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 reddish-brown pottery shard (ostracon) with a small amount of dark ink writing in the upper-right area.

The image shows a triangular, broken pottery fragment with smooth reddish fabric and a few darker specks. In the upper-right corner there are several short groups of dark marks that appear to be ink writing. The marks are too indistinct to confidently identify specific hieroglyphic signs or count exact occurrences. No figurative imagery, cartouches, or clearly legible divine names are visible. No Greek or Coptic/Arabic text is apparent. The object’s form and single-field ink correspond broadly to an inscribed ostracon.

hieroglyphic only Late Period–Ptolemaic Period (based on catalogue; ink marks not legible enough to refine) fragmentary
Materials potteryink (dark, handwritten marks)
Signs unknown group of ink marks ×3
Visible text "Unclear: small dark ink inscription in upper-right; individual signs not reliably legible."

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.