A Painted Linen Mummy Wrapping Fragment, 18th Dynasty, probably reign of Amenhotep II, 1540-1292 B.C.

belonging to the priest Senhotep, painted in black and red with fifteen columns of retrograde inscription containing the beginning of Spell 1 from the Book of the Dead, the scene above showing the mummy lying on a lion-legged bier on a sled drawn by five attendants, the mummy flanked by Isis on the left and Nephthys on the right, two men conversing at the side of the mummy.

estate of Rudolph Kip, New York
Doyle Antiques (Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, December 1st, 1972, no. 57, illus.)
acquired by the present owner circa 1986

Aimé de Caluwe, Un Livre des morts sur bandelette de momie (Bruxelles, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire E. 6179) (Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, vol. XVIII), Bruxelles, 1991, p. XV, n. 9

Luc Limme (A. de Caluwe, op. cit.) points out that the present fragment is part of the same mummy wrapping as the fragments acquired circa 1896 by the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (Annie Gasse, "L’étoffe funéraire de Senhotep," Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, vol. 83, 1983, pp. 191, pls. 38-40; Annie Gasse, "Les Livres des morts sur tissu," Égypte, Afrique et Orient, October 2006, pp. 6-7). The priest Senhotep, Chief of Police of the sanctuaries of Min and Isis at Akhmim, is represented on one of the Cairo fragments, together with his wife Henuttawy and their daughters Isis and Tuy, worshipping a now missing figure of Osiris; this fragment, marking the very beginning of the painted wrapping, must have immediately preceded the present one.