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

Situla

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

Description

Late Period – Roman Period, 600 BC–100 AD. Copper alloy. H. 11.3 × Dia. 4 cm (4 7/16 × 1 9/16 in.). From: Egypt. Credit: Gift of Darius Ogden Mills, 1904.

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.

Small, footed Egyptian copper-alloy vessel (“situla”) with an open top and a register-like band of incised figures/hieroglyphs on its body.

The image shows a compact, tapering vessel with a narrow pointed base and an open rim that flares slightly. At the top there are two raised, rounded handles or posts curving inward toward each other, forming a loop-like shape. The body is decorated with dense incised decoration that resembles hieroglyphic signs and/or standing figures arranged in horizontal segments. Some areas preserve dark green patina and lighter scraped highlights from wear. No clear cartouche is visible, and no legible Greek/Coptic/Arabic text appears. The incisions are too worn/fragmentary to reliably identify individual deities or specific named kings.

decorative Late Period – Roman Period (consistent with catalogue) good
Materials copper alloygreen patinaincised/engraved surface
Signs incised hieroglyphic-like shapes (unreadable) ×20

Connections

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.