Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) · ostracon

Ostracon

Source of record: Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Pottery, ink

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 small fragment of reddish-brown pottery bearing a dark reddish-brown ink inscription with a cluster of signs near the upper area.

The object is a roughly triangular pottery sherd with broken edges. Its surface is mottled with reddish-brown and tan areas from firing and handling. A dark reddish-brown ink runs vertically in the center/upper portion, and there is a concentrated group of painted/drawn signs near the upper center-right; the overall marks resemble a handwritten Egyptian text rather than a decorative motif. No clear royal cartouche or deity-specific determinatives can be confidently identified from the available image resolution. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible.

hieroglyphic only Late Period–Ptolemaic (as catalogued; exact sign forms unclear) fragmentary
Materials potteryink
Signs inked Egyptian hieroglyphic signs (unreadable) ×5
Visible text "Unclear: a vertical ink stroke and several clustered signs near the upper area; no legible full phrase visible."

Connections

Found at Hibis
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access).
  • 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.