Left Foot from an Anthropoid Coffin
Description
Object Label: The pliability of wood allows for more detailed and naturalistic carving than stone. Because of the scarcity and cost of the material in ancient Egypt, the feet and arms of wooden statues or anthropoid (i.e., human-shaped) coffins were often made separately. The fact that this life-size painted foot extends as far as the heel suggests that it was originally part of a coffin rather than a statue. Although independently modeled feet on anthropoid coffins appeared as early as the late New Kingdom, the sandals and red outline of toenails on this foot are more typical of the Greco-Roman period. Caption: Left Foot from an Anthropoid Coffin, 30 B.C.–2nd century C.E.. Wood, gesso, pigment, 2 1/16 x 3 1/5 x 6 5/8 in. (5.2 x 7.7 x 16.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.2041.1E. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
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.
Fragment of a painted anthropoid coffin figure showing a left foot/ankle portion with attached painted textile-like bands.
The image shows a roughly shaped, weathered fragment in the form of a human foot and lower leg/ankle area. A raised rounded toe/forefoot is visible at the left end, while the opposite end breaks off. The surface is coated with a light-colored ground and has areas of reddish-brown and faded yellow/orange pigment. Near the center of the fragment are short, painted linear motifs (possibly strap-like or decorative bands), and at least one darker painted element resembling a curved line or band. The background/ground coating appears abraded, with flaking and exposed substrate. No clearly legible hieroglyphs, cartouches, or alphabetic inscriptions are visible; the small marks appear non-specific and too fragmentary to confidently read. No royal titulary or deities can be identified from the visible portion. The fragment is consistent with a painted, gessoed wooden coffin element rather than an inscribed sculpture or vessel.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.2041.1E tier-2
- BKM-Object 185791 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.