Monkey
Description
Object Label: Throughout Egyptian history, monkeys were enjoyed for their playful, whimsical behavior. This blue faience example holds a ball or piece of fruit. In antiquity, it wore a metal earring indicating that it represented a household pet. Because they had to be imported over great distances at considerable expense, the possession of monkeys indicated the owner’s wealth and social status. Caption: Monkey, ca. 1352–1336 B.C.E.. Faience, 2 1/8 × 1 1/8 × 1 9/16 in. (5.4 × 2.8 × 4 cm) mount: 2 1/4 × 1 3/4 × 1 3/8 in. (5.7 × 4.4 × 3.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 48.181. (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 small blue faience figure of a seated baboon.
The artifact depicts a small, intricately crafted figure of a baboon made from blue faience. It is seated on its haunches, with detailed features that include prominent eyes and ears. The surface shows some wear typical of ancient artifacts, but the overall form is intact. This style of faience figurine was commonly used in ancient Egypt for both decorative and symbolic purposes.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 48.181 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3524 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.