I know I have posted some articles about Sennedjem before (here, here and here), but I believe it is worth returning to this artist of divine Gods and Goddesses again.

One of the most glorious and revealing galleries in Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs is the one that holds a single object. It is the outer coffin of the ancient Egyptian artisan Sennedjem, who lived in Deir el-Medina (in Egyptian, Set Maat or “Place of Truth”) during the reigns of Ramses II and his father, Seti I. He was part of an elite group of skilled craftspeople and artists who lived in this walled village on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes and worked primarily in the tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings. Sennedjem held the title of “servant in place of Truth,” indicating that he was one of the teams responsible for constructing and decorating the royal tombs. Sennedjem’s own tomb was on a hill overlooking the workers’ settlement. A small pyramid sits on top of the entrance to an offering chapel. Below that lies Sennedjem’s decorated burial chamber. The painted reliefs from the walls and ceiling of that chamber are reproduced in the exhibition and surround Sennedjem’s coffin, as they did when the intact tomb was discovered in 1886. These are some of the most famous scenes from Egyptian tombs, showing his progress from death into the afterlife. famsf.org

It is undoubtedly a treasure for us humans that there were such artisans to show and let us know the divine life of Gods and Goddesses and the peoples in those days. And all in all, we could say that this kind of art is inspired by Gods and Goddesses and can be stated as divine work, and here with this gorgeous coffin for him, we recognize the respect given to this artist.

The image above: Coffin of Sennedjem by Chris Irie

Now let our dear Madam Marie Grillot tell us about this precious coffin and its fascination.🙏💖

The external coffin of Sennedjem, craftsman of the Place de Vérité

via égyptophile

Sennedjem was, under the reigns of Sethi I and Ramses II (XIXth dynasty), one of the “servants” of the “Place of Truth”. Cabinetmaker or more probably mason, he lived, with his family, in one of the stone houses covered with a roof of palm leaves of “Set Maât her imenty Ouaset”. Founded at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty during the reign of Thutmose III, this royal institution was dedicated to the artisans who worked on the excavation and decoration of the eternal abodes of the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, and even necropolises more distant. “The fact that we often refer to them as ‘workers’ sometimes tends to substantiate the misconception that the community of the village of Deir el-Medina was at the lowest rung of Egyptian society. In fact, these men were craftsmen, for the most part highly qualified and distinguished for their know-how,” specifies Pierre Grandet in “The artists of Pharaoh, Deir el-Medineh and the Valley of the Kings”). Protected by high walls, the members of the community also had places of worship and, on the slopes of the Theban mountain, a necropolis in which to dig their eternal home. It was there that, at the very beginning of the reign of Ramesses II, Sennedjem was buried, and until the end of the time, ramesside other members of his family…

Their tomb was rediscovered in January 1886 by “gournawis”. In “Hidden Treasures of Egypt”, Zahi Hawass recounts the following circumstances: Only days of excavations, Salam and three of his friends made a spectacular discovery: at the bottom of a still unexplored burial shaft, they found a wooden door whose ancient seals were intact. Salam immediately informed Maspero, who happened to be in Luxor for its annual inspection visit”. In his correspondence to his wife Louise on February 3, the Director of Antiquities told this story: “The vault is approximately 5 m long by three wide. It is vaulted, with a shallow burial and painted with vivid colours; unfortunately, the paintings and texts are only excerpts from the Book of the Dead. It was filled to the top with coffins and objects: eight adult mummies, two child mummies, a family of these priests of the cemetery about whom I spoke to you in the letters I wrote from Turin in 1880 (?) The mummies are superb, of a beautiful red varnish with elegant representations, but they are only the least interesting part of the discovery. You know that the mummies were carried to the tomb on sledges, held by men or drawn by oxen. Our tomb contains two of these complete sledges: first the floor, with the rings intended to pass the sticks, when one wanted to carry, then the movable panels of the catafalque in which one locked the coffin, then the lid in cornice… and c This is how we will exhibit everything at the Boulaq museum. Alongside this, the complete furniture: eight large canopic boxes, around forty small funerary statuette boxes, around a hundred charming limestone figurines, around twenty painted earthenware vases, a new bed different in shape from the first two,… In addition, a beautiful armchair with a canvas bottom imitating the tapestry; two stools with canvas bottoms imitating red leather, a folding chair, bouquets of flowers, a cubit, an ostracon containing a very curious historical novel, although very short”…

Sennedjem’s body lay in a magnificent stuccoed and painted wooden mummified coffin. His mummy “was protected by a wooden board covering his body and his funerary mask and representing him dressed as he was alive” (Hanane Gaber, “At work, we recognize the pharaoh’s craftsman”).

The whole was placed in an imposing “sarcophagus” of polychrome and varnished stuccoed wood. 2.60 m long, 0.98 m wide and 1.25 m high, it takes the form of a naos, adorned with a coved cornice, topped with “a domed roof rounded at the ‘front, whose gentle slope joins the cornice at the rear’.

It is entirely covered with hieroglyphic scenes or inscriptions. In “The Tomb of Sennedjem at Deir-El-Medina TT.1”, Martha Sara Saujaume specifies: “Its decoration corresponds to the type of drawings of the 19th Dynasty, in particular for the yellow colour of the background of the vignettes and for the decoration with vignettes corresponding to the Book of the Dead, in very bright colours such as blue and red, as well as texts from the same Book of the Beyond arranged in vertical columns… The decoration on the sides is divided into two registers. Lower comprises columns of text with chapters from the Book of the Dead. In the upper register, we find the Four Sons of Horus and vignettes from the Book of the Dead”…

Represented standing, two by two and turning their backs, the four protective goddesses watch over Sennedjem: at the head are Selkis and Neith, at the feet Isis and Nephthys, each with one arm along the body, the other slightly spread in protective sign. Moving, charming, they are wearing a three-part black wig with a light headband. The hieroglyphic sign is placed on the top of their skull, which allows their identification. They are dressed in tight dresses held by straps, and their neck is adorned with a lovely necklace with multiple rows…

Martha Sara Saujaume notes the presence of “family” representations, such as: “the deceased and his wife Iineferti seated on chairs. She hugs her husband by the shoulders while they play Senet before a table of offerings. This same scene is found inside the access door to the funeral chamber of the deceased. To the right of this scene, we see the ba of the deceased, Sennedjem and Iineferti, on a white chapel. In front of him, the deceased is kneeling in adoration before the two lions holding the Horizon on their shoulders….”

At the time of the burial, to facilitate the hauling of it towards the vault, the sarcophagus was deposited on a sledge: “On the skids of the sledge of the funerary tank of Sennedjem, wheels which left their mark there, had been adapted to facilitate the transport of the heavy and cumbersome piece of furniture. This type of funerary tank with a sledge base only seems to appear in the 18th Dynasty and to disappear with the end of the New Kingdom” (Ruth Anthelme, Christian Leblanc, “Ramses the Great”).

This external coffin has been registered in the Cairo Museum Entry Journal JE 27301. It will be presented at the “Ramses & the Gold of the Pharaohs” exhibition to be held from April 7 to September 6, 2023, at La Grande Halle de la Villette, in a scenography featuring the most beautiful scenes from the funerary vault… Let us remember that, for Bernard Bruyère, the tomb of Sennedjem (TT 1 – TT = Theban tomb): “is not only one of the most beautiful and best preserved in Thebes; but it is, moreover, a perfect, complete and typical example of a large family tomb comprising the four regular components, the courtyard and the chapels accessible to the living, the well and the vault reserved for the dead”…

It is interesting to specify that Khonsou, son of Sennedjem, rested in an almost identical external coffin (JE 27302) which was at the “Ramses the Great” exhibition, organized by Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, from May 15 to October 15, 1976, at Grand Palace in Paris.

Marie Grillot

Sources:

Sarcophagus of Sennedjem http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/record.aspx?id=15748 Bruyère, Bernard, La tombe N°1 de SEN-NEDJEM (1959), MIFAO 88 de 1959 https://archive.org/details/MIFAO88

Padro Josep, “Bulletin of the French Society of Egyptology” – 1988, n°113, pp. 32-45

Elisabeth David, Gaston Maspero, Letters from Egypt, Correspondence with Louise Maspero, Seuil, 2003

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, Ramses the Great, National Galleries of the Grand Palais (1976)

Hanane Gaber, Laure Bazin Rizzo, Frédéric Servajean, At work, we know the craftsman… of Pharaoh! – A century of French research in Deir el-Medina (1917-2017), 2018, SilvanaEditorial

Pharaoh’s artists, Deir el Medineh and the Valley of the Kings, Louvre, 2002

Zahi Hawass, Hidden Treasures of Egypt
Nicholas Reeves, the great discoveries of ancient Egypt, Éditions du Rocher, 2001

Osirisnet.net website – Tomb of Sennedjem https://www.osirisnet.net/tombes/artisans/sennedjem1/sennedjem1_02.htm

https://www.osirisnet.net/tombes/artisans/sennedjem1/e_sennedjem1_01.htm