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

Rough ware jar

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

Description

Jar, Rough ware. Predynastic Period, ca. 4500–4000 B.C. (?). Pottery. Probably from: Abadiya, Northern Upper Egypt. Excavation: EEF excavaions 1898-1899. Credit: Gift of Egypt Exploration Fund, 1899.

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 freestanding, terracotta hand-shaped jar with a narrow mouth and rounded body, photographed against a plain background.

The object is a small, rough, reddish-brown pottery jar shown upright. It has a slightly flared rim forming the mouth, a broad rounded shoulder/body, and a flat or slightly uneven base. The surface appears unglazed with visible abrasions and finger/coil-like roughness typical of utilitarian coarseware. No painted decoration or molded relief is visible. There is a small red patch or residue near the lower portion, but it is not clearly identifiable as deliberate inscription. No clear hieroglyphs or other script are legible on the vessel in the image.

daily life Predynastic Period (as in catalogue; image consistent with early coarse pottery, but period cannot be confirmed from photo alone). good
Materials potteryterracotta (clay)
Signs unknown red marks/residue

Connections

Found at Abadiya
Materials PotteryTerracotta
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.