The First Vatican Coffin Conference has been inspired by the Vatican Coffin Project, directed by Alessia Amenta, Curator of the Vatican Egyptian Department, in collaboration with the Vatican Diagnostic Laboratory for Conservation and Restoration, directed by Ulderico Santamaria together with his assistant Fabio Morresi.
The Vatican Coffin Project is concerned with wooden polychrome coffins of the Third Intermediate Period (21-26 Dyn., 1070-612 B.C.) in the Vatican collection.

The Vatican Coffin Project has two main goals:

• the study of the coffin construction techniques and of the painting materials (as well the study of modern restoration intervention);
• the identification of any workshop.

The aim is the study of coffin construction and painting techniques and secondly the identification of any atelier, with the help of the results of our analyses connected to the iconographic and textual evidence. The Protocol of analyses of this project has been carried out by the Vatican Diagnostic Laboratory for Conservation and Restoration.
For the past two years the Egyptian Department of the Musei Vaticani has been cooperating in this project with the Egyptian Departments of the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden.

The first batch of coffins analysed to date, housed in the respective collections, belongs to the Bab el-Gasus corpus.
These coffins from the subterranean galleries of the "cachette" of Bab el-Gasus now form the focal point of the exhibition Coffins of the Amun Priests, running from 20 April to 15 September at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden. The exhibition has been organized by the Leiden Museum in collaboration with the Egyptian Departments of the Vatican Museums and the Musée du Louvre in Paris.