The mummy's coffin returns

A two and a half thousand year old coffin

A two and a half thousand year old coffin is back on display at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro after nine months of conservation work.

The coffin held the mummified remains of an egyptian priest.

Originally donated to the museum in the 19th century, they were in storage for many years

The Egyptian mummy and its two coffins are now among the most popular exhibits at the museum, and have been on display for more than 20 years.

During the Victorian era Ast Tayef Nakht's outer coffin was painted with varnish, a technique that was popular at the time.

In the '80s work was carried out to restore the huge, and intricately decorated wooden cask. That meant areas were covered with acrylic paint, and places that had been damaged by grave robbers during its long history were filled.

Staff at the Royal Cornwall Museum recently decided that the layers of paint and varnish were damaging the relic, and so embarked on hours of painstaking work to return it to its original state.

Jane Marley removes the hardened varnish using solvents

Working on just two centimetre sections of the artefact at a time, the museum's Conservator Laura Radcliffe carefully removed the hardened varnish using solvents, and in areas where the varnish was very hard, a scalpel. It's painstaking work, and took more than 150 hours, but Laura says her efforts have revealed even more of the coffin's history.

The casket is seven feet long, and would originally have been decorated from top to toe, but the artwork on the base of the coffin has been lost. It was damaged when the coffin was put on a plinth, to stand upright on display.

Wood was an expensive commodity in the Egyptian period, and rather than being made out of a solid piece, the coffin is made up of many small pieces of sycamore held together with dowels. It's now also possible to see where the coffin was damaged by grave robbers in the 19th century.

Now the coffin has been conserved, staff are hoping to move Ast Tayef Nakht to a larger gallery within the museum in the near future.