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Forgeries of wooden mummy masks are  very numerous.

Many are rather crude and not very pretty.

Similarly , the upper parts of the painted lids of wooden anthropoid sarcophagi are common and also commonly created by fakers.

 


















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Some genuine examples.
















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Some examples which may have lost  much or all their added painted details are sometimes touched up and enhanced.

But what are we to make of this rather attractive piece?

 








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This piece was on offer from a dealer and came with this reassuring  interesting old letter.

 



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And indeed, a more recent letter from the British Museum.

 

 This  letter reads:

 

"Dear Mr Lyonne, I am delighted to tell you that I have now had time to thoroughly examine the coffin mask you brought to the British Museum on 20 March. It is certainly a good specimen from the period, carved from a single block of wood and painted over a light gesso (plaster and glue) base. I can concur with Sir Wallis Budge's opinion that the piece represents a young woman of very high standing from the 22nd Dynasty. The practise of adding an idealised image of the dead person to the anthropoid coffin became an integral part of wealthy burials in ancient Egypt and her high status is further emphasised by the winged vulture head-dress which was normally the perogative of queens. Sadly we will never know her true identity as the lower portion of the coffin is now lost. This would have undoubtedly contained details of her name and lineage. Unfortunately, it was not uncommon for unscrupulous traders or indeed licenced dealers to saw this off making the most marketable part (the mask) easier to transport. Your item is now ready to be collected at your convenience."

  

 


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This letter from present-day curator at the British Museum  authenticating the mask, dated April 2003, was offered along with the envelope the letter was sent in, with a British Museum franked postmark dated April 2003, and a single-sided xerox copy of a British Museum visitors pass for the mask dating to March 2003, apparently stamped by the British Museum.

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What nice provenance! What do we know about this Mr. Abemayor mentioned in Wallis Budge's letter.? Well we know that a Mr E.A. Abemayor ran an antiquities shop near the Shepherds Hotel in Cairo in the early years of the 20th Century. He sold to Howard Carter amongst others. Later, other members of the Abemayor family established an antiquities dealership in New York.  

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And so.................read more>>>