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

Snakebite Papyrus

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, acc. 47.218.85a-f. Public domain (CC0). Copy archived by egyptianinscriptions.org with attribution; original at the holding institution.

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Accession: 47.218.85a-f
Find spot: Elephantine, Egypt, Egypt approx. site location
Period: Late Period
Date: 6th–4th century B.C.E.
Date range: 599 BCE – 301 BCE
Materials: ['Papyrus', 'ink']
Height: 40.2 cm
Width: 70.2 cm
Repository: Brooklyn Museum
At source: View original →

Cite & export

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Snakebite Papyrus (47.218.85a-f). Egyptian Inscriptions Database. https://egyptianinscriptions.org/object/17907

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Description

Caption: Snakebite Papyrus, 6th–4th century B.C.E.. Papyrus, ink, a: Glass: 15 13/16 x 27 5/8 in. (40.2 x 70.2 cm) a: Object: 10 13/16 x 26 3/16 in. (27.5 x 66.5 cm) b: Glass: 15 3/4 x 29 1/2 in. (40 x 75 cm) b: Object: 10 11/16 x 25 3/8 in. (27.2 x 64.5 cm) c: Glass: 15 3/4 x 22 3/16 in. (40 x 56.3 cm) c: Object: 10 13/16 x 18 3/8 in. (27.5 x 46.7 cm) d: Small Box of Fragments: 1 3/4 x 4 1/16 x 4 1/16 in.. Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Theodora Wilbour from the collection of her father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 47.218.85a-f.

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 mounted papyrus fragment on a display sheet with scattered inked hieroglyphic text fragments arranged across the right side and a handwritten note in the center.

The image shows an object mounted under glass in a museum mount. On the right side of the mount there are numerous small, rectangular orange-brown papyrus pieces with black/dark ink marks on them, suggesting broken segments of an ink-written papyrus. In the middle-left area there is a clearer, handwritten inscription in dark ink (likely cataloguer/curatorial handwriting rather than ancient Egyptian), including bracketed text at the bottom. No clear, complete ancient hieroglyphic signs, royal titulary, or cartouches are legible at this resolution; the ink marks on the papyrus fragments are too fragmented to identify specific signs confidently. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible. The visible materials include papyrus and ink (as catalogued), with the mount and backing not counted as primary materials.

funerary Late Period (as catalogued); ancient text too fragmentary to confirm visually fragmentary

Materials Papyrusink

Signs unknown inked hieroglyphic sign fragments

Visible text "Handwritten modern note is visible but not reliably readable in full; an entry reading includes an “exact[ … 1961]” style bracketed portion (exact words unclear)."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

Handwritten modern note is visible but not reliably readable in full; an entry reading includes an “exact[ … 1961]” style bracketed portion (exact words unclear).

Connections

Found at Elephantine

Materials Ink Papyrus

Cross-references (2)

BKM-Accession 47.218.85a-f tier-2
BKM-Object 124173 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.