Head of a Ptolemaic King
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-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A black stone sculpture of an Egyptian pharaoh's head.
The artifact is a finely crafted black stone head depicting an Egyptian pharaoh. The sculpture displays traditional royal iconography, including a nemes headdress and a uraeus on the forehead. The style is realistic with detailed facial features, characteristic of Egyptian royal portraiture. The ears and parts of the headdress appear to be worn or eroded, which is common in ancient artifacts.
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.