Mummified Human Remains of a Woman
Description
<p>Mummification preserved mortal remains in order to house the Ka, or life force of the individual, as it needed to return to the body to find sustenance. The human-shaped covering, called "cartonnage," is composed of layers of linen and plaster. Its painted decoration includes the floral wreath on the wig, a broad collar, and a winged scarab beetle. Five additional registers of decoration show the protective four sons of Horus, the sacred boat of the funerary-deity Sokar, a mummy of Osiris on a funerary bed, a divine falcon god, and a short hieroglyphic text with an offering formula.See the additional media for a facial reconstruction of the mummy, courtesy of Michael Brassell, as well as a color reconstruction of the cartonnage.</p><p>For the latest information about this object, <cite><a href='https://purl.thewalters.org/art/79.1A' rel='external'>Mummified Human Remains of a Woman</a></cite>, visit the Online Collection of the Walters Art Museum.</p>
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.
A tall mummified female human remains wrapped and decorated with painted textiles showing a stylized face and funerary scenes.
The image shows a vertically displayed, mummified body (catalogued as a woman) with a painted mask-like face featuring large almond-shaped eyes and arched brows. The head and upper torso are covered by blue, red, and black painted bands and stripes resembling wrapped linen or a painted shroud. Across the chest and down the body are additional horizontal and vertical decorative elements, including a central, symmetrical layout and multiple registers of painted figures/objects consistent with funerary decoration. A red circular element near the chest/wrapping and a patterned beaded/striped collar-like area are visible. The lower portion shows additional painted scenes and rows of offerings or figures, though exact iconographic identification is not fully clear from this resolution. No legible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. No specific royal cartouches are discernible. No clear deity names are legible, though the funerary iconography suggests standard Egyptian afterlife motifs; however, specific deities cannot be reliably identified from the image alone.
Inscriptions (1)
English description
Cross-references (2)
- Walters-AccNum 79.1A tier-2
- Walters-id 91758 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Walters Art Museum (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.