Aten Sun-Disk Inlay
Description
Object Label: Inlays The late Eighteenth Dynasty taste for opulence extended to inlaid wall decoration in temples, palaces, and large houses. During the reign of Akhenaten, skilled workmen began to create scenes by piecing together individual fragments of colored glass or faience. These works depicted the king, natural motifs, and faithful worshipers beneath the Aten sundisk. Many of these motifs had already appeared in paintings in earlier buildings, but the new medium added vividness and prominence. Architectural inlay continued into the Twentieth Dynasty. Caption: Aten Sun-Disk Inlay, ca. 1339–1329 B.C.E.. Faience, Diam. 2 5/16 in. (5.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Theodora Wilbour, and Victor Wilbour honoring the wishes of their mother, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, as a memorial to their father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 16.339. (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.
Round, reddish ceramic/faience-like object photographed against a beige background, with a small dark rim or crack line around part of the edge.
The image shows a single circular, dish- or disk-like artifact with a reddish surface (likely glazed or weathered). The top and upper-left area include faint, dark incisions or surface marks that could be decorative elements, but no clearly readable hieroglyphs, cartouches, or iconographic details are legible at this resolution. The lower edge shows darker irregular patches and a slight profile break suggesting chips or breaks. No visible blue/green faience glaze patterns are clearly distinguishable in this photo; the dominant visible color is red. There is no Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text visible. No explicit Aten sun-disk rays or the “Aten” iconography can be confirmed from the image.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 16.339 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3170 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.