This project extends my broader research on metals, minerals, and the material sciences during the Mamluk Sultanate by tracing the life of a single, extraordinary object: an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus that, over two millennia, became a healing basin, a colonial artifact, and a touchstone of Cairo’s medical and urban history. Originally carved in the sixth century BCE for a treasury official named Hapmen, the basin was inscribed with spells from the Book of the Dead and modeled on the sarcophagus of Pharaoh Thutmose III, an act of deliberate imitation that reveals how later Egyptians reimagined their own past.
By the fifteenth century CE, the sarcophagus had been repurposed as a public water basin in Cairo, famed for its healing powers and guarded, according to chroniclers, by jinn. Its story illuminates the porous boundary between science and magic—between established medical practices and the healing powers attributed to talismanic stones, inscribed texts, and the occult sciences. Building on my current research on the roles of metals and minerals in Mamluk society, this project explores how enduring materials like stone were first shaped in antiquity and later reworked within the urban and intellectual landscapes of medieval Egypt. The project investigates how crafting practices, geological knowledge, and symbolic associations of stone informed later acts of reuse—whether through carving, inscription, or ritual adaptation. Across its transformations—from sarcophagus to healing basin, museum artifact, and namesake of one of Cairo’s modern dermatological hospital—the basin’s history reveals how Egyptians continually reimagined their material past, renewing the meanings of ancient objects through acts of reuse and reinterpretation.
