Painted Cartonnage
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/79.1B' rel='external'>Painted Cartonnage</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.
Tall painted cartonnage figure mask/cover with a stylized seated/standing torso and decorative bands of offerings and landscape scenes beneath a painted wig and face.
The object appears to be a vertical, mummy-style painted cartonnage element (cartonnage with paint), dominated by a human/ancestral figure rendered frontally. The head shows a painted, stylized face with dark eyebrows, outlined eyes, and a headdress/wig in muted blues, greys, and tans. The collar and chest area are decorated with broad, multicolored stripes and banded ornaments. A central emblem-like red/orange circular element appears on the upper body. Beneath the upper register are horizontal tiers of painted scenes: the middle registers include figures/standing forms and offering tables or rows of offerings; lower tiers show additional figures and a landscape-like band with animals or birds and people in separate compartments. The lower edge is irregular and damaged, with exposed or flaking surfaces consistent with aged cartonnage. No clearly legible hieroglyphs, cartouches, or modern text are visible at this resolution; only decorative, non-textual painted elements are apparent.
Inscriptions (1)
English description
Cross-references (2)
- Walters-AccNum 79.1B tier-2
- Walters-id 91759 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.