This massive stone sarcophagus was found in 1903 by the Egyptian workmen of Ernesto Schiaparelli and his collaborator Francesco Ballerini in the mastaba tomb of Duaenre, near the pyramid of Cheops in Giza. The reliefs gracing the remains of the funerary chapel of the tomb and a block that was removed from it, presently in Boston, inform us that Duaenre was a prince, the son of king Chefren and queen Meresankh, and that he had held the offices of visir and scribe of the sacred books. The oblique cut at the base of one of the short sides of the sarcophagus was possibly meant to make it easier to drag, just as knobs protruding from the lid helped to lift it. The inner cavity being rather small, the deceased must have been laid in it on his side in a half-contracted position.
