Cartonnage of Nespanetjerenpere
Description
Object Label: Cartonnage, a substance made of cloth or papyrus mixed with plaster and water, was used during the Third Intermediate Period to make an innermost case for the mummified body. The mummy was inserted and the covering was then painted with funerary scenes and inscriptions and placed in one or more coffins, which had been decorated in much the same way. The decoration here was chosen to associate its occupant, the priest Nespanetjerenpere, with divine resurrection. The ram-headed falcon on his chest represents the sun god's nightly journey through the land of the dead. The small figures on the front represent deities aligned with various parts of his body, as described in the funerary Book of the Dead. Caption: Cartonnage of Nespanetjerenpere, ca. 945–718 B.C.E.. Cartonnage, pigment, glass, lapis lazuli, 69 11/16 x 17 5/16 in. (177 x 44 cm) Height to top of beard: 14 3/4 in. (37.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 35.1265. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum) Tags Brooklyn Icons
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.
Painted and decorated Egyptian cartonnage figure of a mummy, showing a human face with ornamental headcloth and a vertical register of hieroglyphic scenes.
The object is a tall, anthropoid cartonnage-style mummy covering or figure painted in multiple colors. The head is human with a forward-facing gaze; a blue-and-gold striped nemes-style headcloth covers the hair, with a small ear and finely painted facial features. Over the chest and upper body are painted broad gold/yellow collars and wing-like feather motifs, with a central pectoral/ornament area. The torso and legs are filled with extensive vertical columns of hieroglyphic text and small figured scenes, framed by colored borders. Multiple horizontal bands subdivide the body, suggesting narrative or funerary formulae. No clearly readable modern catalog text is visible on the photograph. The background is a dark studio setting; the object rests on a small white pedestal.
Inscriptions (1)
Visible text (machine reading)
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 35.1265 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3357 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.