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

Signet Ring

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Object Label: Because this ring bears a cartouche of King Khufu of Dynasty IV, known later to the Greeks as Cheops, it was once world famous as the actual signet ring of the builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza. The inscription, however, shows that it really belonged to a man named Neferibre who was a priest in the cults of Isis and the deified Cheops at Giza two thousand years after Cheops died. The ring is unusually heavy and is made of gold more than twenty-one karats pure. Caption: Signet Ring, ca. 664–404 B.C.E.. Gold, 11/16 × 1 × 7/8 in. (1.8 × 2.5 × 2.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.734E. (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 golden ring with hieroglyphic inscriptions, including cartouches.

The artifact is a ring made of gold, featuring hieroglyphic inscriptions on its surface. The inscriptions include cartouches and various symbols associated with ancient Egyptian royalty. The craftsmanship suggests careful engraving typical of royal or significant artifacts.

royal New Kingdom excellent
Materials gold
Signs ankh djed

Connections

Found at Giza
Deities Isis
Materials Gold

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 37.734E tier-2
  • BKM-Object 4094 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.