Gathering Lotuses
Description
Object Label: Brother Simeon Schwemberger was an amateur photographer at St. Michael's Mission School. Stewart Culin, the Museum's first curator of ethnology, acquired more than ninety of Schwemberger's photographs and used them to illustrate his expedition reports. After Culin's death in 1929, the Museum's Trustees acquired his personal library and papers, a purchase noted in the Museum's Annual Report as "The important event of the year." Culin was a bibliophile whose personal library numbered close to seven thousand books, periodicals, and pamphlets with texts in several languages, predominantly on the art and ethnology of the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Culin's research files and expedition reports are an important resource on the history of the objects he collected and on Native American, Asian, and Eastern European cultures. Caption: Egyptian. Gathering Lotuses, ca. 670–650 B.C.E.. Limestone, pigment, 5 5/16 x 5 7/8 in. (13.5 x 15 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 55.3.3. (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.
Relief fragment in limestone showing a seated/standing Egyptian figure with traces of dark pigment, holding a lotus-like object in one hand and a staff/utensil in the other.
The image shows a portion of an ancient Egyptian relief carved in light stone. The central figure is rendered with a dark, heavily abraded/painted surface that preserves pigment in folds of a garment. The figure’s head is turned slightly to the viewer’s left; facial features are worn but remain in relief. In the lower register, the figure appears to hold or present a large lotus-like bloom toward the front (left side of the bloom is clearer), consistent with the catalogue theme of lotus gathering. On the viewer’s left edge, a second hand/arm is extended forward holding a slender implement or staff-like object. Above and behind the figure, faint carved shapes and possible hieroglyphic signs are present but too damaged/unclear to identify reliably. No clear cartouche or royal name is visible. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 55.3.3 tier-2
- BKM-Object 4239 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.