WALTERS-EG
Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) · statue
Statue of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris
Description
Divine images, powerful symbols, and sacred words placed in the burial chamber with the deceased helped ancient Egyptians transition from the earthly realm to the afterlife. This funerary statue, owned by a woman named Asetirdis (“Isis is the one who gave her”), depicts the god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. A composite of Ptah (a creator god), Sokar (the patron deity of the necropolis west of Memphis), and Osiris (the ruler of the underworld), Ptah-Sokar-Osiris’s purview encompassed all phases of life, including rebirth. Shown in a mummified form, his red wrappings are covered in an intricate net of beads painted in blue, black, and yellow. A cavity in the statue’s base was designed to hold a papyrus scroll inscribed with funerary texts or another sacred object to facilitate Asetirdis’s rebirth after death.
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, gilded and patterned Egyptian funerary-style figure standing upright with a human face and a tall, striped crown/attribute rising above the head.
The image shows a full-height, front-facing statue-form figure on a rectangular base. The figure has a black wig/beard-like styling on the lower face and wears an elaborate, vertically striped headdress/crown topped with a red circular element. The face is painted with red lips and dark outlined features, and the body is covered with dense decorative bands and patterned panels in red, white, yellow, blue/green, and black. A broad, collar-like necklace surrounds the neck and upper torso, with additional rows of bead/pectoral motifs. The base is painted with rectangular compartments and colored geometric/figural blocks; no legible inscriptions are visible in the provided image. No clearly identifiable cartouches or royal names are visible. Overall appearance is consistent with a multicomponent painted wooden funerary statue, matching the catalogue’s materials description.
funerary
unclear (likely Late Period/Early Ptolemaic funerary sculpture style; cannot be dated confidently from the image alone)
good
Deities
Ptah-Sokar-Osiris (catalogue identification; not explicitly readable in the image)
Materials
painted surfacegilding (limited/unclear but suggested by yellow highlights)textile-like painted patterned areas (unclear whether actual textile is present)wood (implied by statue construction; cannot be directly confirmed from image)
Inscriptions (1)
Inscription #1
English description
Front: Words said by Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, the Great God, Lord of Abydos, that he may give offerings to the Hathor, Osiris-ir-des, daughter of Wsim-nechen (?) true of voice. Back: [A gift that the king gives] to Osiris, Foremost of the Westermers, the Great God, Lord of Abydos, that he may give invocation offerings consisting of bread, beer, and every good and pure thing upon which the god lives, [to] the Hathor, Osiris-ir-des, daughter of Wsim-nechen (?), true of voice.
Connections
Cross-references (1)
- ARTIC-id 160171 tier-2
Similar inscriptions · by content embedding
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.