Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) · jewelry
Bead Net Funerary Shroud
Description
The winged scarab beetle in the center of this beaded shroud invokes Khepri, the morning form of the sun god, whom ancient Egyptians depicted as a dung beetle. Just as the sun is born anew each dawn, Egyptians planned to be reborn into a new form of existence after death. As symbols of this renewal, scarab amulets were secured to the body with linen wrappings or incorporated into nets made of beads and laid over a mummified body. The image’s power is strengthened by the hieroglyphic meaning of the scarab shape, “to come into existence.”
Cross-references (1)
- ARTIC-id 128013 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian).
- 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.