ARTIC-EG
Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) · papyrus
Funerary Papyrus of Tayuhenutmut
Description
Potent symbols, sacred words, and divine protection helped ancient Egyptians transition from the earthly realm to an eternal existence. Interactions between mortals and the gods were depicted on funerary objects including papyri, like this example made for temple singer Tayu-henut-Mut (“the mistress of [the goddess] Mut”). This papyrus shows Tayu-henut-Mut standing with raised hands before an offering table, praising the enthroned god Osiris, ruler of the afterlife. Behind Osiris a scribe has carefully copied spells from the Book of Going Forth by Day. First appearing during the New Kingdom (about 1550 BCE), this religious text is better known today as the Book of the Dead, because scrolls were buried with their owners. Tayu-henut-Mut’s copy includes five spells selected from nearly 200 known options to aid in her journey to eternity, including one for “causing a man to remember his name.” Egyptians believed that one would cease to exist in the afterlife if their name was forgotten or no longer spoken among the living.
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.
A long, horizontally oriented funerary papyrus sheet covered in dark red-brown ink hieroglyphs, with a small illustrated vignette at the right end.
The object appears to be a papyrus scroll or sheet with a large block of densely packed hieroglyphic text running across the left and central portion. The script is mainly horizontal lines with occasional vertical grouping cues, written in dark red-brown pigment on a light papyrus ground. Along the far right end is a surviving painted scene framed by decorative borders: a small rectilinear panel contains a stylized figure/standing form and architectural or offering-like elements in muted colors (e.g., red/orange, green, and light tones). The vignette is partially abraded, and the image edges show damage/overhangs. No clearly readable cartouche or royal titulary is legible at this resolution; the title person name (Tayuhenutmut) cannot be confirmed from visible letters. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is apparent. The visible material is consistent with papyrus with pigment (ink/paint).
funerary
unclear (likely Late Period to Ptolemaic/Roman based on general funerary papyrus layout, but not confirmable from the provided image)
fragmentary
Materials
PapyrusPigment (dark ink for hieroglyphs)Painted vignette pigments
Signs
hieroglyphic text lines (dense prose/ritual content; individual signs not reliably legible)
Inscriptions (1)
Inscription #1
English description
“Words spoken by Osiris Foremost of the West, Lord of Abydos, Wenenefer, Lord of Eternity… that he might give offerings and provisions to the Osiris, the Mistress of the House and Songstress of Amun-Re, King of the Gods, Tayuhenutmut, true of voice, daughter of the scribe of the treasury Nespaherentahat, true of voice.”
Cross-references (1)
- ARTIC-id 805 tier-2
Similar inscriptions · by content embedding
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian).
- 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.