Goddess Seshat
Description
Object Label: Seshat, whose name means “female scribe,” was the goddess of writing and record keeping. She was believed to have responsibility for recording regnal years and maintaining the House of Life, an archive containing Egypt’s sacred books. This fragment—found at the Pyramid Temple of Senwosret I—was copied from a relief carved at least three hundred years earlier for Pepy II, the last great ruler of the Old Kingdom. Catalogue description: Culture Egyptian Caption: Egyptian. Goddess Seshat, ca. 1919–1875 B.C.E.. Limestone, 20 11/16 x 23 1/4 in. (52.5 x 59 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 52.129. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
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.
Limestone fragment in relief showing a male figure seated/standing at right, with surrounding hieroglyphic signs and Egyptian iconography bands along the sides.
The object is a roughly rectangular limestone block fragment with the surface carved in shallow relief. On the right side, a human figure is depicted in profile facing left, with a striped collar/wig and an arm extended toward the center. Several groups of hieroglyphic signs occupy the center and left zones, including rectangular sign forms and vertical lines. On the left side there are additional standing or cage-like sign clusters, and small marks along the border suggest structured inscription layout. No clear throne name cartouche or royal titulary is legible in this image. The catalogue identifies the piece as 'Goddess Seshat'; however, the visible figure appears to be a generic male human figure rather than a clearly identifiable female deity silhouette with Seshat’s distinctive attributes. Therefore, while inscriptions are present, the deity identification is not clear from the available photograph.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 52.129 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3576 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- 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.