Artifacts from the Tomb of the Priests of Amun in Finland

Authors

• Thomas Christiansen University of Copenhagen (alumnus)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23993/stor.163531

Abstract

This article presents the first comprehensive publication of the artifacts from the Tomb of the Priests of Amun preserved in Finland. The Finnish share—comprising a mummy cover and nine shabtis—was allocated as part of the division of the Russian Lot VI, carried out in Odessa in 1894–1895, and arrived in Helsinki in the autumn of 1895. Since then, this small group has remained intact and is today housed in the National Museum of Finland. Despite its stable provenance and uninterrupted accessibility, these objects have received little scholarly attention and have remained largely unpublished. Drawing on archival sources, stylistic and epigraphic analysis, and comparative material from the wider distribution of Lot VI—whose subsequent history is retraced in detail—this study identifies the likely original burials to which the artifacts once belonged and situates them within the broader corpus. The accompanying catalogue raisonné adopts the structure and terminology developed by the Gate of the Priests Project, especially in its publications on Lot V (Italy) and Lot XVI (Denmark). The findings contribute to the ongoing reconstruction of individual burial assemblages from the largest intact tomb cache of the Third Intermediate Period.