Stela of Pepy
Description
Object Label: Many stelae discovered at Abydos were originally left in tombs with other items intended to help the deceased achieve immortality. British archaeologists working there early in the twentieth century found this stela of a man called Pepy—a traditional name—in a Middle Kingdom tomb. Although the text reveals little about Pepy, a streak of individualism seems to have run through his household: of the eleven relatives and servants depicted here, five have names that appear in no other works from more than three thousand years of Egyptian history. Caption: Stela of Pepy, ca. 1836–1700 B.C.E.. Limestone, 14 x 8 3/4 x 5 in. (35.6 x 22.2 x 12.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Egypt Exploration Society, 12.911.1. (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 limestone stela with engraved hieroglyphs and seated figures.
The stela features several rows of hieroglyphic inscriptions alongside depictions of seated human figures. The art style is typical of Egyptian stelas, with figures shown in a rigid, frontal perspective bordered by inscriptions. Notable features include detailed rendering of the figures' garments and accessories.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 12.911.1 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3081 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.