Ostracon
Description
Late Period–Ptolemaic Period, 400–30 B.C. Pottery, ink. 15.6 x 14.4 x 0.9 cm (6 1/8 x 5 11/16 x 3/8 in.). From: Hibis, Western Desert; Kharga Oasis, Egypt. Excavation: MMA excavations, 1908–10. Credit: Rogers Fund, 1925.
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 fragmentary terracotta ostracon with faint, partially preserved black/red ink traces forming indistinct marks on the surface.
The object is a small, irregular pottery fragment (ostracon) with a light brown/tan surface and reddish-brown inclusions. Faint ink strokes and smear-like markings are visible across the central area, but the characters are too eroded/low-contrast to identify specific signs confidently. No clear cartouche, deity figure, or legible Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is discernible. The writing appears to be oriented horizontally/diagonally in several diffuse strokes rather than a clearly bounded column, though the exact layout cannot be reconstructed. Edges are chipped and the fragment is incomplete.
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.