Tabasety, the Temple Singer in Aarhus

An Egyptian burial assemblage in the collection of the Museum of Ancient Art and Archaeology of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, comprises an anthropoid coffin, a mummy-cover and a mummy. Several analyses have been carried out on the human remains since their arrival to the Museum in 1950 but these results have never been published nor critically accessed from an Egyptological perspective. Notwithstanding the unique opportunity provided by this burial assemblage to carry out the integrated study of the funerary equipment and the human remains, only recently has the coffin set been thoroughly analysed, described and published. This paper presents the results obtained from former anthropological studies with an Egyptological assessment of the data, comparing them with the information provided by the burial equipment. The critical integration of this data reveals important clues regarding the special social status held by an elderly woman suffering from a severe and chronic disability within the priesthood of Amun during the Twenty-first Dynasty.