We successfully opened the 2023 season of the LMU Ankh-Hor project earlier this week. Although we only had three working days in Week 1, we made great progress with our prime working tasks. Ashraf and Hassan cleaned the area and many boxes with objects from the tomb of Ankh-Hor (TT 414), Mohammed and Karima consolidated already 20 pieces of painted coffins.

One particular challenge for Mohammed was a fragment of a 26th Dynasty qrsw-coffin (a coffin in the shape of a shrine with vaulted lid and corner posts). This piece (Fig. 1) was reused as building material in the Lichthof of TT 414 in the later reconstruction phase of this part of the tomb during the 30th Dynasty. The builders in the 4th century BCE used mainly mud bricks and wood – and for the latter, plenty of broken 26th Dynasty coffins were available as suitable building material (especially as architraves).

Thus, although the original object Mohammed consolidated is in a very pure condition and we cannot identify its owner, the piece tells us a lot about the life history of TT 414.

I was busy in the last days sorting the coffin fragments according to priorities for consolidation and cleaning. Several of them are still not assignable – find labels are missing and the texts are not readable. Some of the fragments we are dealing with were never registered before and require full documentation. For the unclear pieces because they are not readable, I take infrared photos and try to identify the objects back home with the help of the database. We are using this technique since 2021 and have wonderful results – for most of the painted coffins with stains on the surface or darkened surfaces, the original decoration becomes visible again.

I had a particularly successful experience yesterday: A piece whose inscriptions I could not read until yesterday suddenly became clear (Fig. 2). Based on the texts (especially the name of its owner), it was an easy task to identify the coffin fragment as Reg. 762. It also turned out that this coffin was actually much nicer decorated than a first glance of the darkened surface would indicate.

Furthermore, and this shows the enormous potential of infrared photography for the LMU Ankh-Hor project, more genealogical data became available for the owner of this coffin. Back in the 1970s, the names of the parents were not readable. But now they are! And it seems as if we have another, previously unknown family member of the famous Hor and Kalutj/Nes-Khonsu family! But this is so exciting that I have to ask all of you for a little patience – there will be a separate blog post about this (soon insha’allah).