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Walters Art Museum (Egyptian) · jewelry

Scarab with Personal Wish Formula

Source of record: Walters Art Museum (Egyptian) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

<p>This steatite scarab has a flat underside with a vertically arranged bottom inscription with a personal wish formula. The top of the piece has a very detailed, deeply incised design with slightly irregular line flow and almost balanced proportions. The workmanship is good and the piece is simply made. The piece functioned as a provider individualized amulet and should provide its owner with the special support of the goddess Bastet. It originally would have been mounted or threaded.</p><p>For the latest information about this object, <cite><a href='https://purl.thewalters.org/art/42.54' rel='external'>Scarab with Personal Wish Formula</a></cite>, visit the Online Collection of the Walters Art Museum.</p>

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.

Round seal/scarab amulet showing a molded motif with vertical register(s) of incised signs on a green-blue glazed surface.

The image shows a small circular plaque/amulet (scarab-related) with a light red-beige body and a green-blue glaze. The center contains molded/incised dark lines forming a rectangular, vertically oriented element in the lower half and a long, horizontal band with an eye-like or cartouche-like sign above it. Additional vertical columns of incised signs appear to the right of the central motif. No clearly readable individual hieroglyph names can be confirmed from the low-resolution image, but the layout resembles a personal wish/magic text field rather than a naturalistic scarab back. There is no visible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text, and no clearly legible royal cartouche is present.

hieroglyphic only unknown good
Materials light red-beige steatitegreen-blue glaze
Signs incised hieroglyphic signs (not legible individually) ×10

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1

English description

[Translation] May I be a favorite of Bastet.

Connections

Deities Bastet

Cross-references (2)

  • Walters-AccNum 42.54 tier-2
  • Walters-id 1123 tier-2

Similar inscriptions · by content embedding

About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Walters Art Museum (Egyptian).
  • 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.