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

Coptic Ostracon

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. Coptic Ostracon, 395–642 C.E.. Limestone, pigment, 4 7/16 x 7/8 x 6 1/4 in. (11.2 x 2.2 x 15.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1823E. (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 broken limestone ostracon inscribed with dark ink containing handwritten Coptic-style text across the surface.

The object is a roughly rectangular, irregularly broken piece of limestone with a mottled, light gray/beige surface. Across most of the top face runs a dense, horizontal line of dark pigment/ink forming multiple stacked lines of writing. The script appears cursive and alphabetic with diacritic-like marks, consistent in style with Coptic writing, though individual letters cannot be reliably transliterated from this image alone. No carved figures, iconography, or clear hieroglyphic signs are visible; the markings are entirely textual. A partial accession/numbering mark in the lower-left corner appears in lighter ink/paint as “758”. No legible Greek or Arabic text is apparent. No royal names or cartouches are clearly identifiable, and no deities can be confidently read from the text. The overall condition is fragmentary, with the right edge and lower portions chipped away.

unclear Late Antique Period (Coptic), likely Late 3rd–7th century CE (consistent with catalogue) fragmentary
Materials Limestonepigment/ink
Signs Coptic cursive text (unreadable in full)
Visible text "Partial visible numbering/mark: “758” (lower-left). Coptic text lines are present but not fully legible enough for a reliable excerpt."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

Partial visible numbering/mark: “758” (lower-left). Coptic text lines are present but not fully legible enough for a reliable excerpt.

Connections

Found at Thebes
Materials LimestonePottery

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 37.1823E tier-2
  • BKM-Object 118341 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.