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

Cat Coffin

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Caption: Cat Coffin, 664 B.C.E. or later. Wood, gesso, pigment, animal remains, 19 1/8 × 5 1/2 × 10 1/4 in. (48.6 × 14 × 26 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1944Ea-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.

Image shows a small Egyptian-style cat figurine/coffin-shaped object standing upright on a rectangular base, with painted detailing on the head and body.

The object is a mummiform/cat-shaped form with pointed ears and a long tapering body, posed upright. The surface is heavily worn, showing darkened patches and remnants of pigment, especially around the face and along the torso. The head has painted facial markings (not fully preserved) including a darker line/spot around the muzzle region and small markings on the forehead/face; the eyes appear as painted circles/almond-shaped areas but are not crisp due to abrasion. The cat stands on a thick, rectangular base that is also worn and stained. No clear hieroglyphs, cartouches, or other inscriptions are visible in this image. The overall appearance and form are consistent with a cat coffin/figural container rather than a royal sculpture, though exact identification of coffin inscriptions cannot be confirmed from the photo provided.

funerary Late Period or later (consistent with catalogue; exact dating cannot be confirmed from image alone) poor
Materials wood (structure)gesso (coating; inferred from painted surface)pigment (visible remnants)animal remains (not directly verifiable in this image)

Connections

Found at Saqqara
Materials WoodPigment

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 37.1944Ea-b tier-2
  • BKM-Object 118449 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.