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

Sealing

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

Description

Middle Kingdom, Dynasty 12–13, ca. 1981–1640 B.C. Mud. From: Cemetery, Lisht North, Memphite Region, Egypt. Excavation: MMA excavations, 1920–22. Credit: Rogers Fund and Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1922.

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 roughly oval lump of mud with impressed or incised linear markings and a band of hieroglyph-like signs on one face, consistent with a small Middle Kingdom sealing impression.

The object appears as a thick, irregular, oval fragment of mud. One side shows a horizontal register or band containing a sequence of vertical strokes and curved elements that resemble hieroglyphic signs, along with additional linear/striated marks near the top. The edges are worn and the surface is abraded, suggesting it is a fragment of a sealing rather than a complete stamped cylinder/seal. No clear animal, human, or deity figure is visible—only sign-like marks. No modern labels or non-Egyptian scripts are visible. The material surface and the presence of sign impressions support the museum catalogue’s attribution to a mud sealing from the Middle Kingdom (Lisht North).

hieroglyphic only Middle Kingdom (based on catalogue ground truth; specific reign unclear from image) fragmentary
Materials mud
Signs Unclear hieroglyphic sign(s) in a horizontal band (likely a sealing name/formula) ×6

Connections

Found at Lisht
Materials Mud
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.