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

The Wilbour Papyrus

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, acc. 34.5596.32. Public domain (CC0). Copy archived by egyptianinscriptions.org with attribution; original at the holding institution.

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Accession: 34.5596.32
Find spot: Middle Egypt, Egypt, Egypt
Period: New Kingdom
Dynasty: Dynasty 20
Date: ca. 1147 B.C.E.
Date range: 1147 BCE – 1147 BCE
Materials: ['Papyrus', 'ink']
Height: 32.0 cm
Width: 46.0 cm
Repository: Brooklyn Museum
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Cite & export

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, The Wilbour Papyrus (34.5596.32). Egyptian Inscriptions Database. https://egyptianinscriptions.org/object/19050

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Description

Caption: The Wilbour Papyrus, ca. 1147 B.C.E.. Papyrus, ink, Glass: 12 5/8 x 18 1/8 in. (32 x 46 cm) Object: 10 7/16 x 16 1/8 in. (26.5 x 41 cm) Total length of 34.5596.1-.33: 406 11/16 in. (10.33 m). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 34.5596.32. (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 fragmentary sheet of papyrus displayed under glass, covered on the right with dense lines of dark ink text in Egyptian hieroglyphic/related script, while the left side is comparatively sparse and includes faded markings.

The image shows a brown, fibrous papyrus sheet mounted in a light frame. The sheet is damaged with irregular tears and missing edges, leaving frayed fibers along the bottom and right margins. Most legible content appears in the right half: many closely spaced horizontal lines of dark ink, consistent with a papyrus manuscript. The left half contains fewer, lighter strokes and what may be faint ink ruling or column boundaries, but the exact sign forms are not sufficiently clear to identify specific hieroglyphs or reading direction with confidence. No cartouches or royal titulary are clearly discernible at this resolution. There is no visible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text. A small label-like mark or number appears near the top of the mounted display (within the image border), but it is not part of the papyrus text.

hieroglyphic only New Kingdom (per catalogue ground truth; script details too unclear to refine from image alone) fragmentary

Materials Papyrusink

Signs unknown hieroglyphic/manuscript sign(s)

Visible text "Multiple lines of dark ink Egyptian manuscript text are visible on the right half, but the individual signs are not clear enough for an accurate excerpt."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

Multiple lines of dark ink Egyptian manuscript text are visible on the right half, but the individual signs are not clear enough for an accurate excerpt.

Connections

Materials Ink Papyrus

Cross-references (2)

BKM-Accession 34.5596.32 tier-2
BKM-Object 152149 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.