Scarab Coffin
Description
Object Label: The scarab beetle lays its eggs in small balls of dung, which it sometimes moves into position with its forelegs. This action led to associating the scarab with the force that rolls the sun across the heavens. Because the word for scarab beetle in the Egyptian language contains the same consonants as the word for “to come into being,” the ancient Egyptians especially associated the scarab with the sun, when it newly comes into being every morning. Scarabs could therefore be mummified to make requests to the sun god. Caption: Scarab Coffin, 664–332 B.C.E.. Wood, animal remains, Coffin with Lid: 1 7/16 × 1 15/16 × 3 1/8 in. (3.6 × 5 × 8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1368Ea-c. (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.
Photograph shows a small, dark, banded stone-like object shaped like a scarab/rounded segment with a slightly raised ridge and chipped edges, on a plain background.
The image is a studio-style black-and-white photograph. Centered is a single compact object with a curved profile and a rounded, flattened top, exhibiting horizontal striations or banding along its surface. The edges appear chipped or worn, and the object’s left side looks more truncated than the right. A small gray/black label or inventory marking in the mid-right background reads “233A” (handwritten/printed). No clearly legible hieroglyphs, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text appear on the artifact itself in the provided image; only the background number is visible. The object resembles a carved/covered element consistent in general shape with a scarab-related coffin component, but the image does not show a full coffin form or any clear inscriptions. No deities or royal names/cartouches are clearly identifiable.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.1368Ea-c tier-2
- BKM-Object 117920 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.