Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · jewelry

Fragment of Pectoral

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Object Label: Egyptian religion frequently adopted a mulitplicity of approaches to explain or represent different aspects of a single divine concept. The sun god, for instance, had a morning aspect called Khepri, commonly depicted as a scarab beetle pushing the sun disk across the heavens much as a beetle rolls a ball of dung across the desert floor. The noontime sun was Re or Re-Horakhty, often shown as a falcon or falcon-headed man with a sun disk on his head. Atum, who personified the sun that set over the western horizon to travel through the underworld, could be represented in many guises, including those of a human-headed cobra, a ram-headed man, or a weary old man. Caption: Fragment of Pectoral, ca. 664–332 B.C.E.. Steatite, glaze, 1 9/16 x 3 3/4 x 5/16 in. (3.9 x 9.6 x 0.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 68.18. (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 horizontally oriented fragment showing a painted/colored decorative register with a central falcon-headed deity or protective figure and wings, flanked by symmetrical motifs on a dark background.

The image shows a rectangular stone/plaster fragment bordered by damaged edges. Across the center is a large, greenish circular form above a central figure with a falcon-like head (beak area suggested) and a striped, blue-green body beneath. Semicircular or feather-like elements extend from both sides of the central figure, giving a winged/wing-and-feather appearance. The surrounding field includes scattered small blocks of color and geometric patterns (including red-brown, turquoise/green, and beige). No clear cartouche or royal name is legible. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible. No distinct hieroglyphic signs can be confidently read, though the decorative style suggests iconographic ornament typical of Egyptian pectoral fragments.

religious Late Period (catalogue) fragmentary
Deities unknown falcon-headed deity/figure (iconography not fully legible)
Materials stone (possibly steatite; surface appears dark with painted/glazed color)glaze/paint-like colored coating (turquoise/green and red-brown areas)

Connections

Found at Egypt
Materials Faience

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 68.18 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 3768 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.