MS HT 110

A painted collar from an Egyptian mummy made from plaster on a linen base. This would have formed part of a larger mummy case decorated with personal adornments associated with the dead person. Mummy masks became more common in the 12th dynasty (1975–1790 BCE), and showed the deceased mummy with a wig, beard and broad collar which also covered the upper arms. The pigments used in the decoration were red ochre, yellow earth, orpiment and Egyptian blue.

The design is composed of rows of flower petal and buds; an eye and a falcon’s head on the upper border represent the god Horus. The central figure is very probably Anubis, the god commonly associated with death, mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion. He is usually depicted as a dog or a man with a canine head and his role was to usher souls into the afterlife. He attended the weighing scale during the ‘Weighing of the Heart’, in which determined whether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead.

Found with the papers of the Egyptologist Professor Stephen Glanville (1900–1956).