Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · seal

Stamp Seal of Meru the 'Answerer of Horus [the King]'

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, acc. 36.837. Public domain (CC0). Copy archived by egyptianinscriptions.org with attribution; original at the holding institution.

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Accession: 36.837
Find spot: Egypt, Egypt approx. site location
Period: Middle Kingdom
Dynasty: late Dynasty 12
Date: ca. 1838–1759 B.C.E.
Date range: 1838 BCE – 1759 BCE
Materials: ['Steatite', 'glaze']
Height: 4.0 cm
Width: 2.2 cm
Repository: Brooklyn Museum
At source: View original →

Cite & export

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Stamp Seal of Meru the 'Answerer of Horus [the King]' (36.837). Egyptian Inscriptions Database. https://egyptianinscriptions.org/object/30662

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Description

Object Label: Like many cylinder seals, Middle Kingdom stamp seals such as this one belonged to high-ranking government officials and had the name and titles of the owner incised on the flat bottom. Artists carved miniature sculptures of humans or animals on the backs of these elite seals. Caption: Stamp Seal of Meru the 'Answerer of Horus [the King]', ca. 1838–1759 B.C.E.. Steatite, glaze, 1 9/16 x 7/8 x 13/16 in. (4 x 2.2 x 2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 36.837. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

The same text in other collections

Linked by shared inventory number (BKM-Object 3413). Each record below describes this same artifact or text from a different angle.

Brooklyn 36.837 PNM text

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 small stamp seal showing a seated/standing human or deity-like figure on a base with an applied band of hieroglyphic signs across the lower register.

The image shows a compact, dark brown/black object viewed from above at slight angle. The central motif appears as a figure seated or standing on a rectangular base; the head and torso are modeled in relief/3D carving. A horizontal band of incised or relief signs wraps across the lower portion of the seal. Some colors (blue/green) are visible in the figure and along the base, suggesting traces of glaze or pigment. The hieroglyphs are present but too small/blurred in the provided image to reliably read individual signs or count them with confidence. No cartouche is clearly legible.

royal Middle Kingdom (per catalogue ground truth; specific reading cannot be confirmed from image). good

Deities unknown (figure may represent Horus-related figure, but not legible)

Royals unknown

Materials dark stone (likely steatite; per catalogue)traces of glaze/pigment (blue/green)

Signs unknown hieroglyphic signs (incised/relief band) ×5

Connections

Deities Horus

Cross-references (3)

BKM-Accession 36.837 tier-2
BKM-Object 3413 tier-2
PNM-Object pnm:83892745 tier-2 (inventory-match)

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.