Relief of Ptolemy II Philadelphos
Description
Object Label: Although the Ptolemaic Period ushered in a long period of foreign rule, the Macedonian kings of that dynasty did not interfere with the Egyptian artistic traditions of the preceding three milennia. Ptolemy II Philadelphos, like his father Ptolemy I Soter, the founder of the dynasty, continued the practice of building and decorating temples in traditional Egyptian fashion. While this is not to say that the Macedonian rulers did not have Greek artists portray them according to Greek artistic conventions, here the Greek ruler is shown in a purely Egyptian guise, wearing the traditional nemes-headdress of the pharaoh. The style of the relief, including the deeply cut navel, the horizontal treatment of the torso muscles, the "golf ball" chin, and the upturned smile, is common in representations from Dynasties XXIX and XXX (circa 399–342 B.C.) and was readily adopted by the Ptolemies into their iconographic program. Visible behind the king is the figure of a goddess in another scene. Caption: Relief of Ptolemy II Philadelphos, 285 or 282–246 B.C.E.. Granite, 27 × 23 1/2 × 2 5/8 in. (68.6 × 59.7 × 6.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 72.127. (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 worn stone relief shows a standing male figure holding a royal staff and an ankh-like object, surrounded by remnants of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The photograph depicts a roughly rectangular, broken block of stone with a shallow-carved relief on the face. In the center, a human figure stands in profile/three-quarter view with one arm bent upward holding what appears to be a long staff or scepter; the other arm is angled across the body. The figure’s head and torso are partly eroded, but the overall pose resembles royal iconography on Ptolemaic reliefs. Around and behind the figure are incised hieroglyphic signs in vertical bands; however, most individual signs are too worn to read confidently. No clear cartouche or complete royal titulary is preserved in the visible portion. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible in the image.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 72.127 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3816 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.