One mummy – many coffins
Boxes and other forms of containers are technologies that arise at given points of time in various cultures. Everybody knows the ancient Egyptian practice of mummifying their dead. What is perhaps less known is that they placed the mummies inside layer upon layer of coffins says Anders Bettum, Egyptologist at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo.
A similar idea can be found with Russian dolls, Chinese boxes and even Norwegian poetry traditions.
“The Egyptian coffin sets are based on the same principle that we can observe with Chinese boxes and Russian nested matryoshka dolls, where objects are nested inside each other to constitute a complete ensemble,” he says.
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/08/2013/one-mummy-many-coffins