Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) · jewelry

Scarab Inscribed for Amenhotep III

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

Description

Faience

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 turquoise-blue faience scarab seal with incised hieroglyphic text on the back, now heavily worn but still showing columned signs.

The object is an oval scarab-shaped amulet in turquoise-blue material with darker and lighter patches from age or firing. The back (elytra) bears an incised inscription arranged in distinct horizontal bands and vertical/column-like groupings of signs. The central area contains a vertical column of strokes/signs, while the left and right sides show blocky, rectangular groupings consistent with hieroglyphs (though many individual signs are too worn to securely identify). No cartouche shape is clearly legible at this resolution, and there is no clearly readable royal title visible. No separate figures of deities are present; only hieroglyphic signs occur on the back.

hieroglyphic only New Kingdom (catalogue ground truth) good
Materials faienceceramic glaze (blue/turquoise)
Signs incised hieroglyphic signs (unidentified due to wear) ×8

Connections

Found at Malqata
Deities Amun
Royals Amenhotep III
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.