Ibis Mummy
Description
Object Label: Often, the more elaborate the wrapping, the less likely it is that the whole animal is inside, as the two CT scans shown here reveal. Perhaps the intricate wrapping substitutes for the animal. This ibis is the most elaborately wrapped of all the animal mummies on display here. The herringbone pattern linen, the beak, and the elaborate crown all cover a mummy made only from ibis feathers. In contrast, the simple circular wrapping of this cat, with a head modeled in linen, conceals a complete cat mummy. Caption: Ibis Mummy, 30 B.C.E.–100 C.E.. Animal remains, resin, linen, Ibis mummy with headdress: 30 5/16 × 5 1/2 × 8 1/4 in. (77 × 14 × 21 cm) a - Ibis mummy without headdress: 24 7/16 × 5 5/16 × 8 1/4 in. (62 × 13.5 × 21 cm) b - Headdress: 15 × 13 11/16 × 2 11/16 in. (38.1 × 34.8 × 6.9 cm) mount (display dims on support board): 7 × 9 × 34 1/4 in. (17.8 × 22.9 × 87 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 14.655a-b. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum (Gavin Ashworth, photographer)) Tags Brooklyn Icons
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
Photograph of an upright mummified bird effigy with an ibis-like beak and black-and-gold ornamental wrapping around a long, bundled body.
The object appears as a vertically oriented, bundled animal mummy: an ibis-like head with a long, narrow beak extends from the top. The head is dark/black with a small pale area around the eye region, and the top is further capped by additional small bundled elements. Below the head, a long body is wrapped in layered, banded textiles or textile-like material with a repeating chevron/V-shape pattern in dark and tan/brown colors. At the very top and around the upper bundle there are small, dark granular/packed areas that resemble resin/packing or additional wrappings. No clear pigments, cartouches, or legible hieroglyphs are visible, and no Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is apparent. The overall presentation is consistent with a bird mummy (matching the catalogue theme of an “Ibis Mummy”), though the exact species and any inscriptions cannot be confirmed from this image alone.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 14.655a-b tier-2
- BKM-Object 8647 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.