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

Finger Ring with Inscription

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

Description

Catalogue description: Culture Coptic Caption: Coptic. Finger Ring with Inscription, 5th–7th century C.E.. Iron, 9/16 × Diam. 3/4 in. (1.5 × 1.9 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, 16.151. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum (in collaboration with Index of Christian Art, Princeton University))

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 corroded silver-gray finger ring with an oval bezel bearing an incised design that includes human/figure-like features and some linear marks that resemble inscriptions or decorative symbols.

The image shows a plain hoop ring with a rounded oval bezel (signet) set on top. The entire piece appears heavily weathered/corroded, with the metal surface mottled and pitted. On the bezel, an incised central motif forms a face-like or figure-like shape with symmetrical elements; around or within this motif are additional incised lines and clustered marks that could be hieroglyphic-style strokes, but they are too degraded to read confidently. No clearly legible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. The overall design is consistent with a ring whose bezel carries an inscription, though the exact wording/signs cannot be securely identified from this image.

unclear Late Antique Period (per catalogue; exact inscription style not legible) poor
Deities unknown
Materials iron (catalogue) / unknown metal surface color (appears iron/steel-gray)
Signs Incised linear/clustered marks on bezel (possibly hieroglyphic or symbolic inscription) ×10

Connections

Materials Metal

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 16.151 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 9426 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.