Jar Lid with Human Face
Description
Object Label: The absence of any trace of shoulders indicates that this limestone head was never part of a complete sculpture. It probably served as the lid of a canopic jar, a vessel containing a corpse’s vital organs that were removed during mummification. The artist who carved this face followed the dominant style of mid-Twelfth Dynasty, including full, fleshy cheeks, wide open eyes with a high, arcing upper lid, and an overall sense of serenity. Caption: Jar Lid with Human Face, ca. 1876–1837 B.C.E.. Limestone, 4 × 4 7/16 × 4 1/16 in. (10.2 × 11.2 × 10.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Christos G. Bastis and Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 87.78. (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 carved limestone head depicting an Egyptian male figure with a nemes headdress.
The artifact is a finely carved limestone sculpture depicting the head of an Egyptian man. The figure is wearing a nemes headdress, which is intricately detailed with lines to represent pleats. The facial features are well-defined, with a serene expression and a prominent false beard indicating royal or divine status. The style and craftsmanship suggest an emphasis on symmetry and idealized facial features typical of ancient Egyptian art.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 87.78 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3924 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.