This is the first coffin exhibition I have attended and it was well worth the trip to Malaysia. Nestled in the National Museum the exhibition displayed over 39 'coffins' from Malaysia, Thailand, Borneo, India and the Philippines. There were also displays on burial traditions and rituals.
Any burial box can be referred to as a coffin, which means 'basket'. However many refer to a casket(coined from a the term used for a jewlery box) as having four sides and a coffin as having six sides.
Highlights of the coffin exhibition included a 14-karat gold plated Chinese coffin valued at $AUD 200,000 on loan from the Nirvana Memorial Park. The coffin was not dissimilar to the Carl Williams coffin posted over front pages of Australian newspapers in April.
Other highlights included a series of animal shaped coffins from Borneo. Shapes included full scale buffaloes and crocodiles. The buffalo head is symbolic of bearing burdens of the dead, assisting with the passage to the afterlife. Animal shaped coffins house the body of a man, if the cover has no particular shape, then the coffin houses the body of a woman.
Log coffins from Thailand and parts of Malaysia were also on display and typically stood in cliffs such as Coffin Cave.
Jar coffins and tree coffins were on display from indigenous tribes in Peninsular and East Malaysia.
The Rattan Chair coffin was also interesting, bodies would be seated on the chair and exposed to the elements until they rotted and then could easily be shoved into pottery urns.
Malaysia and surrounding regions are rich in archaelogical finds with the earliest evidence of human occupation in Sarawak an 38,000-year-old skull from the Niah Caves.
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