Wadjet-eye Amulet Inscribed for Amunhotep III
Description
Object Label: Amulets In the New Kingdom, amulets represented magic in miniature form. At that time, the Egyptians frequently wore amulets proclaiming their devotion to the cult of major deities such as Thoth, god of wisdom, or Hathor, an ancient goddess associated with music and love. These charms were intended to provide protection from specific dangers. Amulets of birth-gods, for example, were believed to protect women during pregnancy and childbirth and to watch over a newborn in the first years of life. In the Eighteenth Dynasty, certain amulets began to be placed within mummy bandages to guarantee life after death. The most common included wedjat-eyes, signifying the restoration of wholeness; tyt-amulets, emblems of the goddess Isis, who restored her dead husband Osiris to life; and flowers, traditional symbols of fertility. Beads inscribed with a person’s name ensured that the memory of the individual would survive throughout eternity. So-called heart scarabs, known since the Thirteenth Dynasty, are frequently found on New Kingdom mummies. The Egyptians believed that a deceased person’s fate would be determined by weighing his or her heart against the “Feather of Truth” on a divine balance. Texts carved on heart scarabs prevented the deceased’s heart from revealing anything negative during the weighing ritual. Caption: Wadjet-eye Amulet Inscribed for Amunhotep III, ca. 1390–1353 B.C.E.. Faience, 4 5/16 x 1 15/16 x 6 5/16 in. (11 x 5 x 16 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1298E. (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.
Small blue-green faience amulet shaped like an eye (widely recognizable as an eye/“wadjet” style form) with recessed incised lines and a framed panel on one side.
The object is photographed against a plain light background. It appears to be a compact faience amulet with a flattened, sub-rectangular/eye-like outline and a central vertical element. On the visible face, there is an incised and/or molded design resembling hieroglyphic or emblematic marks arranged within a bordered field; the marks are too worn/abstracted to confidently identify specific signs. No surrounding attachment loop, cord, or backing is clearly visible in this view. The surface shows typical glaze/fired ceramic texture with blue-green coloration and darker outlines from the incised decoration. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. No cartouche is clearly legible in the image.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.1298E tier-2
- BKM-Object 4134 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.