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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 triangular terracotta ostracon fragment with multiple lines of dark ink hieroglyphic-like writing on the surface.

The image shows a broken pottery fragment shaped roughly as a wedge/triangle. Along one face, there are several horizontal bands of dark, carbon-like ink forming groups of signs consistent with Egyptian script. The ink is concentrated near the center and lower portions, with additional faint marks toward the upper area. No figural scenes, deities, or cartouches are clearly readable in the resolution provided. There is no visible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text. The artifact is photographed against a plain light background, with no additional inscriptions or labels visible.

hieroglyphic only Late Period–Ptolemaic (per catalogue; script style appears consistent but cannot be confirmed from the image alone) fragmentary
Materials pottery/terracottaink (dark pigment)
Signs indistinct hieroglyphic/letter groups (not legible enough to specify exact sign names) ×15
Visible text "Multiple lines of dark ink writing; individual signs are not legible enough in this image to provide a reliable transcription."

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.