Physician's Box
Description
Object Label: The ancient Egyptians, like their modern counterparts, suffered from eye diseases called ophthalmias that could lead to blindness. Because ophthalmias are transmitted by flies, they occur primarily in the summer when the insects are most abundant in Egypt. This box belonged to a physician who treated seasonal eye diseases. Each of the three compartments contained a powder for one of the seasons of the Egyptian year—winter, “inundation” (flood), and summer. The hieroglyphs on the exterior state that the summer powder remedied “running ophthalmia.” Caption: Physician's Box, ca. 1938–1700 B.C.E. or later. Wood (ebony?), 2 1/16 x 2 15/16 x 1 1/4 in. (5.3 x 7.5 x 3.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Theodora Wilbour, and Victor Wilbour honoring the wishes of their mother, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, as a memorial to their father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 16.77. (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 wooden board engraved with hieroglyphic inscriptions.
The artifact is a rectangular wooden board featuring well-preserved hieroglyphic inscriptions. The hieroglyphs are neatly carved into the wood and appear to cover the entire visible surface. There are symbols including birds and an eye which are common in Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The board is mounted on a stand, suggesting it might have been an educational tool or a part of a larger object.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 16.77 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3142 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.