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

Priestesses and Dancers

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

Description

Twentieth Century; original Middle Kingdom, Dynasty 12, reign of Senwosret I, A.D. 1914–1915; original ca. 1970–1917 B.C. Tempera on paper. facsimile: h. 32 cm (12 5/16 in); w. 57 cm (22 7/16 in), scale 1:3, framed: h. 35.6 cm (14 in); w. 59.7 cm (23 1/2 in). Original from: Tomb of Intefiker/Senet (TT 60), Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Egypt. Excavation: MMA Graphic Section, 1914–1915. Subject: Women, Dancing, Dancers. Credit: Rogers Fund, 1930.

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 wide Egyptian-style painting on paper depicts a group of four male-presenting figures in orange-and-blue ceremonial attire playing stringed instruments toward two seated/standing female-presenting figures to the right.

The image shows a rectangular, wall-painting-like composition with a pale background. On the left, several figures with close-cropped dark hair and distinctive skin tones stand in procession, wearing blue collars and patterned garments, and each holds or plays a long, ribbed instrument (likely harps/lyres) positioned across the torso. Two figures on the right face toward the musicians; one appears seated or partially seated with legs extended, and another stands with arms extended in a dance/attitude consistent with performance. The style is flat, with strong outlines and simplified musculature; faces have a simplified, stylized profile. There is small, faint line-work at the top edge resembling hieroglyphic-like marks, but the characters are too unclear to identify reliably. No clear cartouches or names are visible. No museum catalogue–specific textual inscription is legible.

daily life Twentieth Century (based on ground-truth catalogue; image style resembles modern/20th-c. painted/tempera work rather than Middle Kingdom original mural painting). good
Materials paperpaint (tempera or similar)

Connections

Materials Paper
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.