Snake Coffin with Mummy
Description
Object Label: Shrews and ichneumons both prey on snakes and therefore won the Egyptians’ admiration and worship. Though snakes could turn their powers to protecting kings and queens, serpents also threatened the sun god Re on his journey through the next world. Egyptian religion made room for both the positive and negative aspects of certain animals. The shrew mummy bundle shows that more than one animal was sometimes included in one package. Caption: Snake Coffin with Mummy, 664–332 B.C.E.. Wood, animal remains, linen, 2 5/8 x 2 1/16 x 8 1/16 in. (6.7 x 5.2 x 20.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1358Ea-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 of a long, hollow wooden coffin-like object laid horizontally above a smaller wrapped bundle, both on a light gray background.
The image shows two separate elements. The upper object appears to be a rectangular wooden shell or coffin component with visible grain and darkened areas suggesting age or staining; one end is cut open/roughly hollow. The lower object is a small, elongated bundle wrapped in a fibrous, linen-like material (or textile), with folds and frayed edges visible. No clearly readable hieroglyphs, cartouches, Greek, or other script are visible on the surfaces shown. No explicit carved snake imagery or painted decoration can be confirmed from this view. Overall the items are consistent with a Late Period snake coffin assemblage, but the photograph primarily shows the wooden casing and a wrapped interior component rather than definitive iconography.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.1358Ea-c tier-2
- BKM-Object 117910 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.