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

Signet Ring

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, acc. 37.734E. Public domain (CC0). Copy archived by egyptianinscriptions.org with attribution; original at the holding institution.

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Accession: 37.734E
Find spot: Giza, Egypt approx. site location
Period: Late Period
Dynasty: Dynasty 26 to Dynasty 27
Date: ca. 664–404 B.C.E.
Date range: 664 BCE – 404 BCE
Materials: ['Gold']
Height: 1.8 cm
Width: 2.5 cm
Repository: Brooklyn Museum
At source: View original →

Cite & export

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Signet Ring (37.734E). Egyptian Inscriptions Database. https://egyptianinscriptions.org/object/18536

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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-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 small gold signet ring is shown in three-quarter view, with an engraved bezel displaying Egyptian-style iconography and hieroglyph-like signs.

The object is a gold ring with a rounded hoop and a flattened, oval/teardrop bezel. The bezel face bears incised, darkened lines forming a small central figure with a head/face and raised arms or a symbolic posture, alongside surrounding rectangular hieroglyph-like signs arranged in a band. A number of additional small marks appear near the upper and lower edges of the bezel, consistent with decorative/inscription layout for a personal seal. No cartouche is clearly legible at this resolution, and no Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible. The image background is plain gray, and no other inscriptions or mounting details are present.

decorative Late Period (per catalogue); iconography style consistent with Late Period/Third Intermediate-to-Late Period seal engravings good

Deities unknown (human/figure with raised arms; not clearly identifiable)

Materials gold (metallic surface)

Signs incised hieroglyph-like signs (exact reading unclear) ×10

Visible text "Incised hieroglyph-like signs and a central figure; exact wording/reading unclear from the provided image."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

Incised hieroglyph-like signs and a central figure; exact wording/reading unclear from the provided image.

Connections

Found at Giza

Deities Isis

Royals Khufu

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.