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

Pounder

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

Description

Pestle, pounder. Neolithic Period, Buto–Merimda–Maadi, ca. 4500–4000 B.C. Quartz. From: Merimda Beni Salama, Western Delta, Egypt. Excavation: Vienna Academy of Science excavations, 1927–29. Credit: Gift of Albert Rothbart, 1933.

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.

Photograph of a small, roughly ovoid stone tool/artifact with a rounded face, photographed against a plain light background.

The object appears as a compact, rounded, oval/ellipsoidal stone, with a worn and irregular surface. No carved decoration, raised motifs, or any clear worked edges are visible in the provided view. The surface shows mottled orange-brown and yellowish tones consistent with weathering and/or iron-rich mineral staining, with small pits and fractures. There are no legible hieroglyphs, cartouches, or inscriptions visible. No depictions of deities or royal regalia are apparent. Only the stone material is visible; the catalogue's stated quartz material is plausible given the stone appearance, but the image alone cannot confirm the specific mineral.

unclear Neolithic Period (Buto–Merimda–Maadi) per catalogue; image itself does not allow reliable period confirmation good
Materials stone (exact mineral unclear from image)

Connections

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.