The Foundation has recently acquired an Egyptian Ptah-Sokar-Osiris statue, also called a papyrus sheath. It has been dated to 990-970 BCE. It is from the estate of an English military family who believed it was brought from Egypt in the early 1900s. It would have stood in a tomb near the mummy of the deceased.
The statue is of wood and, like most of these figures, it is covered in black varnish. Apparently the black colour referenced the darkness of the night as well as the fertile black mud on the banks of the Nile, and in turn these referred to death and coming alive in the afterlife.
The PSO figure wears the atef crown of the god of the afterlife, Osiris. The deceased person becomes an Osiris after death and to make sure he can make the transition, the PSO figure would have contained a papyrus roll with excerpts from the Book of the Dead written in cursive hieroglyphics.
On the wooden base there are two holes: one for the PSO figure and a small one probably for a wooden sculpture of a hawk, which represented Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis.
The PSO figure will be the central feature in the CCCRH Egyptian Exhibition.
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