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

Head of a Ptolemaic King

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, acc. 53.75. Public domain (CC0). Copy archived by egyptianinscriptions.org with attribution; original at the holding institution.

+ 3 more images

Accession: 53.75
Find spot: Egypt, Egypt approx. site location
Period: Ptolemaic Period
Date: 3rd century B.C.E. (probably)
Date range: 299 BCE – 201 BCE
Materials: ['Basalt']
Height: 40.6 cm
Width: 41.9 cm
Repository: Brooklyn Museum
At source: View original →

Cite & export

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Head of a Ptolemaic King (53.75). Egyptian Inscriptions Database. https://egyptianinscriptions.org/object/18010

JSON →

Description

Object Label: Sculptors working for the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt occasionally showed their royal subjects in traditional style. This head depicts a Ptolemaic ruler wearing the ancient nemes-headcloth with a protective uraeus cobra. The king's ovoid face with full, fleshy cheeks suggests that the artisan may have been trying to reproduce the physical features of a specific ruler. However, in the absence of dated parallels for this head, we do not know whom it represents. Caption: Head of a Ptolemaic King, 3rd century B.C.E. (probably). Basalt, 16 x 16 1/2 x 16 in. (40.6 x 41.9 x 40.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 53.75. (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 sculpted stone head of a bearded/robed-looking male king figure wearing a Nemes-style headcloth, shown in a frontal view.

The image shows a dark, roughly finished stone (black/dark gray) sculpture of a human head, presented frontally. The figure wears a broad striped headcloth across the brow and upper forehead (Nemes-like), with a smooth face, heavy-lidded eyes, and a straight nose. There are shallow indications of facial hair (a short beard and/or moustache area) and the sides of the head suggest flaring sculpted elements consistent with the headcloth ends or coiffure. The background is neutral and the object is mounted on a light-colored pedestal. No clear hieroglyphic, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible on the head or around it in this view, and no legible cartouche is present.

royal Ptolemaic Period (as catalogued); stylistic details consistent with a Ptolemaic royal head, though exact reign cannot be determined from the image. fragmentary

Materials dark stonelikely basalt (per catalogue)

Connections

Materials Stone Dark Stone

Cross-references (2)

BKM-Accession 53.75 tier-2
BKM-Object 3583 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.