Dreyfus: I am Renee Dreyfus – I’m Curator in charge of Ancient Art.

This is an anthropoid coffin of a man named Iret-hor-iru.

The afterlife was envisioned as a continuation of an ideal earthly existence. For the ancient Egyptians, they believed that the body was necessary to the survival of the spirit - it was a place to which the spirit could return to, to receive sustenance and even protection. 

So it makes sense that a human-shaped coffin could function as a substitute for the mummified body within it. And in addition to that, it provides a surface for those magical images and texts that you see running down the body of the coffin. These texts were used to protect the deceased and assure the safe passage into this happy afterlife.

And if we look at that unusually long inscription, it's carved with the owner's name and also a spell from the Book of the Dead, Spell 72, that guarantees the care of the deceased and his free movement in the next world. So it's really a very special coffin for a wealthy man. And at one time it was painted, and if you look carefully at the wig case, you can still see some of that paint that's on there.