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 rectangular reddish pottery ostracon fragment with scattered dark ink marks forming partial hieroglyphic text lines.

The image shows a small, flat, rectangular piece of fired clay with rounded edges and a reddish-orange surface. Faint dark traces—mostly clustered in the upper half and along the midline—appear to be ink writing. The marks are not continuous enough to confidently read as a complete sequence, but their shape is consistent with partial hieroglyphic signs rather than purely random scratches. No clear cartouche, figure, deity iconography, or other imagery is visible. The surrounding background is neutral and the object is photographed against a light gray field. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic script is clearly identifiable.

hieroglyphic only Late Period–Ptolemaic Period (consistent with catalogue; text not legible enough to refine further) fragmentary
Materials potteryink
Signs partial hieroglyphic sign forms (unidentified) ×6

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.