3,500-year-old Egyptian canvas on display in Paris - CCTV News - CCTV.com English

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3,500-year-old Egyptian canvas on display in Paris

Reporter: Fei Ye CCTV.com
05-07-2015 00:25 BJT

A 3,500-year-old Egyptian polychrome linen canvas, or funerary canvas, was on display in Paris Tuesday, before going on auction in mid-June.

Titled the "Tanedjem linen square", the rare piece is a particular type of Theban funeral textile dating back to 1400 BC.

The rare piece was discovered by French archaeologist Bernard Bruyere on the site of Deir el-Medina, which used to be the artisan village in the Valley of the Kings, in eastern Egypt. The PIASA auction house director said that this was a major discovery of ancient Egyptian antiquity.

"There's a lot of emotions with this piece. There is nothing more fragile than these small strands of linen and 3,500 years later, they get to us so we can give Tanedjem back his memory, which he had lost for more than 3,000 years," said Henri-Pierre Teissedre.

The character portrayed on the canvas, Tanedjem, still remains unknown and does not figure in the great book of Egyptian names. But his clothes, the ornaments depicted as well as the luxurious furniture, attest to the important status of this man within the community.

Ta-nedjem linen square

"He's holding a piece of fabric in his right hand and is extending his left arm towards a table filled with offerings. Then he is perfectly identified from the hieroglyphic inscription, which says: ‘Offering of everything that is good and pure for the spirit of Tanedjem, just of voice,’" said Christophe Kunicki, Egyptian Antiquities expert.


"‘Just of voice’ which simply means that he was deceased at the time."

This piece of painted fabric is part of a restricted body of work of which only 22 other copies have been listed in the Bulletin of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology.

"So the function of these linen squares is more or less the equivalent of a headstone, meaning that, in order to survive in the after-life, the deceased needed physical support, hence mummification," said Kunicki.

The auction will take place June 18.