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

Stela depicting Anubis and a mummy on a bed for for Pachom-alal, son of Peteharsomtous

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

Description

Roman Period, A.D. 1st century. Sandstone. H. 37 × W. 29.5 × D. 6 cm (14 9/16 × 11 5/8 × 2 3/8 in.). From: Dendera, Northern Upper Egypt, Egypt. Excavation: EEF excavations, 1897–98. Subject: Animals, Anubis, Mummies. 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 sandstone stela fragment shows a kneeling mummiform figure or deity-like person lying on a bed or bier, with a winged, jackal-like figure above and a register of incised writing below.

The object is an oval-arched sandstone stela. The upper register contains a standing figure with raised arms and a long, staff-like or vertical implement at the center; behind/around the figure are curving shapes that may indicate wings or a stylized canopy. Flanking/overlapping the figure are smaller forms, including what appears to be a jackal or jackal-like head with pointed ears and a long snout, suggesting Anubis iconography. In the lower register, a horizontal bed/bier is depicted with a mummiform body lying on it; the head and torso are rendered in profile, with small hooked/curving elements near the body. Beneath the main images is a band of closely spaced incised hieroglyphic signs arranged in horizontal lines. A few signs are partially worn, making exact readings difficult from the image alone. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is legible, but the hieroglyphic inscription is present.

religious Roman Period (per catalogue; image consistent with late Egyptian style, but exact dating cannot be confirmed from image alone) fragmentary
Deities Anubis (jackal-like figure; identification tentative but iconography matches)
Materials sandstone
Signs incised hieroglyphic signs (various) ×30
Visible text "Unclear from image; individual signs too worn/low-resolution to transcribe reliably."

Connections

Found at Dendera
Deities Anubis
Materials Sandstone
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.