Ampulla of St. Menas
Description
Catalogue description: Culture Coptic Caption: Coptic. Ampulla of St. Menas, 5th–7th century C.E.. Terracotta, Length: 3 1/8 in. (8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Theodora Wilbour, and Victor Wilbour honoring the wishes of their mother, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, as a memorial to their father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 16.164. (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.
Photograph of a small terracotta ampulla with a handle and a rounded body bearing an incised relief scene on the front.
The object appears to be a terracotta container (ampulla) with two opposing loop-like handles rising from the shoulders. The body is rounded and the front surface contains a worn, low-relief or incised design within an oval or recessed area. The scene includes a central human/figure-like form and surrounding elements that are too abraded to confidently identify (no clear legible inscriptions are visible). The rest of the surface is plain and shows weathering/cracking consistent with excavation wear. No distinct Egyptian royal iconography, cartouches, or clearly readable hieroglyphs are visible in the provided image. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text can be confirmed.
Connections
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 16.164 tier-2
- BKM-Object 9440 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.