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-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 painted anthropoid wooden coffin with a mummiform face and extensive colored plastered/painted decoration covering the front and body.
The image shows the upper half and most of an anthropoid coffin stand-alone against a light background. The coffin has a human-like face with a painted headdress/striped wig, arched eyebrows, large eyes with dark pupils, a straight nose, and a painted nemes-like head covering that extends down onto the shoulders. The body is filled with dense, rectilinear bands of hieroglyphic-like decoration in multiple colors (red, yellow/ochre, greenish-blue, and black outlines), arranged in horizontal rows separated by borders. Along the lower portion, a painted base/edge is visible with further bands and some darker areas from wear or flaking. The overall surface appears coated (plaster over wood) and then painted. No clear royal cartouche is legible at this resolution; the name 'Thothirdes' cannot be confirmed from visible text. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. Some decorative motifs resemble stylized columned/box-like hieroglyphic groupings, but individual signs are not reliably readable, so only approximate sign identification is provided.
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.