Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)

ÉVA LIPTAY: Éva Liptay "My Face Is (That of) Ra"

"MY FACE IS (THAT OF) RA'" ÉVA LIPTAY 1. THE INNER DECORATION OE A TWENTY-FIRST DYNASTY COFFIN IN BUDAPEST I published an earlier short study on a Twenty-first Dynasty coffin from the Egyptian collection preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts.

2 In the present paper I would like to draw attention to an interesting detail of the iconography of the same coffin pertaining to its inner decoration. The inner decoration of the case of the coffin is polychrome on a yellow background. On the basis of this colour scheme it can be dated to the second half of the Twenty-first Dynasty. The principal motif on the crown of the head is a bearded èi-bird (the colour of its skin is rust-red) with outstretched wings and arms, depicted with the face de profil,

1 and holding an r

/z/7-sign in each hand. At each of the four corners of the composition is a stylized pair of feathers. The decoration on the bottom has almost completely disappeared due to the damage it had sustained, however, according to the exhibition guide from 1939, it has not deteriorated any further since the first half of the twentieth century: "... the bottom of the coffin is decorated with a large-sized portrait of a goddess, which is now extensively blurred and thus cannot be identified with certainty."

4 The large-sized, central figure of the divinity appearing on the inner side of the bottom (usually Nut / the goddess of the West or Osiris / ûW-column) which

—according to the twentieth century

7 description quoted above

—originally formed a prominent part of the decoration,' which cannot be reconstructed, is a characteristic feature of the earlier period of the history of the type used by the Amon priesthood at Thebes during the Twenty-first Dynasty and at the beginning of the Twenty-second Dynasty.

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