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

Menat with royal name Ptolemy

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

Description

Early Ptolemaic Period, ca. 306–246 B.C. Faience. H. 10.4 × W. 5 × Th. 1 cm (4 1/8 × 1 15/16 × 3/8 in.). From: Egypt. Credit: Bequest of Nanette B. Kelekian, 2020.

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 turquoise-blue faience menat pendant with vertically arranged relief decoration and hieroglyphic text for a royal name.

The object is a small, molded faience menat-shaped amulet with a flat back and a flaring top that has a perforated/bored section suitable for attachment of a suspension element. The main body shows a centered register of raised relief symbols: a seated or standing figure-like form above and, below it, vertically arranged hieroglyphs. On the lower portion there is a cartouche-like oval/rectangular enclosure containing additional signs. The hieroglyphs are too small/blurred in the image to reliably transcribe, but their presence supports an inscriptional royal-name identification consistent with the catalogue description. No clearly legible Greek or other scripts are visible. The surfaces show light discoloration and minor edge wear consistent with handling.

decorative Early Ptolemaic Period (per catalogue; image does not contradict) good
Deities unknown
Royals Ptolemy (implied by catalogue; hieroglyphs not legible enough for a confident confirmation of the exact royal name)
Materials faience (turquoise/blue glazed surface)
Signs vertical hieroglyphic inscription (cartouche-like oval/enclosure present near bottom) ×20
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.