This remarkable hawk-headed coffin is made of solid silver. It belonged to Sheshonq the Second, who ruled around 350 years after Ramses the Great. The coffin has a moulded shape without edges or corners. A sculpture of a hawk’s face emerges at the head. The lid is a long, low dome. It is widest and bulges highest at the head and shoulders, then gently slopes and narrows to the ankles, before rising up sharply at the feet.
The hawk face is looking skywards. It has sculpted, curvilinear lines, and is lightly etched all over with feather-like patterns which reach to the shoulder area. Here they resemble the shoulder flaps that usually form part of a Pharaoh's headdress.
The hawk’s hooked beak is smaller and blunter than a real hawk’s. It is in the centre of the face, like a nose. Round, sightless eyes sit on either side of the beak, ringed by etched concentric circles. They are at the top of two sculpted furrows which each draw an arc from the beak, out to the edge of the face, then down and in towards the coffin’s shoulder, making a heart shape.
The torso has ‘crook and flail ‘sceptres affixed to it. These staves are typical of royal coffins. They rest diagonally on the chest area, above the waist.
This part of the coffin lid is a dense with etchings of wings and feathers, also typical of royal burials. The centre of the coffin is decorated with carved fans of blade-shaped feathers, while short bunches of feathers tied like upside-down bouquets, are lined up into decorative rows. Lower down, around the hips, the etchings include cartouches, and pictures of the sun god Re, shown as a human with a disc above the head, and arms as outstretched, feathered wings.
Four miniature silver coffinettes are evenly spaced in a line alongside the main coffin. These tiny little chests, each about 25 centimetres long, and only a few centimetres wide, once held the King’s mummified internal organs: his lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines; a little coffin for each one.
Unlike the main coffin, the miniatures each have a human face, and wear the Pharaoh's cobra on the brow, and the narrow false under-chin beard which signifies his status as a living god.
It’s extremely rare to see a coffin with the head of the god Horus, the hawk; and also very unusual for the internal organs to be placed in human-shaped containers
Gold was plentiful in antiquity, but silver was not. Because of the scarcity of local resources, silver must have been imported. Since silver is susceptible to the corrosive salts found in most Egyptian burials, it appears less frequently in tombs than gold. The room around the coffin is full of gold ornaments.