Fragment of a Left Hand
Description
Object Label: The original appearance of a complete sculpture can often be recognized from even a small fragment. Statues offering a naos, or shrine with a divine image, which this hand originally held, became popular in the later periods of Egyptian history. They depict the owner in perpetual offering and thus in the eternal presence of a divinity. The inscription on this and another fragment now in Liverpool identifies the deity as Osiris and the owner as Senu, a prince, noble, governor, overseer of the royal harem, and prophet of Osiris, Horus, and Isis, lords of the Temple of Provisions. Caption: Fragment of a Left Hand, 285–246 B.C.. Basalt, 4 7/16 x 4 7/16 in. (11.2 x 11.2 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, 16.620. (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 dark stone fragment shaped as the wrist/hand area of a carved left hand, with carved incisions and a band of small hieroglyph-like marks on the upper face.
The object is a compact, dark basalt fragment with a molded form that clearly suggests a sculpted human hand (thumb and finger contours visible on the front right). The wrist/knuckle area is rounded, and the underside/edges are broken. On the upper surface, there are shallow, linear carved marks arranged in rows that resemble hieroglyphic signs, though the exact characters cannot be read confidently from this image. The front and sides show only the hand modeling, with no legible Greek/Coptic/Arabic text visible. No royal cartouche or named figure is clearly identifiable in the available view. Overall condition appears broken but stable, with worn edges from excavation or age.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 16.620 tier-2
- BKM-Object 10109 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.