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

Right chest of Akhenaten prostrate with Aten cartouches

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

Description

New Kingdom, Amarna Period, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten, ca. 1352–1336 B.C. Indurated limestone. H. 13 × W. 12 × D. 9 cm (5 1/8 × 4 3/4 × 3 9/16 in.); Cartouche W. 2.2 cm (7/8 in.). From: Great Temple of the Aten, Pit outside southern wall, Amarna (Akhetaten), Middle Egypt, Egypt. Excavation: Petrie/Carter excavations, 1891–92. Credit: Gift of Edward S. Harkness, 1921.

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.

Fragment of a carved limestone “chest” element showing four vertical cartouche-like ovals with incised hieroglyphic signs, arranged in a register-like sequence.

The object appears as a broken, wedge-shaped section of a larger sculpture. On the front face there are four vertically oriented, cartouche-like frames containing incised hieroglyphic signs; the outer frames include small projecting end details, and the central larger cartouche contains more densely packed signs. The reverse/side areas are plain due to breakage and truncation. No readable full cartouches, names, Aten symbols, or deity determinatives can be confirmed from the visible detail, though the format clearly imitates royal titulary inscriptions. There is no visible Greek/Coptic/Arabic text. The style and relief placement are consistent with Amarna-period royal cartouche decoration in limestone, but the exact identification as Akhenaten prostrate with Aten cartouches cannot be securely verified from this fragment alone.

royal New Kingdom, Amarna Period (18th Dynasty, reign of Akhenaten) fragmentary
Materials indurated limestone (white)
Signs cartouche-like ovals/frames (hieroglyphic cartouches/titular frames) ×4

Connections

Deities Aten
Royals Akhenaten

Cross-references (4)

  • Wikidata-Q Q116273509 tier-1
  • Collection-QID Q160236 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
  • Inventory-Number 21.9.516 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
  • MET-Object 549640 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.