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

Inlay depicting the god Shepsi

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

Description

Inlay, god Shepsi. Late Period–Ptolemaic Period, 4th century B.C. Faience. H. 15.3 cm (6 in.); W. 10 cm (3 15/16 in.); D. 1 cm (3/8 in.). Possibly from: Hermopolis (Ashmunein; Khemenu), Middle Egypt. Credit: Rogers Fund, 1918.

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.

The image shows a standing male deity figure in a blue-green faience style, holding his hands together/at chest level, set against a rectangular base with decorative bands and inset inscriptions or motifs.

A small Egyptian deity statuette-inlay (or inlay-like figure) depicts a standing, mummiform/anthropomorphic male figure with a close-fitting wig or head covering and a tall, narrow face. The deity’s arms are bent and held forward with the hands close together. The figure wears a broad patterned garment or panel at the torso (a blue patterned field) and stands on a rectangular base. The base and lower edge feature layered decorative bands (including patterned/scale-like ornament on the main rectangular section) and a thin register near the bottom with additional small incised/painted linear markings. No clear cartouches or royal titulary are visible. The main decoration includes hieroglyph-like or schematic vertical/double-vertical motifs within the rectangular torso panel, but the text is not clear enough to read confidently.

religious Late Period–Ptolemaic Period (as given by catalogue; image style consistent with Late–Ptolemaic small divine faience objects, but exact dating not fully confirmable from image alone) good
Deities Shepsi (catalogue subject; specific iconographic confirmation not fully legible from image)
Materials faience (blue-green glaze)
Signs Unclear vertical/columnar motif(s) within the rectangular torso panel (possibly a hieroglyphic sign or decorative column; not legible)

Connections

Found at Hermopolis
Materials Faience

Cross-references (4)

  • Wikidata-Q Q116252539 tier-1
  • Collection-QID Q160236 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
  • Inventory-Number 18.2.8 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
  • MET-Object 551312 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.