Head of a King (perhaps Ptolemy XII)
Description
Object Label: Both of these heads have several features commonly found on royal sculpture from the end of the Late Period and the early part of the Ptolemaic Period: a slight smile, circular marks at both ends of the mouth, and a triangular area between the eyebrows and the root of the nose. The larger head, wearing the red and white crowns of northern (Lower) and southern (Upper) Egypt, has a needle-shaped back pillar. Caption: Head of a King (perhaps Ptolemy XII), 332–30 B.C.E.. Limestone, 15 1/4 x 5 1/2 x 14 1/4 in. (38.7 x 14 x 36.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1489E. (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.
Sculpted male head of an Egyptian king, shown in frontal view with a royal nemes-style headdress and simplified facial features.
The object is a stone bust/head fragment consisting of a closely cropped upper head and headdress. The head is carved in fairly smooth modeling, with downcast/half-closed eyes, a straight nose, and a defined mouth. A striped or banded headdress is visible at the top and across the forehead, resembling a royal nemes or a stylized head covering. Around the upper forehead there is a broad band with additional carved elements that could relate to royal regalia, but the details are worn and/or indistinct. The neck area breaks off at a shallow angle, and the lower portion of the headdress and shoulders are only partially preserved. No legible inscriptions are visible on the image, and no clear Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text appears. The museum catalogue states limestone and a Ptolemaic royal attribution (perhaps Ptolemy XII), but the image does not show an identifiable cartouche or name to confirm a specific ruler from this view.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.1489E tier-2
- BKM-Object 4161 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.