A couple days ago, some construction workers a few blocks from my house unearthed a very cool Civil War-era casket made of cast iron. Unfortunately, some kids vandalized the casket, since the workers locked the casket in the building (couldn’t get anyone to come pick it up).
The thing that’s neat about it is that it looks more like an Egyptian sarcophagus than a casket. Here’s the link to our local NBC station coverage; there are more detailed pics in the slideshow(the 6th picture is a closeup of the casket, which had figures etched into it): http://www.nbc4.com/news/4353441/detail.html
There is a church next door to the site, but the Washington Post reported that the church wasn’t built until 1902 and that the coffin seems to predate that. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32750-2005Apr6.html)
Earlier this morning, I remembered that the US had kind of a craze with Egyptology for a while, so I thought it must be some rich person who had decided to be buried in a sarcophagus. However, I did some googling and figured that I was probably thinking of the 1920s-30s craze after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. Does anyone happen to know if things related to Egypt were popular in the 1860’s, or whether caskets of this type were used back then? Any thoughts on what the casket markings might be?