Ostracon
Description
Ostracon, Demotic. Late Period–Ptolemaic, ca. 600–30 B.C. Pottery, ink. H. 7.4 × W. 9.7 × D. 1.3 cm (2 15/16 × 3 13/16 × 1/2 in.). From: Medinet Habu, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Egypt. Excavation: Davis excavations, 1912–13. Credit: Gift of Theodore M. Davis, 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 ostracon fragment covered with dark ink hieroglyphic/abbreviated Egyptian writing lines across the surface.
The image shows a small, broken, wedge-shaped fragment of reddish pottery with a worn surface. Multiple horizontal lines of dark ink run along the face of the fragment, forming closely spaced Egyptian writing that appears hieroglyphic or cursive hieratic-like in style. No figural imagery, cartouches, or identifiable deity iconography is clear in the available view. The inked text is the dominant feature, while the edges and broken corners indicate fragmentary condition. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic script is legible, and no clear royal name enclosure is 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.