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Two Boats with Female Mourners
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
This relief depicts part of the flotilla accompanying the funerary boat. The setting could be either the brief voyage across the Nile to the cemetery on the west bank or the traditional voyage downstream to Abydos, the sacred city of Osiris, where in earlier times final rites for the dead were performed. Both of the boats preserved here are filled with professional female mourners whose task it was to proclaim the virtues of the deceased and to lament his departure. This composition is certainly copied from a lost, probably painted, original of Dynasty 18.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineTwo Boats with Female Mourners, c. 667–647 BCE. Egypt, Late period (715–332 BCE), Dynasties 25–26. Limestone; overall: 58.2 x 91 cm (22 15/16 x 35 13/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the Hanna Fund, 1951.282
