Mask of a Man’s Face
Description
Object Label: The rough edges around the face suggest that this mask was cast in a mold. The dreamy, delicate quality of the features is typical of sculpture made at Amarna, where there is also evidence of artistic experimentation with various materials and manners of representation. If this example is a portrait, it almost certainly represents a member of the royal family. Some scholars think that it may be the face of the king at Amarna, Akhenaten himself. Caption: Mask of a Man’s Face, ca. 1352–1332 B.C.E.. Terracotta, 4 1/4 x 2 13/16 in. (10.8 x 7.2 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, 16.61. (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.
Terracotta sculpted mask depicting a man’s face with idealized features and a headdress/short hair framing the head.
The image shows a small, head-and-shoulders sculptural mask or face fragment mounted on a rod. The face is modeled in terracotta with applied/painted details implied by surface variations: almond-shaped eyes with heavy lids, arched eyebrows, a straight nose, and closed lips. Short hair or a simplified headdress frames the sides of the face, and there are small ear shapes visible. The background is a museum display case with warm lighting; no surrounding iconography or accompanying figures are visible. There is no clearly legible hieroglyphic, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text on the mask in this view. No cartouches or royal names are visible, and no deities are directly identifiable from the facial features alone.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 16.61 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3137 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.