Plaque Inscribed for Amunhotep II
Description
Object Label: Foundation Deposits In addition to commissioning new buildings, Egyptian kings occasionally claimed existing structures such as temples or palaces as their own. The most common way for a king to do this was to substitute his own name for that of the original builder in the inscriptions. When a king commissioned a new structure, he buried objects in the four corners of the foundation to be certain that the gods would remember the true builder and that later kings could not find and reinscribe them. These so-called foundation deposits usually included plaques with the king’s name, as well as models of objects used to erect the building, such as grinders, hoes, and rockers needed to move large stones. Caption: Plaque Inscribed for Amunhotep II, ca. 1426–1400 B.C.E.. Faience, Other (average): 3 1/8 x 9/16 x 5 11/16 in. (8 x 1.4 x 14.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 36.619.7.
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.
Two rectangular turquoise-blue faience plaque fragments are shown side by side, each decorated with red-painted hieroglyphic signs and figures within bordered cartouches/frames.
The image displays two upright rectangular plaque pieces with rounded edges. Both have a light blue/turquoise faience body and are covered with red pigment forming hieroglyphic signs inside rectangular border frames. On the left plaque, the arrangement appears stacked vertically with multiple sign groups; individual sign forms are not clear enough to confidently transliterate. On the right plaque, additional red-painted elements are visible, including what looks like a standing or seated figure-like form near the center and several surrounding hieroglyphic signs. No clearly legible full cartouche naming a specific king is visible at this resolution. The overall layout is consistent with an inscribed devotional/royal plaque style, though specific wording cannot be recovered confidently from the provided image.
Connections
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 36.619.7 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3401 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.