Coffin of Thothirdes
Description
Object Label: The Egyptian word for mummy, sah, means “nobility” or “dignity” and denotes a divine and eternal manifestation of the deceased. According to ancient belief, the mummified body has been transformed into a home for the soul. After death, the mummy reunites with the ba-soul, which travels outside the tomb and serves the needs of the ka-soul (which receives food offerings) and the akh-soul (which represents all the parts integrated and acting together as a capable being in the afterlife). The mummy shown here has undergone carbon-14 dating, a scientific method used to determine the date of archaeological samples. The results indicate that Thothirdes died between 768 and 545 B.C.E., supporting the Twenty-sixth Dynasty date suggested by the style of his coffin. Coffins like this one protected the mummy and ensured entrance to the afterlife by pictorially illustrating Egyptian hopes for what happens after death and by associating the deceased with Osiris, king of the dead. Near the center of the lid, Thothirdes is shown as a mummy, mourned by the goddesses Isis and Nephthys (respectively, the wife and sister of Osiris) just as they mourned Osiris himself. Thothirdes’s ba-soul, painted as a human-headed bird, hovers above him, signaling that his soul can work effectively after death. Slightly above this scene, two gods lead Thothirdes away from the test where his heart was weighed against “truth” in a balance scale. Having thus proven he lived a life of truth, Thothirdes is now on his way to a happy afterlife. Caption: Coffin of Thothirdes, 664–525 B.C.E.. Wood, plaster, pigment, Coffin Box (approximate): 22 x 7 5/16 x 69 in. (55.9 x 18.5 x 175.3 cm) Coffin Lid (approximate): 24 x 20 x 70 in. (61 x 50.8 x 177.8 cm) mount (m1-37.1521Eb (board)): 10 × 32 × 79 in. (25.4 × 81.3 × 200.7 cm) mount (m1-37.1521Ea (board)): 18 × 32 × 79 in. (45.7 × 81.3 × 200.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1521Ea-b. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
An Egyptian mummy coffin with colorful painted decorations and inscriptions.
The artifact is a painted wooden coffin featuring a human figure with a headdress and striped decorations over the head. The body is adorned with intricate geometric and symbolic patterns painted in bright colors, including reds, yellows, and blues, which are characteristic of Egyptian funerary art. The details are carefully executed, indicating expert craftsmanship. The face of the figure is painted with detailed features and a serene expression.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.1521Ea-b tier-2
- BKM-Object 4170 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.