Fish
Description
Object Label: This charmingly painted tilapia symbolizes fertility. Because tilapias carry their fertilized eggs in their mouth until they are ready to hatch, the Egyptians viewed them as capable of spontaneous generation and thus regeneration and rebirth. X-rays have revealed pellets of clay inside this fish that represent the eggs and suggest it was used as a rattle during rituals, a form of musical accompaniment to prayer. The pastel black, red, and blue paints were common on pottery made at Akhenaten’s capital Amarna, and at his father’s palace at Malkata. Caption: Fish, ca. 1390–1336 B.C.E.. Clay, pigment, 2 9/16 × 4 7/16 × 1 1/4 in. (6.5 × 11.2 × 3.2 cm) mount (deck mount display dims): 3 3/4 × 4 3/4 × 2 1/2 in. (9.5 × 12.1 × 6.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 48.111. (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 detailed faience sculpture of a fish with scale patterns.
The object is a faience sculpture depicting a fish, characterized by an intricate pattern of scales and vibrant colors. The craftsmanship suggests it was either a decorative piece or part of a larger assembly. Its style is indicative of the expertise in faience work from ancient Egypt, with attention to detail in the creation of the scales and fins.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 48.111 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3520 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.