MFA Boston Returns Ancient Egyptian Child’s Coffin to Swedish Museum After Decades-long Disappearance
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston is returning a small, ornate clay coffin created for an Egyptian boy who died over 3,000 years ago to the Gustavianum, Uppsala University Museum after discovering that the object had been stolen from the Swedish institution.
Provenance research by the MFA Boston revealed that the documents provided when it acquired the object in 1985 were inauthentic. The coffin was actually excavated by the British School of Archaeology in Egypt in 1920 and sent to the Victoria Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (Gustavianum) two years later. At some point between then and 1970, it went missing from the museum.
The coffin has been returned to the Gustavianum and will undergo conservation work before being displayed. It is an important item in their collections and holds significance for the museum and university. The coffin dates back to Egypt’s 19th dynasty and is richly painted with figures and hieroglyphs. It was made for a boy named Paneferneb and is approximately 43 inches long.
The circumstances surrounding the object’s disappearance from the Gustavianum and its journey to the US remain unknown.
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Elara Voss, graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a Master’s in Fine Art. She specializes in contemporary sculpture and installation art, exploring themes of nature and human interaction. Elara’s works have been featured in several group exhibitions across Europe, and she is currently working on her first solo show.