Funeral masks

After about 1000 years of making mummies, the Egyptians came up with yet another way to make sure the ba and ka could recognize their body. After the mummy was wrapped, a mask was fitted over the head and shoulders. The faces on these funeral masks resembled those of the dead, so the ba and ka could identify the mummy as their own. Funeral masks were made out of solid gold (like King Tut's), wood, or cartonnage (a material similar to paper-mâché). Wooden and cartonnage masks were painted or gilded with gold.

 
cartonnage mask

Coffins and sarcophagi

To further protect the mummy from possible damage, Egyptians often placed them in one or more coffins. Like many other Egyptian burial customs, the styles of the coffins changed over the thousands of years that mummification was practiced.

The earliest coffins of the Old Kingdom were boxy and made of wood. Their decoration was usually very plain, with just some hieroglyphics and a pair of wedjat eyes painted at the head end. The wedjat eyes allowed the mummy to "see" into the world of the living. Painted below the wedjat eyes was a false door to allow the spirit to come and go as it pleased. As time passed, the decoration became more elaborate. Images of gods, hieroglypics that spelled out protective prayers, and pictures of amulets covered almost every square inch of these coffins.

During the Middle Kingdom, Egyptians began to make anthropoid (or mummiform) coffins. Whether you call them anthropoid or mummiform, both words mean "human shaped." Like the funeral masks, these coffins had faces that resembled the person inside to help the ba and ka recognize it. Many of these were made of cartonnage because it was cheap, light, and easy to shape and paint. Some of these were gilded with gold as well.

These coffins were heavily decorated with hieroglyphics and pictures of gods and magic symbols to protect the mummy on its way to the afterlife. Some of the typical images to appear on coffins are pictured below.

And for even more protection, some mummies were placed into a sarcophagus. A sarcophagus is a coffin made of stone. They are quite heavy (several tons) so several men were required to position a sarcophagus into a tomb. Sarcophagi were expensive, so only pharaohs and queens, priests and priestesses, viceroys, nobles, and other important officials were buried in them. Like regular coffins, sarcophagi were either rectangular or mummiform.