Model Grinder 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: Model Grinder Inscribed for Amunhotep II, ca. 1426–1400 B.C.E.. Egyptian alabaster (calcite) , 1 7/8 × 13/16 × 3 9/16 in. (4.8 × 2 × 9.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 36.621.1. (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.
A small, roughly triangular/rounded soapstone or alabaster model fragment with shallow incised marks resembling hieroglyphs on its face.
The image shows a small pale stone object with a rounded triangular outline. Its surface appears light-colored and polished, consistent with alabaster/calcite. On the upper right portion of the front face there are several shallow, cream-colored incised/eroded signs that resemble hieroglyphs (partly worn), arranged in a short line. A few additional faint marks are visible near the left upper area, but they are too eroded to read reliably. No clearly identifiable cartouche or royal titulary is legible from the available detail. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. The overall condition is fragmentary/worn, with the inscription heavily abraded.
Connections
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 36.621.1 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3408 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.