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

Papyrus

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

Description

Ptolemaic Period, Philadelphos?, ca. 250 B.C. Papyrus. Framed: H. 29.2 cm (11 1/2 in.); W. 17.5 cm (6 7/8 in.). From: cartonnage of mummy 69, Hiba (Ankyronpolis), Middle Egypt, Egypt. Excavation: EEF excavations 1902-1903. Subject: Documents. Credit: Gift of Egypt Exploration Fund, 1909.

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.

The image shows three fragments of a thin, tan papyrus sheet covered with dense black ink lines and symbols consistent with hieroglyphic or cursive Egyptian writing.

There are multiple papyrus fragments (one upper horizontal strip and two lower pieces) arranged on a light background. The papyrus fibers/lamination are visible through the sheet’s texture, and the writing appears in dark ink in horizontal rows; some areas are smudged or flaked, and several spots look abraded or torn. No clear royal cartouche or clearly legible deity name is identifiable at this resolution. The overall layout is that of written papyrus rather than an illustrated religious scene. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic script is clearly visible.

hieroglyphic only Ptolemaic Period (catalogue ground truth; specific dating not confirmable from the image alone) fragmentary
Materials papyrus (fibrous sheet)dark ink
Signs mixed hieroglyphic/cursive ink text (unreadable at this resolution)

Connections

Materials PapyrusDark Ink
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.