Ostracon
Description
Ptolemaic–Early Roman Period, 664 B.C.–A.D. 1st century. Pottery, ink. 11.5 × 9.5 cm (4 1/2 × 3 3/4 in.). From: Medinet Habu, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Egypt. Credit: Rogers Fund, 1914.
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 reddish-brown pottery sherd/ostracon inscribed with dark ink hieroglyphic text in horizontal lines across the surface.
The image shows a flat, irregularly shaped brown terracotta fragment with slightly curved edges, consistent with an ostracon. Dark pigment/ink inscriptions are arranged in multiple lines running roughly left-to-right; the signs are small and closely spaced, with some larger strokes suggesting Egyptian hieroglyphic notation. No clear cartouche, royal titulary, or identifiable deity iconography is visible. The fragment’s surface shows erosion and missing corners, but the inked lines remain largely legible as a sequence of hieroglyph-like signs. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic script is clearly visible.
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access).
- 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.