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

Cowroid Stamp Seal with a Nefer Hieroglyph on the Base

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

Description

Cowroid, nefer. New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1390–1352 B.C. Faience. L. 1.5 cm (9/16 in). From: Palace of Amenhotep III, Malqata, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Egypt. Excavation: MMA excavations, 1910–11. Subject: Hieroglyphs. 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.

An oval, glossy faience stamp seal with a raised hieroglyph-like form on one face.

The image shows a small, oval amuletic/cylinder-stamp type object viewed frontally. The surface is glossy and speckled, consistent with glazed faience, and the color varies between greenish-blue and darker green with lighter streaks and patches from wear. On the central area of the face there is a vertical, raised motif resembling a single hieroglyph or sign on the seal face; surrounding background is smoother and less raised. No clear cartouche, royal name, deity figure, or additional text is legible at this resolution. The underside/base is not clearly shown, and the specific shape described by the catalogue as “Nefer” on the base cannot be confirmed definitively from the provided single view. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible.

decorative New Kingdom (per catalogue) good
Materials faience (glazed, speckled surface)
Signs Single vertical raised hieroglyph-like form (exact sign unclear)
Visible text "Exact reading unclear; a raised single sign/hieroglyph is visible on the face/base area."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

Exact reading unclear; a raised single sign/hieroglyph is visible on the face/base area.

Connections

Found at Malqata
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.