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 pottery ostracon fragment covered with faded ink marks that form a line-by-line text, likely Egyptian hieroglyphic or cursive script.

The image shows a broken, rectangular-to-trapezoidal ostracon with a reddish clay surface. Across most of the visible area, there are multiple horizontal rows of dark, faded marks consistent with written characters in ink. The ink is spread unevenly due to weathering and abrasion, and individual signs are difficult to read with confidence at this resolution. No clear royal cartouche, deity emblem, or figure is visible; the writing appears to be text-only. The object edges are chipped and the surface shows deterioration, but it is generally intact as a writing-bearing fragment.

hieroglyphic only Late Period–Ptolemaic (as catalogued; specific reign not readable) good
Deities unknown
Royals unknown
Materials pottery (reddish clay)ink (dark pigment)
Signs unidentified written sign(s) in horizontal lines (cursive/hieroglyphic-like marks) ×30
Visible text "unclear; multiple faded horizontal lines of Egyptian script/characters, not legible enough to transcribe."

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.