Letter to Pachnoubis
Description
Caption: Letter to Pachnoubis, 2nd century C.E.. Terracotta, 3 5/8 x 1/4 x 5 1/4 in. (9.2 x 0.6 x 13.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum Collection, X849. (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 an orange-brown terracotta fragment inscribed with multiple lines of dark ink hieroglyphic cursive text.
The object is a broken, irregular terracotta sherd with a mottled orange surface and darker edges from firing and/or handling. Across the face are several horizontal rows of inked signs that resemble Egyptian cursive script rather than relief carving. The signs are distributed over much of the visible surface but are partially faded and incomplete due to breaks and flaking; individual sign forms are difficult to read reliably from this image resolution. No clearly legible cartouche, royal protocol formula, or divine figure iconography is unambiguously identifiable. A small paper label is attached at the bottom of the photo, but no museum catalogue text is readable on it. Overall, the writing presence is consistent with a short administrative/legal/communication text on terracotta, though the specific addressee (Pachnoubis) cannot be confirmed from the visible strokes.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession X849 tier-2
- BKM-Object 121165 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.