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

Relief of the Royal Ka

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, acc. 67.69.2. Public domain (CC0). Copy archived by egyptianinscriptions.org with attribution; original at the holding institution.

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Accession: 67.69.2
Find spot: Abydos, Egypt, Egypt approx. site location
Period: Late Period or Ptolemaic Period
Dynasty: Dynasty 30 or reign of Ptolemy VI
Date: 381–343 B.C.E. or 186–145 B.C.E.
Date range: 381 BCE – 343 BCE
Materials: ['Limestone', 'pigment']
Height: 25.0 cm
Width: 35.5 cm
Repository: Brooklyn Museum
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Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Relief of the Royal Ka (67.69.2). Egyptian Inscriptions Database. https://egyptianinscriptions.org/object/18716

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Description

Object Label: According to Egyptian belief, the Royal Ka (soul) inhabited the legitimate king and migrated from the old to the new when the older king died. Some scholars have associated votive animal mummies with a ritual that strengthened the Royal Ka. Here, an artist portrayed the Ka as a royal bust on a standard wearing a crown of ostrich feathers, cobras, and the short ram’s horns associated with Amun, king of the gods. The figure also wears a protective cobra on his forehead. Caption: Relief of the Royal Ka, 381–343 B.C.E. or 186–145 B.C.E.. Limestone, pigment, 9 13/16 x 14 x 1 3/4 in. (25 x 35.5 x 4.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 67.69.2. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum (Gavin Ashworth, photographer))

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.

Fragmentary painted limestone relief showing a partial standing/robed male figure in profile, associated with a hieroglyphic cartouche-like sign area above and a staff/element at the right edge.

The object is a broken, irregular limestone relief fragment with traces of red and yellow/ochre pigment. The main surviving figure is rendered in profile facing left, with a red-toned face and a yellow-gold painted headdress or cap. A white/cream garment covers the torso, and red paint outlines or shading appear at the lower garment. At the upper field, there is a vertical gold-toned band flanked by angular elements, suggesting the presence of hieroglyphic or symbolic signs; the exact reading is not fully preserved. The right side shows a curved, pole-like or staff-like painted element (part of an attribute) set against the stone background. No complete cartouche name is clearly preserved in legible form. There is no clearly visible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text. Any hieroglyphs are fragmentary and cannot be confidently identified beyond the possibility of a cartouche/sign group. The overall composition matches a royal/ka-related relief depiction in broad terms (a royal figure with accompanying sign field), but the lack of readable royal name prevents confirmation of the specific individual.

religious Late Period or Ptolemaic Period (as catalogued); exact date unclear from fragment fragmentary

Deities unknown

Royals unknown

Materials limestonepigment (red and yellow/ochre traces)

Signs Fragmentary hieroglyphic/cartouche-like sign group (unreadable)

Connections

Found at Abydos

Deities Amun

Materials Limestone

Cross-references (2)

BKM-Accession 67.69.2 tier-2
BKM-Object 3760 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.