A carved alabaster cup from Tutankhamun's tomb, shaped like a white lotus in full bloom and engraved with wishes for the king's endless life. Howard Carter, who opened the tomb in 1922, called it the Wishing Cup.
- Cut from one block of alabaster, 18.3 cm high and 28.3 cm wide
- Found on the antechamber floor when the tomb was entered on 4 November 1922
- Heh appears on the handles with palm ribs, tadpoles and shen rings
- The rim asks for millions of years at Thebes and eyes that see happiness
- Now at the Grand Egyptian Museum, listed as JE 67465 and GEM 36
What it is
The lotus chalice is a drinking vessel cut from a single block of alabaster, counted among the goods buried with the pharaoh Tutankhamun. Its bowl is carved as a white lotus in full bloom, with rounded petals, and the handle supports take the form of open blue lotus flowers with buds growing beside them. Since the lotus was tied in Egyptian myth to the rebirth of the sun, the cup is read as a statement about the king's own return to life. Signs cut into the stone and coloured blue ask for vast spans of years and for happiness. Howard Carter, who found it, called it the Wishing Cup.
Where it comes from
The cup was made in the reign of Tutankhamun, in the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom, and is dated to roughly 1332 to 1323 BC. It came to light with the rest of the tomb contents, KV62, in the Valley of the Kings at West Thebes, which Howard Carter entered on 4 November 1922. The burial had lain almost undisturbed. The chalice was among the first things his team saw, lying on the floor just inside the antechamber, and it had not been left there when the tomb was closed, so its position at discovery says nothing about where it was meant to stand.
Tools and materials
The vessel measures 18.3 cm high and 28.3 cm wide, with a cup 16.8 cm deep. At the tips of the petals sits the god Heh, crouched on a basket, the neb sign. Each hand grasps a notched palm rib, the hieroglyph for a year, and each rib rests on a tadpole, the sign for a hundred thousand, above a shen ring, the loop meaning eternity. An ankh, the sign of life, closes the top of each rib. The cut signs are filled with blue pigment.
Lotus chalice, drawn and placed
- Living
- Revived
- Fading
- Historical
- Legendary
- Performed
- Lineage
- Ancient Egyptian royal funerary equipment, 18th Dynasty, New Kingdom
What it is for
Taken together, the design asks for unending life for the king. Heh governed the million years, infinity and eternity, and a kneeling figure of Heh was itself the hieroglyph for one million, so his figure on the handles piles up immense stretches of time around the bowl. The king's names set in the middle of the open white flower point to rebirth, much as a lotus holding the newborn sun stood for renewal. The rim text puts the wish into words: millions of years, a place at Thebes, and eyes that look on happiness.
Peoples and places
The cup is Egyptian, made for a king of the 18th Dynasty and laid in the royal cemetery at West Thebes. Its inscriptions name Amun-Re and the city of Thebes, and the rim wish asks that the king pass his millions of years there. It stays in Egypt, in Cairo, and has gone abroad only as part of exhibitions of the tomb finds.
At a glance: who, where and when
What people believe
Behind the carving lies the Egyptian account of how the world began. A lotus came up from Nun, the water that existed before anything, and the sun god emerged from the flower, so a lotus holding a king stood for a fresh start. Heh ruled the huge stretches of time, and scribes wrote his name with the palm rib, the tadpole and the shen ring to mean a year, a hundred thousand and never-ending. The ka, the vital spirit a person is born with, is what the rim text wishes to keep alive.
Compare and confuse
The lotus and the counting of years turn up again on the cedar chair from the same tomb (JE 62029, find number 87), which carries the same group of signs. The thought is shown far more plainly in the Head of Nefertem, where the king is carved coming out of a blue lotus as the sun at daybreak. The cup also carries two other names, the Alabaster chalice and, from Carter, the Wishing Cup or the King's Wishing Cup.
Today
The chalice has moved from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to the Grand Egyptian Museum, where it is listed as JE 67465, find number 014 and GEM 36. It was one of the finds chosen for the first temporary show of the tomb goods and travelled in the touring Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition as number 39. It has since appeared in Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh. Carter copied the inscriptions himself and asked Alan Gardiner to translate them for publication, and the rim wish was later carved on Carter's second gravestone.
Questions people ask about Lotus chalice
What is the lotus chalice?
A carved alabaster cup from Tutankhamun's tomb, shaped as a white lotus in bloom. Its handles carry the god Heh and signs for years, and its rim is engraved with wishes for the king's endless life.
Where and when was it found?
On the floor just inside the antechamber of Tutankhamun's tomb, KV62, in the Valley of the Kings at West Thebes. Howard Carter's team entered the nearly untouched burial on 4 November 1922, and the cup was among the first objects they saw.
What do the inscriptions say?
One direction gives the king's full titulary, ending with the throne name Nebkheperure. Read the other way, from the ankh, the rim asks that his ka live and that he spend millions of years at Thebes, facing the north wind and beholding happiness.
Why is it called the Wishing Cup?
The rim text is a wish for the king's wellbeing and long life, and Howard Carter named the vessel after it. The same words were later placed on Carter's second gravestone.
What does the god Heh stand for?
Heh is the god of the million years, of infinity and eternity. A kneeling image of him wrote the number one million, and the palm ribs, tadpoles and shen rings around him spelled out a year, a hundred thousand and endless time.
Good reading and sources
The facts on this page come from the Wikipedia article "Lotus chalice", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, and from its Wikidata record (CC0). EveryJaadu rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.
It may contain mistakes. Names and customs differ from one community to the next, and some knowledge is closed to outsiders and left out here. This page describes belief and practice. It does not say that any of it works, it is not a how-to, and it is not medical advice. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-20.
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