Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · statue
Headrest of Shemai Old KingdomDeir el Nawahid, Egypt
Description
Object Label: This headrest—the Egyptian version of a pillow—was found in the tomb of a man named Shemai. Headrests were believed to have magical powers that protected the head from evil spirits. The inscription on this example invokes Osiris, god of the afterworld, suggesting that Shemai had it made specifically for his tomb. Caption: Headrest of Shemai, ca. 2288–2170 B.C.E.. Alabaster, pigment, 7 5/8 in. (19.4 cm) base: 6 3/16 × 2 3/4 in. (15.7 × 7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 59.3. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
A machine reading of the photograph made Jul 2026: deities, names, signs and a description as the model saw them. Not curatorial; treat it as the model's best reading, not authority.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 59.3 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3667 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.