Zev Radovan, courtesy Israel Museum

Anthropoid Coffin: Such coffins are called “anthropoid” because of their life-size shape and because the lid, cut from the sarcophagus when the clay was leather-hard, depicts a human face. The style shows strong Egyptian influence. The coffins stand about six feet high and date to the 14th–13th centuries B.C. Similar coffins were later adopted by the Philistines. Although the Israel Museum now has 40 such sarcophagi and seven additional lids with faces, each face is distinctive. The faces vary from grotesque to naturalistic, from crude to sophisticated.