Sunk Relief of a Man
Description
Object Label: Both of these figures wear priestly attire. One has his hands raised In a gesture of prayer or adoration, while the other—to judge from comparable images in New Kingdom Theban tombs—held either two curved-topped candles or a candle and an ointment jar. The style of both figures is a combination of the art of their own era and that of the New Kingdom. Catalogue description: Culture Egyptian Caption: Egyptian. Sunk Relief of a Man, ca. 670–650 B.C.E.. Limestone, pigment, 6 5/8 x 7 in. (16.8 x 17.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation, Inc., 86.226.8. (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 painted limestone sunk relief scene showing a male figure identified by a head-and-shoulders portrait with a wig and a raised arm.
The image depicts a fragmentary block of limestone carved in sunk relief and painted in reddish-brown/orange tones. The preserved portion centers on a profile-facing male figure ("man") with a distinctive patterned wig or headpiece and a facial profile rendered in relief. One arm extends across the body toward the left side of the panel, with additional fragmentary elements at the lower edge suggesting part of a larger gesture or attendant figure/action; surrounding background areas show tool marks and heavy loss of paint. No clear hieroglyphic inscriptions, cartouches, or readable text are visible in the photograph. The palette and finish are consistent with surviving pigment remaining on carved surfaces.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 86.226.8 tier-2
- BKM-Object 4241 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.