Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) · architecture

Relief fragment, tomb of Mereri

Source of record: Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

First Intermediate Period, Dynasty 9, ca. 2100–2030 B.C. Limestone. H. 11.6 × W. 91 × D. 7.3 cm (4 9/16 × 35 13/16 × 2 7/8 in.). From: Tomb of Mereri, Behind Temple of Hathor, Dendera, Northern Upper Egypt, Egypt. Excavation: Egypt Exploration Fund excavations, 1898. Credit: Gift of Egypt Exploration Fund, 1898.

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 horizontal limestone relief fragment carved with vertical rows of small hieroglyphic signs across much of the surface.

The object is a long, narrow stone fragment with worn edges, showing shallow relief carving in multiple lines. The most prominent surface feature is a series of hieroglyphic signs arranged in bands; individual signs are small and partially damaged, making specific identification uncertain. There is no clearly preserved human figure, seated deity, or clearly legible cartouche visible in the provided image. The carving appears weathered, and some sections have losses or smoothing that obscure details. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. No explicit deity iconography can be confirmed from the fragmentary signs alone.

hieroglyphic only First Intermediate Period (per catalogue; inscription/signs too fragmentary to date independently) fragmentary
Materials limestone
Signs hieroglyphic signs (individual determinatives not reliably identifiable) ×30

Connections

Found at Dendera
Materials Limestone
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.