Verona, Ancient Egyptian funerary boat model from nearly 4,000 years ago enters Palazzo Maffei collections

A model of a sailing funerary boat from Ancient Egypt has entered the collections of Palazzo Maffei in Verona. The piece is now the oldest among the more than 650 works on display in the Verona museum in Piazza delle Erbe commissioned by collector Luigi Carlon: in fact, it dates back nearly 4,000 years.

Dated between 1939 and 1850 B.C., the 50-centimeter-long craft belongs to that group of models, produced mainly in the Middle Kingdom period, generally deposited inside the tombs of Egyptian dignitaries. Under the covered movable structure (the cabin), the body of the deceased can be seen surrounded by six kneeling oarsmen simulating the rowing motion, while at the stern is the helmsman. Complete with all its primary parts, made of molded and carved wood with traces of polychromy, the exhibit at Maffei Palace has a hull with white and brown linear decorations and graft holes for attaching the various movable elements and characters, while the mast is centrally arranged and equipped with a rolled sail that rests horizontally on an additional movable support.

Placed in the room on the second exhibition floor, which already brings together some ancient pieces of Greco-Roman provenance and the “summa” of knowledge with the complete edition of Diderot and d’Alambert’s Encyclopédie, the funerary boat model, which for typological comparisons can be compare to the one kept in the Louvre in Paris, testifies to the strong sense of life in the afterlife typical of Egyptian culture, as it symbolizes the transport of the soul of the deceased from the world of the living to the world of the dead. According to Egyptian culture, in fact, the deceased would enter the Duat (the Realm of the Dead) with his or her body-that is why bodies were mummified and the most important organs were preserved-where the god Osiris would infuse the breath of life anew.

“I have always been attracted to these Egyptian Sacred Boats,” says Luigi Carlon, “and every time I saw them in museums my thoughts took me to Böcklin’s painting The Island of the Dead. In this work, in the boat at the stern is the helmsman, while at the bow is a mysterious figure dressed in white who is about to pass from the world of the living to the Afterlife. The Egyptians also believed in an afterlife, and the boat was used to transport the deceased to a new world. Here, too, there is the helmsman at the stern and then the rowers and the body of the deceased.”

“It’s a work that conveys a lot of emotions,” concludes the collector and president of the Maffei Palace Foundation, “and it makes you think that the real world is closely related to a spiritual world. I think it is important that this vessel is now in the collection and can convey deep reflections to visitors, along with knowledge of the fascinating customs of an extraordinary people.”

Verona, Ancient Egyptian funerary boat model from nearly 4,000 years ago enters Palazzo Maffei collections

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