Coffin and Cover of Princess Mayet
Description
Object Label: Excavated in 1921, Princess Mayet’s tomb was one of six subterranean shrines dedicated to women in king Montuhotep II’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, Thebes. Five of these women held the titles of king’s wife and priestess of Hathor, but Mayet’s objects did not include any titles. Mayet died as a child, and her relationship to Montuhotep II is uncertain. Her coffin—likely made for someone else—was reinscribed with her name, Mayet, meaning “female cat.” The inscriptions painted on the box include an offering formula that lists the one thousand each of bread, beer, meat, fowl, and linen she will need in the afterlife. Magical eyes painted on one long side allow Mayet to see her offerings. Caption: Coffin and Cover of Princess Mayet, ca. 2008–1957 B.C.E.. Wood (Mediterranean cypress - Cupressus sempervirens, Sycamore fig - ficus sycomorus, tamarisk - Tamarix sp.), pigment, 19 × 15 1/2 × 72 in. (48.3 × 39.4 × 182.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 52.127a-b. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
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 painted wooden coffin, likely the coffin body and matching cover, decorated with bands of hieroglyphs and offering/ritual motifs along one long side.
The image shows a long, rectangular painted wooden coffin laid on its side. Along the top edge and running lengthwise on the visible face are dark-blue/black painted hieroglyphic bands in horizontal registers, separated by lighter framing lines. Near the upper portion of the side are grouped symbols that include an offering-table style rectangle and other standard coffin/dead-related signs, though specific readings are not fully legible at this resolution. The lower portion of the side is largely plain, with the painted decoration concentrated in the upper band. No clear Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. No metal, textiles, or stone components are apparent; only wood and pigment are visible. The overall subject aligns with the catalogue’s identification as a coffin for Princess Mayet, though the exact name “Mayet” and any royal cartouche are not clearly readable in the provided image.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 52.127a-b tier-2
- BKM-Object 3575 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.