Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · funerary_equipment

Bird Coffin of Iihetek Late Period to Ptolemaic PeriodSaqqara

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, acc. 37.1391Ea-b. Public domain (CC0). Copy archived by egyptianinscriptions.org with attribution; original at the holding institution.

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Accession: 37.1391Ea-b
Find spot: Saqqara, Egypt approx. site location
Period: Late Period to Ptolemaic Period
Dynasty: Dynasty 26, or later
Date: 664–30 B.C.E.
Date range: 664 BCE – 30 BCE
Materials: ['Copper alloy', 'animal remains (2 individuals)', 'linen']
Height: 38.7 cm
Width: 8.9 cm
Repository: Brooklyn Museum
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Cite & export

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Bird Coffin of Iihetek (37.1391Ea-b). Egyptian Inscriptions Database. https://egyptianinscriptions.org/object/18626

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Description

Object Label: This extraordinary coffin contained two small bird mummies. It is shaped like an Egyptian shrine and decorated with images of the goddesses of mourning, Isis and Nephthys. The rear of the coffin displays a djed-pillar, a symbol of Osiris often found on the back of human coffins. The reasons why the man named Iihetek had this unusual coffin type made remain unclear. Caption: Bird Coffin of Iihetek, 664–30 B.C.E.. Copper alloy, animal remains (2 individuals), linen, 15 1/4 x 3 1/2 x 2 11/16 in. (38.7 x 8.9 x 6.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1391Ea-b. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

A machine reading of the photograph made Jul 2026: deities, names, signs and a description as the model saw them. Not curatorial; treat it as the model's best reading, not authority.

Connections

Found at Saqqara

Deities Osiris Isis Nephthys

Cross-references (2)

BKM-Accession 37.1391Ea-b tier-2
BKM-Object 117939 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.