Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · papyrus

Papyrus Fragment Inscribed in Greek

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Caption: Papyrus Fragment Inscribed in Greek, 7th or 8th century C.E.. Papyrus, ink, Glass: 10 13/16 x 13 9/16 in. (27.5 x 34.5 cm) Fragment: 5 1/8 x 6 7/8 in. (13 x 17.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Theodora Wilbour, 35.1469. (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.

A fragment of inscribed papyrus with multiple lines of dark ink cursive script across the surface.

The image shows a rectangular, worn papyrus sheet fragment with a grey-beige background and transverse fiber texture. Several horizontal lines of dark ink form a clustered script; the characters are small, looped, and cursive, but the resolution and overlap make the exact script (Greek vs. another hand) difficult to confirm. There are no clearly identifiable figurative scenes, human figures, or formal iconography. No cartouches or royal titulary are discernible. No clear Egyptian hieroglyphs or names of deities can be read confidently. The right side appears more damaged, with ink remnants and lighter patches where the papyrus is abraded. The marks look like writing rather than symbols, with no legible Greek letters or Coptic/Arabic text readable with certainty.

hieroglyphic only Byzantine Period (uncertain; catalogued as Byzantine Greek papyrus) fragmentary
Materials Papyrusink
Visible text "No reliable excerpt can be transcribed from the image due to low legibility/overlap; writing is present in multiple lines."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

No reliable excerpt can be transcribed from the image due to low legibility/overlap; writing is present in multiple lines.

Connections

Materials InkPapyrus

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 35.1469 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 45075 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.