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

Head from a Statuette of Zeus Serapis

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

Description

Caption: Head from a Statuette of Zeus Serapis, 1st century C.E.. Faience, 3 7/8 x 2 7/8 x 2 3/8 in. (9.8 x 7.3 x 6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 58.79.1. (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.

A molded head of a deity figure with curly hair and a crown-like head covering, shown frontally in light blue-green faience.

The artifact is a sculpted head from a small statuary group, rendered in a light turquoise/blue-green glaze consistent with faience. The face has heavy, classical features: arched eyebrows, large almond-shaped eyes, a prominent nose, and a short beard that is carved in layered forms. The hair and sides/back are depicted as thick, wavy curls; on both sides of the head, voluminous ringlets flare outward. The top/head area suggests a stylized head covering or crown-like element typical of iconographic portraits. The background is plain and no inscriptions or additional iconographic elements are visible. No clear hieroglyphs or Greek/Coptic/Arabic text appear in the image. The piece is intact except for a small chip along the lower/side edge.

religious Late Ptolemaic (as catalogued); iconography suggests Greco-Egyptian syncretic deity portraiture. good
Deities Zeus SerapisSerapis
Materials faience (glazed ceramic)

Connections

Deities Serapis
Materials LimestoneFaience

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 58.79.1 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 74513 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.