Nun Vessel
Description
Object Label: In ancient Egyptian origin myths, dark blue and black were colors of the primordial waters that the Egyptians called nun, or nonexistence. Faience bowls, popular in the New Kingdom, were often decorated with motifs that evoked marshland, recalling the waters of nun. The square in the center of this bowl is a pond from which lotus buds and flowers grow. The lotus blossoms symbolize life emerging from the waters of nonexistence. Caption: Nun Vessel, ca 1539–1493 B.C.E.. Faience, 3 3/4 × Diam. 10 1/2 in. (9.5 × 26.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 40.298. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A blue faience bowl with decorative motifs etched into its surface.
The artifact is a faience bowl featuring intricate decorative motifs, likely consisting of stylized lotus flowers and geometric patterns. The bowl's blue glaze gives it a striking visual appeal, and the craftsmanship suggests an artistic purpose, possibly linked to religious or decorative functions. The motifs are symmetrically arranged, emphasizing both form and aesthetics typical of Egyptian artistic traditions.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 40.298 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3452 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- 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.