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

Lower Half of Kohl Tube

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

Description

Kohl tube, Tiye. New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1390–1352 B.C. Faience. H. 6.5 cm (2 9/16 in), Diam. 2 cm (13/16 in). From: South Village, Malqata, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Egypt. Excavation: MMA excavations, 1910–11. Credit: Rogers Fund, 1911.

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 small cylindrical Egyptian faience object, likely the lower portion of a kohl tube, decorated with a blue painted emblem or hieroglyphic sign on the exterior.

The image shows a vertically oriented, rounded cylindrical tube fragment with a thick, glazed yellow-beige surface and a darker blue painted design framed by a blue rectangular border. The design includes a stylized glyph-like figure at the upper area and additional blue signs beneath; the exact reading is unclear. No full inscriptions, cartouches, or Greek/Coptic/Arabic text are visible in the provided view. The lower end appears plain and uninscribed compared with the decorated upper band. Overall surface glaze and blue pigment are consistent with faience decoration.

decorative New Kingdom (as catalogued) good
Materials faience (glazed, yellow-beige)blue pigment/paint
Signs Painted hieroglyph-like signs/emblem (unreadable) ×2
Visible text "Unclear blue painted hieroglyphic signs inside a rectangular border (exact transcription not possible from image)."

Connections

Found at Malqata
Materials Faience

Cross-references (4)

  • Wikidata-Q Q116252697 tier-1
  • Collection-QID Q160236 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
  • Inventory-Number 11.215.508 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
  • MET-Object 551236 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.