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

Stone, 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 tan, broken ostracon fragment with faded dark ink marks forming lines of hieroglyphic writing.

The image shows a small, irregular, rectangular sherd/ostracon with a sandy tan surface. The writing is applied in dark ink and appears as multiple horizontal bands of hieroglyphic signs across the face of the fragment. Most characters are eroded and cannot be securely identified to specific Gardiner numbers. No figural scenes, deities, or cartouches are clearly legible. The object’s edges are chipped and the surface shows mottling consistent with fired or fired-like ceramic/stone. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible.

hieroglyphic only Late Period–Ptolemaic Period (per catalogue); writing style not clear enough here for a tighter estimate fragmentary
Materials stoneink
Signs unidentified hieroglyphic sign ×10
Visible text "Multiple lines of hieroglyphic signs in dark ink; individual signs too eroded to transcribe reliably."

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.