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Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) · other

Model ax

Source of record: Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Middle Kingdom, Dynasty 12, ca. 1981–1802 B.C. Copper, wood, animal hide. l. 5.7 cm (2 1/4 in). From: Tomb of Ankhef (Tomb 9), Asyut (Lykopolis), Middle Egypt, Egypt. Excavation: Khashaba excavations. Credit: Gift of Edward S. Harkness, 1917.

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.

Photograph of a small Egyptian implement resembling an ax: a long wooden handle attached to a rounded dark metal blade head with a cord/binding around the join.

The object is shown isolated against a light background. A straight, cylindrical wooden handle extends horizontally to the left. At the right end, the handle enters a rounded, shield-like head/blade element; the head surface appears dark brown to black with reddish-orange corrosion or patination. Several turns of a braided cord or leather thong are wrapped tightly around the junction, securing the head to the handle; a small flap/loose binding is visible on the top-left of the head. Near the binding on the head there is a small vertical mark with legible characters that look like an Arabic-Indic numeral or letter form, but the text is too unclear to transcribe reliably. No clear Egyptian hieroglyphs, cartouches, or royal names are visible. No deities are depicted.

decorative Middle Kingdom (per catalogue ground truth; image does not provide sufficient secure stylistic/date indicators) good
Materials woodmetal (likely copper/bronze based on patina; exact alloy uncertain)cord/animal hide binding (consistent with catalogue)
Signs ambiguous short non-Egyptian mark (possibly Arabic-Indic numeral or letter), not reliably transcribable

Connections

Found at Asyut (Lykopolis)
Materials Wood

Cross-references (4)

  • Wikidata-Q Q116281789 tier-1
  • Collection-QID Q160236 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
  • Inventory-Number 17.9.16 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
  • MET-Object 546207 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access).
  • 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.