Anastasi. It was part of the first group of antiquities that he sold to the museum. A. Villing, ‘Wahibreemakhet at Saqqara: The Tomb of a Greek in Egypt’, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 145-2 (2018), 177. Included in this group was a collection of so-called shabtis also belonging to Wahibreemakhet. An example of one of these shabtis can be seen in fig. 3 H. Schneider, Shabtis : an introduction to the history of ancient Egyptian funerary statuettes with a catalogue of the collection of shabtis in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden (Leiden, 1977), 165-166.

Shabtis were mummiform statuettes placed in tombs. They were meant to assist the deceased with his activities in the afterlife.

In 1839, d’Anastasi sold a second group of objects belonging to Wahibreemakhet to the British Museum in London. It consisted of shabtis (see fig. 4) and wall reliefs (likely from his tomb) mentioning his name. The Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm owns a set of four canopic jars also belonging to Wahibreemakhet (fig. 5 – 8). It seems probable that these canopic jars also came from one of d’Anastasi’s collections. They seem to have been donated to the museum by Queen Josephine of Leuchtenberg (the queen of Sweden and Norway) and it is likely that they were gifted to the crown by d’Anastasi. A. Villing, ‘Wahibreemakhet at Saqqara: The Tomb of a Greek in Egypt’, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 145-2 (2018), 177.

Canopic jars were used by the Egyptians to store the organs of the deceased as part of the mummification process, after which they were placed in the tomb. These jars all had differently decorated lids: a human-headed one, a baboon-headed one, a jackal-headed one, and a falcon-headed one. These canopic jars represent the four sons of Horus. Their names are Imsety (fig. 5), Hapy (fig. 6), Duamutef (fig. 7), and Qebehsenuef (fig. 8). By placing the organs under the protection of these deities, they could be preserved. This was very important for the continuation of the existence of the deceased in the afterlife. H. Schlögl, ‘Uschebti’, in W. Helck, E. Otto, W. Westendorf (eds) Lexikon der ägyptologie, Band 6: Stele - Zypresse (Wiesbaden, 1986), 896-899. We will learn more about them later. Let us now return to the sarcophagus.