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

Mud jar sealing

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

Description

Sealing, jar. Predynastic, Late Naqada III–Early Dynastic Period, ca. 3200–2650 B.C. Clay, mud. From: Tomb 414, Tarkhan, Fayum Entrance Area, Egypt. Excavation: BSAE excavations 1911-1913. Credit: Gift of The Egyptian Research Account and British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1912.

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 broken, irregular lump of mud/clay with impressed and abraded incised marks that likely relate to sealing or impressions from a container.

The artifact appears as a compact, irregular fragment of brownish mud/clay. Across its surface there are shallow, discontinuous impressions/incised lines forming clustered marks; however, the patterns are too eroded and partial to confidently read as specific hieroglyphs or a coherent inscription. No clear cartouche, royal name, deity emblem, or fully preserved seal device is visible. The piece is thick and uneven, consistent with a sealing material fragment that has been broken during excavation or later handling.

funerary Predynastic, Late Naqada III–Early Dynastic (as catalogued); exact dating uncertain from image alone. fragmentary
Materials mudclay

Connections

Found at Tarkhan
Materials ClayMud
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.