Coffin of Wenuhotep
Third Intermediate–Late Period, late Dynasty 25–early Dynasty 26, about 675–600 BCE
Ancient Egyptian
Wood, pigment, and textile; 44.1 × 181 × 51.4 cm (17 3/8 × 71 1/4 × 20 1/4 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, purchased with funds provided by Henry H. Getty and Charles L. Hutchinson, 1893.14a–b
This anthropoid coffin is typical of those made in Dynasties 25–26, its decoration characterized by horizontal registers on the front filled with densely arranged, small-scale figures and the use of red, blue, green, and yellow pigment. The texts on its lid indicate that it was made for a woman named Wenuhotep, who was the daughter of the priest Djehutyhernefu and the Lady of the House, Bastetnakht.[1] The deceased is shown entirely mummiform enveloped in wrappings. The hands and curves of the elbows are not shown, and only a slight swelling at the calves refers to the shape of the mummified individual once enclosed within. The plinth below the feet indicates that the coffin represents the deceased transformed into an imperishable statue that would have been displayed upright prior to being placed in the tomb (fig. 1).1
Fig. 1
Front of cat. 100.
The lid of the coffin (fig. 1) portrays Wenuhotep in a wig with heavy tresses decorated with rosettes, their ends tipped in yellow to represent gold.[2] She wears a vulture headdress whose golden wings frame her face. Although the head of the vulture is not shown, the bird’s legs, with their white pantaloons of feathers and talons clutching round shen signs (eternity), appear on either side of Wenuhotep’s head. On top of the headdress is a representation of a circlet of red-spotted white flower petals (fig. 2) which hangs from a green wreath, an ornament that may symbolize that the gods have judged the deceased worthy of rebirth.[3] Her face is painted a distinctive shade of pink that was frequently used on women’s coffins of this period (fig. 2).
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Fig. 2
Detail of cat. 100.
A scarab appears on top of her head (for a winged scarab on another coffin, see cat. 99), pushing a sun disk with its front legs and clutching a protective shen ring with its hind legs (fig. 3). The scarab became a common element in the decoration of coffins and cartonnage (layers of linen, gum, and gesso) from the seventh century BCE onward, symbolizing the rebirth of the sun each dawn and, by extension, the rejuvenation of the deceased. The symbols for east and west, a reference to the horizons and to the daily birth and death of the sun, flank the scarab. The image of the sun in the horizon on the coffin’s case below also alludes to the solar cycle.
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Fig. 3
Detail of cat. 100.
Scenes of the nightly vigil that the deceased endured before rebirth each day decorate the chest, torso, and leg areas of the lid. The uppermost register is devoted to a large image of the winged goddess Nut, the deity who protected the deceased and from whose womb the new sun and the deceased were believed to be reborn. From about 750 BCE, the figure of Nut replaced the winged scarab or falcon-headed scarab (see cat. 99). The wings are depicted in three segments, a convention first employed by artisans about 675–650 BCE.[4]4
Below the winged Nut is a scene in which Wenuhotep, dressed in a striped robe, raises her hands in adoration of Osiris and Isis (fig. 4). The Four Sons of Horus, the gods who protected the internal organs, stand in panels on either side of this central image.
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Fig. 4
Detail of cat. 100. Wenuhotep, dressed in a striped robe, raises her hands in adoration of Osiris and Isis.
The next register illustrates Spells 151B and 151C of the Book of the Dead, in which the deceased (here represented as Osiris) is laid out on a funerary bier (fig. 5). Overhead is a protective winged disk. The four canopic jars stand under the bed. This image of the nightly vigil is flanked by wedjat eyes and winged deities with falcon heads.
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Fig. 5
Detail of cat. 100, showing a register that illustrates Spells 151B and 151C of the Book of the Dead.
The sun god Re is shown in the third register, seated in a boat that is protected by the coils of a snake wearing the White Crown. A goddess stands watch on the bow and a falcon-headed god with a Double Crown mans the tiller. On both sides of the boat is a wedjat eye that is adored “four times” by a baboon with a sun disk. Here, the wedjat is named as the “Behdetite,” a form of the god Horus who is usually represented as a winged disk. This entire composition is based on religious texts that detail the passage of the sun god Re by boat through the dark hours of the night until he emerged on the horizon at dawn. The chatter of baboons welcoming the rising sun was referred to in these texts as a “secret language” in which the animals communicated with the sun god.[5]7
The next register is dominated by the tall Ta-wer emblem of Osiris of Abydos. At either side are compartments with wedjat eyes (at the top) and knife-wielding protective deities in shrines (at the bottom), flanked by signs for “the west.”8
The area on top of the feet is decorated with an image of Isis (fig. 6) with her wings outspread and grasping ostrich feathers, symbols of order and truth that also indicate that the deceased is “true of voice” after having passed the divine judgment. An image of the Apis bull carrying the body to a pyramid-topped tomb appears under Wenuhotep’s feet (fig. 7). The Apis bull motif underwent change over time. Earlier coffins show the bull gamboling, but on later examples it carries the mummy.[6]
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Fig. 6
Detail of cat. 100 showing the area on top of the feet, depicting the goddess Isis with her wings outspread.
Fig. 7
Detail of cat. 100 showing the area under Wenuhotep’s feet.
The back of the coffin (fig. 8) is decorated with a large djed column, a stylized representation of the backbone of Osiris and the symbol of stability (see also cat. 99). This juxtaposition of Osirian symbolism on the back of the coffin with the solar imagery on the front highlights the differences between the dark, terrestrial realm of Osiris (associated with the setting of the sun and death) and the light-filled celestial realm of Re (associated with the rising of the sun and rebirth). Together the two sides of the coffin describe the cycle of death and eternal rebirth. The djed is flanked by registers of seated deities and, at the bottom, the symbol for the west.10
The interior of the coffin (fig. 9) is coated with white paint or gesso and is not otherwise decorated.
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Fig. 8
Back of cat. 100.
Fig. 9
Interior of cat. 100.
Texts
On the front of the coffin, interspersed with the decoration, texts identifying the coffin’s owner have been added on panels with a yellow ground. The texts flanking the image of Wenuhotep adoring the gods read: “Words said by the Osiris, Lady of the House, Wenuhotep, justified, daughter of the God’s Father, Great One of the Five [a priestly title], Djehutyhernefu, justified.”12
Those flanking the bier scene read: “An offering that the king gives to Osiris, Foremost of the West[erners]. Her mother, the Lady of the House, Bastetnakht.” On either side of the wedjat eyes is a truncated text that should, but does not, include the name of the deceased as the recipient of offerings: the “Great God, Lord of Abydos that he may grant offerings [to Wenuhotep], justified, the one revered by the Great God, Lord of Heaven.” The pole of the Ta-wer emblem bears the formula: “A gift that the king gives to Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, the Great God, Lord of Abydos.”13
The arrangement of the texts on the coffin, the blank spaces where texts would have been expected to appear, and the omission of Wenuhotep’s name before the epithet “justified” in the lower register all suggest that the coffin was not made specifically for her but was purchased from the stock of a coffin maker and then personalized for her through the addition of her name and the names of her parents.
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Construction of the Coffin
The coffin is made of multiple irregularly shaped planks of wood. The floor of the box is made of at least six planks; three reach from the head of the coffin to about the knees. These boards appear to have been cut from the same piece of lumber because they share a curved shape. Three other, more regularly shaped boards form the rest of the floor. The top of the coffin was secured to the bottom with eight tenons that fit into mortices cut into the rim. The type of wood has not been identified.15
During the time that this coffin was made, individual tombs were rare, other than those for the highest officials, and the decoration that had formerly appeared on the walls of tombs was transferred to the surface of the coffin. This coffin would have probably been part of a set of two or even three nested coffins. In the most elaborate examples, the coffin set was placed in a rectangular, wood, qersu coffin that represented the shrine of Osiris.[7] During this period, coffins and mummies of the lesser elite were usually accompanied by a wood stela, a chest for shabtis, and perhaps a Ptah-Sokar-Osiris statue (see cat. 36).16
Modern History of the Coffin
This coffin was purchased from Émile Brugsch, a curator at the Egyptian Museums at Bulaq, Giza, and Tahrir who was also responsible for the sales room at those institutions.[8] In the years after its purchase, this coffin was erroneously associated with a mummified man and his cartonnage (Art Institute of Chicago, 1893.15), even though the old “Register of Works” of the Art Institute lists them separately and assigns them different dates.[9]17
Provenance
Émile Brugsch (1842–1930), Bulaq Museum and Egyptian Antiquities Service, Cairo; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1893.18
Publication History
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Paintings Sculpture and Other Objects in the Museum (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1913), n.p.19
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture and Other Objects in the Museum, 1914 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1914), 190.20
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 15–16, 130n3.21
Robert B. Pickering, Dewey J. Conces, Jr., Ethan M. Braunstein, and Frank Yurco, “Three-Dimensional Computed Tomography of the Mummy Wenuhotep,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 83, no. 1 (1990): 49–55.22
Karen B. Alexander, “From Plaster to Stone: Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” in Recasting the Past: Collecting and Presenting Antiquities at the Art Institute of Chicago, by Karen Manchester (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2012), 21.23
Heike C. Schmidt, “Die Rolle der Gebrüder Brugsch im ägyptischen Antikenhandel,” in Mosse im Museum: Die Stiftungstätigkeit des Berliner Verlegers Rudolf Mosse (1843–1920) für das Ägyptische Museum Berlin, ed. Jana Helmbold-Doyé and Thomas L. Gertzen (Berlin: Hentrich and Hentrich, 2017), 49, 56n47.
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- Wenuhotep’s father’s name, given here as “Djehutyhernefu,” was previously read as “Thoth-hirthaw.” See Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 15. “Djehuty” is the Egyptian rather than the Greek version of the name “Thoth.” The difference in the rendering of the last element of the name is the result of taking the final, sail-shaped sign 𓊡 found in Third Intermediate Period names as “nefu” (nfw), rather than Allen’s reading, “thaw” (ṯꜣw). For the reading of the sail sign in names as “nefu” (nfw), see Karl Jansen-Winkeln, Inschriften der Spätzeit, pt. 2, Die 22.–24. Dynastie (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2007), 393, text 24.
- For similar rosettes on a coffin dating to late Dynasty 25–early Dynasty 26, see: coffin of Takhebkhenem (British Museum, London, EA669; published in John H. Taylor, “Theban Coffins from the Twenty-Second to the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty: Dating and Synthesis of Development,” in The Theban Necropolis: Past, Present and Future, ed. Nigel C. Strudwick and John H. Taylor [London: British Museum, 2003], pl. 61). For similar rosettes that alternate with lotus blooms on a coffin dating to Dynasty 25–26, see: coffin of Gaut-seshen (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, AEIN1522; published in Mogens Jørgensen, Catalogue, Egypt III: Coffins, Mummy Adornments and Mummies from the Third Intermediate, Late, Ptolemaic and the Roman Periods (1080 BC–AD 400) [Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 2001], 204–41).
- On this type of ornament as a possible representation of the wreath of justification, see Jørgensen, Catalogue, Egypt III, 24.
- Martina Minas-Nerpel and Günther Sigmund, Eine Ägypterin in Trier (Trier: Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, 2003), 28.
- Herman te Velde, “Some Remarks on the Mysterious Language of the Baboons,” in Funerary Symbols and Religion: Essays Dedicated to Professor M. S. H. G. Heerma van Voss on the Occasion of His Retirement from the Chair of the History of Ancient Religions at the University of Amsterdam, ed. J. H. Kamstra, Henk Milde, and K. Wagtendonk (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1988), 129–37.
- Taylor, “Theban Coffins,” 107.
- Usually this type of coffin is inside another that is more plainly decorated. Examples include: coffin of Nesmutaatneru (from Deir el-Bahri; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 95.1407b–c; published in Sue D’Auria, Peter Lacovara, and Catharine H. Roehrig, Mummies and Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt, exh. cat. [Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1988], 173–74); coffin of Djed-Djehuty-iuef-ankh (from Deir el-Bahri; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1895.153; pictured in Minas-Nerpel and Sigmund, Eine Ägypterin in Trier, 27); and coffin of Pai-es-tjenef (Ägyptische Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin, Nr. 51–52; illustrated in Minas-Nerpel and Sigmund, Eine Ägypterin in Trier, 28).
- Fredrik Hagen and Kim Ryholt, The Antiquities Trade in Egypt 1880–1930: The H. O. Lange Papers (Copenhagen: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2016), 43, 47–52. The museum moved several times.
- The coffin was dated to Dynasty 26 while the mummified man and cartonnage (Art Institute of Chicago, 1893.15) were placed in the “Greek and Roman Period.” Old Register, Volume I, 56, Museum Registration, Institutional Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. The association of the coffin with the mummy and cartonnage seems to have been first made by Thomas George Allen, who describes the coffin as “still containing the wrapped mummy ([18]93.15) of a woman named Wenuhotep.” Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 15. Until recently, Allen’s error was repeated and the coffin and mummy were exhibited as Wenuhotep’s at the Oriental Institute (University of Chicago) and at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum.
Emily Teeter, “Cat. 100 Coffin of Wenuhotep,” in Ancient Egyptian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago by Emily Teeter and Ashley F. Arico, ed. Ashley F. Arico (Art Institute of Chicago, 2025), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593213/102.
© 2025 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
