Manchester Museum — Egypt and Sudan collection · papyrus

Ostracon

Source of record: Manchester Museum — Egypt and Sudan collection — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

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 reddish-brown pottery ostracon fragment with faint red ink marks in the center.

The image shows a triangular, broken piece of reddish-orange pottery resting on a light-colored surface. Along the left/center area there are faint, partially preserved red ink marks that resemble a few hieroglyphic signs, but most details are too eroded to read reliably. Near the top center there is a small cluster of red ink that may form part of an inscription; at the far right edge there is another darker spot/mark consistent with ink or a staining residue. No clearly identifiable royal cartouche, deity, or complete word is visible. The object type is consistent with an ostracon (a writing surface made from pottery) and the writing appears to be in Egyptian hieroglyphic ink. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is legible.

unclear Middle Kingdom (per catalogue); inscription/hand unclear fragmentary
Materials Pottery (reddish/orange ceramic)Red ink (hieroglyphic/ink marks)
Signs Unidentified hieroglyphic signs/ink marks (fragmentary) ×2
Visible text "Fragmentary red ink inscription; exact reading unclear/illegible."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

Fragmentary red ink inscription; exact reading unclear/illegible.

Connections

Found at Haraga
Materials Limestone

Cross-references (3)

  • Manchester-Accession 6129.a-b tier-2
  • Manchester-IRN 106802 tier-2
  • Manchester-UUID c5cdd0c3-ad1e-3ec8-a92f-8c0e4931d144 tier-2
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Manchester Museum — Egypt and Sudan collection.
  • 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.