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Walters Art Museum (Egyptian) · seal

Cylinder Seal with Titles and Personal Names

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

Description

<p>This early cylinder seal is inscribed with hieroglyphic signs that spell the personal names Nefer-Maat-Ked and Nefer-Sobek, as well as some enigmatic titles. Although the original context of this seal is unknown, several examples of sealings and seals that include the name of an official Nefer-Maat-Ked have been excavated in multiple sites across Egypt. Nefer-Maat-Ked seems to have been an official under several kings, including Khasekhemwy (ca. 2649 BCE), the last king of the Second Dynasty, and Third Dynasty king Djoser, the builder of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara (ca. 2667-2648 BCE). This cylinder seal acted as an administrative tool, connecting its owner with the central royal authority.</p><p>For the latest information about this object, <cite><a href='https://purl.thewalters.org/art/42.177' rel='external'>Cylinder Seal with Titles and Personal Names</a></cite>, visit the Online Collection of the Walters Art Museum.</p>

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 photograph of a stone cylinder seal carved in relief with multiple columns of Egyptian hieroglyphs and personal/title texts, enclosed by a rounded border at either end.

The object appears as a horizontally oriented cylinder seal with a smoothed, rounded perimeter and a flat/rectangular field of carved hieroglyphs. The surface shows several vertical registers (columns) of incised/relief hieroglyphs separated by guide lines. Individual signs include loaf/“basket” shapes, seated/standing human figures or seated figures in small squares or compartments, and repeated vertical strokes that may function as framing or determinatives. No clearly readable royal cartouches are visible at the resolution provided; the text looks more like personal names and titles associated with cylinder seals rather than a single cartouche-bearing royal titulary. There is no visible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic script. The catalogued material is granodiorite; the image is grayscale and does not allow confident verification of the exact stone type, but the object’s hard-stone engraved surface is consistent with a granodiorite seal. The overall condition is good, with crisp carving and minimal surface damage; minor edge wear appears at the perimeter.

hieroglyphic only unclear (likely Late Period–Ptolemaic or earlier dynastic seal; unreadable at current resolution) good
Materials stone (hard, carved, exact type unclear in image; catalogue suggests granodiorite)
Signs generic hieroglyphic grouping of a person/figure and surrounding title signs (unreadable specifics) repeated vertical stroke motifs used as part of the hieroglyph groups ×10 basket/loaf-like sign motifs (unreadable) ×6 seated/standing human figure within a compartment (unreadable) ×2

Connections

Deities MaatSobek
Royals Djoser

Cross-references (2)

  • Walters-AccNum 42.177 tier-2
  • Walters-id 30950 tier-2
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Walters Art Museum (Egyptian).
  • 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.