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

Relief Bust of Serapis

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

Description

Caption: Relief Bust of Serapis, 3rd century C.E.. Terracotta, 2 3/4 x 2 1/16 in. (7 x 5.2 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, 16.285. (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.

The image shows a small relief bust with a rounded head and a beard/moustache detail, carved in a coarse, grainy surface.

The artifact appears to be a freestanding or relief-like bust with a rounded, dome-shaped head and a protruding beard/moustache carved on the face. The hairline and beard are suggested by shallow incisions, while the clothing or neck/upper garment is indicated by a band-like relief across the lower portion. The surface includes many small chips and pitted areas, suggesting wear or manufacture in a friable material. No clearly legible hieroglyphic, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible in the provided image. The face/attire style could be consistent with a Greco-Egyptian cult portrait, but specific identification of Serapis (or any other named figure) is not definitively confirmable from the visible details alone.

religious Ptolemaic Period or Roman Period (per catalogue); specific features unclear fragmentary
Deities Serapis (unclear, inferred from catalogue title only)
Materials unknown/possibly terracotta-like coarse stone or fired clay (catalogue states terracotta)

Connections

Deities Serapis
Materials Stone

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 16.285 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 9543 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.