Funerary Bed of Tutankhamun with Mehet-Weret

This is one of the couches of King Tutankhamun. It is in the form of the goddess Mehet-weret, the cow goddess of the sky whose name means “great flood”. Three ritual funerary couches were found in the antechamber of Tutankhamun. They are made of stuccoed gilded wood in the form of sacred animals whose eyes are inlaid with colored glass paste.

These beds may have been intended to bear the deceased king during his journey to his eternal destination in the afterlife. The two cow heads are surmounted by two horns flanking a solar disk.

The eyes of the cows are inlaid with glass paste and the body is decorated with dark brown spots. The legs of the cows, which form the legs of the bed, are fixed to a rectangular wooden frame.

The surface of the bed is made of fibers covered with a layer of stucco. The central panel is decorated with the Djed and the Ankh signs, which are covered with gold sheet.

New Kingdom, late 18th Dynasty, reign of Tutankhamun, ca. 1332-1323 BC. From the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62). Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. JE 62013