BU Archaeology & ARCE Lecture, "Egyptian Coffins: Exploring the carpenter’s craft for the afterlife"

Biography: Dr. Geoffrey Killen is a leading Egyptologist, wood technologist, and furniture historian who studied Design and Technology at Shoreditch College, University of London and the University of Liverpool, where he specialized in Ramesside woodworking. His expertise embraces forty years of research in the areas of Ancient Egyptian Furniture and Woodworking Technology. Dr. Killen has studied the collections of Egyptian furniture and woodwork at most of the major world museums including the Egyptian Antiquities Museum, Cairo. He has lectured and given practical demonstrations of Ancient Egyptian woodworking processes and techniques in the United States of America and Britain. He has written extensively on the subject and also led in the field of experimental archaeology where making and using replica woodworking tools and equipment has generated and tested archaeological hypotheses. Dr. Killen’s practical work is now displayed together with those original artefacts in several British museums. Abstract: Egyptians invested time and considerable material resources when preparing for death. At Deir el-Medina we have evidence of the production and quality procedures employed by carpenters when manufacturing a coffin for a client. Once the carpenter had manufactured the coffin it provided coffin painters with the opportunity to create examples of magnificent funerary art. In preparation for the recent coffin exhibition, Death on the Nile held at the Fitzwilliam Museum we had the opportunity to analyse a range of different coffins. This included employing new scanning technologies to help us understand the complex nature of coffin construction that is hidden below layers of paint and varnish. Co-Sponsored by Boston University Archaeology Program and the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE).