Parlor props

"The hairs went up on the back of my neck when I walked into the drawing room. It stood out like a sore thumb," says Mark Stacey of Reeman Dansie auctioneers of the 3,000-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus he came across during a valuation of the contents of a home in Essex, U.K. While the mummy that it contained may have been "unrolled" in the 19th c. and subsequently disposed of, the sarcophagus is believed to have been acquired some 60 years ago and originally purchased from a museum that closed down. The find can be considered exceedingly rare except that it follows on the heels of a similar discovery by an auctioneer – also in Essex – of a 2,300-year-old Egyptian coffin that then sold (despite objections from Cairo) for £12,000 ($19,000) last month.

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