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

Cylinder seal of Amenemhat II

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 small cylindrical/vertical seal made of glazed material, showing an incised/embossed register-like scene with a central columnar motif and surrounding hieroglyph-like marks.

The image shows a single, thumb-sized cylinder seal photographed against a plain gray background. The seal’s surface is a light beige/cream body with visible speckling and orange-brown discoloration. The face contains a vertically oriented, compartmentalized design: a central rectangular/cylindrical object with a rounded top sits beneath a broader band of stacked shapes that resemble a stylized doorway or niche. Below and to either side are short, upright and horizontal strokes that resemble hieroglyphic signs. Near the top there is a circular opening/loop-like indentation within the design field, and the lower portion ends in a blocky base. No clear cartouche border, full royal titulary, or deity figure is unmistakably readable at this resolution. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible.

decorative Middle Kingdom (consistent with catalogue) good
Royals unknown (Amenemhat II name/cartouche not clearly legible in the provided image)
Materials glazed ceramic (faience, appearance consistent)
Signs unidentified hieroglyph-like strokes/shapes (not securely assignable) ×6

Connections

Royals Amenemhat II
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.