| Khonsu Human Mummy | |
| |
| Biographical Information | |
|---|---|
| Name(s) | Khonsu |
| Age | 50 - 60 |
| Sex | Male |
| Status | Servant in the Place of Truth |
| Height | |
| Source | |
| Culture | Ancient Egypt |
| Date(s) | 1279–1213 B.C. |
| Site | Deir el-Medina, Tomb TT1 |
| Current Location | |
| Location | The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Catalog # | |
Khonsu was the 6th son of Sennedjem and Iyneferti, born during the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom, under the reign of Ramesses II. Like his father, he worked from a young age as a mason and artisan at the royal necropolis of Thebes, a "Servant in the Place of Truth". He was married to Tameket, with whom he had Nakhtenmut and Nakhtmin, two sons that would later perform his funerary rites and bury him alongside his parents in the family tomb complex (a walled courtyard with three pyramid-shaped offering chapels, under which the bodies were placed), close to their home in the former royal workers' village of Set Maat. They too, as well as Khonsu's brothers, wife and sisters-in-law, would also join him there after their deaths.
Although they have had the same occupation, Khonsu achieved a higher position and social status than his father, becoming a foreman of the workers' force.
Mummification[]
“Nine of them [mummies] had very beautiful anthropoid coffins, single or double, finely painted and varnished. These are Sennedjem, his wife Iyneferti, his son Khonsou and his wife Tamaket, his other children Parahotep, Taashsen, Ramose, Isis and finally, a little girl named Hathor. Rich funerary furniture accompanied them.” (Gaston Maspero, French Egyptologist)
Khonsu's burial assemblage, including his mummy mask, outer and inner coffins, canopic box and shrine
The family of Khonsu lived during prosperous times, and their influence granted them with every funerary necessity one might've had, which led to it being compared to the mummification and burial rites of New Kingdom royalty. His funerary shrine and coffin sets were exquisite in quality and artistry, even though his chapel was the smallest of the family complex, sitting by the left of Sennedjem's. Though him and his brother Khabekhnet each had their own tombs, objects, inscriptions, effigies and mentions of them and other siblings could be found in the crypt of Sennedjem, where Khonsu himself and some of his brothers were buried.
Inside the tomb, all of the mummies were equally surrounded in precious objects: jewels, wine jars, shabtis (small figurines intended to substitute the deceased owner in manual labor in the afterlife, often shown with a hoe, pick, and one or two baskets), furniture, cosmetic boxes, excerpts from the Book of the Dead, Khonsu's canopic box for storing his internal organs after the mummification process, etc., with Khonsu's being some of the more expensive and plentiful. One other detail of note is the fact that Khonsu's coffin set was placed on top of Sennedjem's funerary bed, which leads to the belief that the father's shrine had been disassembled to accommodate the son's.
Khonsu's body was treated and wrapped according to the common practices of the New Kingdom, and a mummy mask made of a wooden frame and cartonnage (a material made of plaster and linen) was placed over his head and shoulders. He was then laid in a wooden coffin, where he was depicted similarly to the mask: with a textured double wig of finely braided hair framing his face, visible pierced earlobes, a wide floral headband and a short goatee; and this was then nested into an outer coffin, where Khonsu appears with a tripartite striated wig and long, curved goatee, while holding the djed symbol for "stability" in his right hand, and tit, for "protection," in his left, in a visually similar way to the royal mummies.
Khonsu, kneeling in prayer or adoration, illustrated on the inner coffin's lid.
Pathology[]
The analysis of his well-preserved mummy indicates that he was between fifty and sixty years old at the time of his death, and most probably died of natural causes after a life of well-earned comfort.
Khonsu's canopic chest, ornate, elaborate, and divided in four compartments
Additional[]
It is likely that the mummy masks of Khonsu and Sennedjem have been exchanged by accident.
The funerary equipment of the father, kept in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, includes a mask depicting a face with soft, almond-shaped features and a faint smile, wearing a band of lotus flowers over the head. Those details, especially the flowers, match the ones found in Khonsu's coffin set, while his assumed mummy mask at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a longer, more austere face, and no lotuses to adorn it, just like the face in Sennedjem's coffin.
There are no inscriptions on either mask, and it is possible that the confusion between them has been made in antiquity, or by the tomb excavators.
External Links[]
☀ The MET: An Artisan’s Tomb in New Kingdom Egypt
☀ Osirisnet: Deir el-Medina, Tomb TT1, SENNEDJEM
☀ Computer Model of the Tomb of Sennedjem
☀ The MET: Life Along the Nile: Three Egyptians of Ancient Thebes
☀ SOUSA, R. Gilded Flesh: Coffins and Afterlife in Ancient Egypt. Oxbow Books, 2019.