Miniature Bust
Description
Object Label: Found in both houses and funerary chapels, busts such as this one were a focus for ancestor worship during the New Kingdom. Just as unhappy ghosts represented a threat to the living, one's relatives among the glorified dead who had been transformed into beings known as akhs could help with earthly problems and act as intermediaries to the powers on the "other side." Indeed, people even wrote messages to deceased relatives requesting aid in connection with a multitude of problems in their daily lives. Caption: Miniature Bust, ca. 1336–1327 B.C.E., ca. 1327–1323 B.C.E., or ca. 1323–1295 B.C.E.. Wood, 3 1/16 x 2 1/16 in. (7.8 x 5.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 53.246. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A wooden sculpture of a man with a shaved head.
The artifact is a wooden sculpture depicting a man with a shaved head and prominent ears. The body is shaped in a simple geometric form flaring towards the base, emphasizing the head and shoulders. The facial features are finely carved, with detailed eyes and lips, reflecting skilled craftsmanship. The style suggests a piece from a private or tomb context rather than a royal or monumental setting.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 53.246 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3595 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.