Overseer of the Treasury, Ptahhotep
Description
Object Label: Ptahhotep is shown in a Persian costume that Egyptian officials adopted under the Persian rulers to imitate Persian court attire. The jacket with flaring sleeves, over which a skirt is wrapped, is complemented by a Persian bracelet and torque (a bar-like necklace) as well an Egyptian pectoral, or chest plaque. These accessories give Ptahhotep the overall appearance of an Egypto-Persian official, one whose dress speaks clearly of his loyalty to the Persian king. The rendering of the two ibexes that terminate the torque, however, is typically Egyptian, with the heads shown from the side. This treatment, together with the pectoral showing Ptah and the lion-headed goddess Sakhmet, underscores the essentially Egyptian nature of the statue. Caption: Overseer of the Treasury, Ptahhotep, 521–486 B.C.E.. Quartzite, 35 × 12 × 13 in., 252 lb. (88.9 × 30.5 × 33 cm, 114.31kg) mount (dimensions as installed): 36 × 12 × 13 in. (91.4 × 30.5 × 33 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.353.
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.
The image shows a dark stone anthropoid monument or statuette fragment with a carved head and broad collar/upper register, the body partially damaged and obscured.
A vertically oriented, dark stone object is photographed against a light background. The upper portion preserves a head with a rounded crown area and a stylized broad collar around the neck. Below the collar, the figure’s torso appears as a long rectangular-to-tapered form with extensive surface loss: a large broken/detached area reveals lighter interior stone and irregular edges. Near the top, a metal-like or stone-lined rectangular element sits across the chest/upper torso, but its function (strap, inset, or repair) is unclear. No clearly readable hieroglyphs are visible on the preserved surfaces, and there is no legible cartouche or name. The carving style suggests a person/official figure, but specific office/title iconography cannot be confirmed from the image due to damage and lack of legible text.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.353 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3431 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.