Images

This is a painted plaster head from an Egyptian coffin-cover. The eyes were inlaid with glass. Behind the back of the head, there is a painted motif of a winged scarab and sun-disk. This portrait mask is for funerary use. From Egypt. 1st...

Pottery ostrakon identifying Themistocles, 480-460 BCE. These were used in Athens to vote a particular citizen to be exiled from the polis. (Museum of the Ancient Agora, Athens)

This is a pottery jar with black repousse. It has 2 perforated handles on its shoulder. From Badari, Egypt. Pre-Dynastic Period, Naqada III, 3200-3150 BCE. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London (with thanks to The Petrie Museum...

This is an ebony statuette of a woman holding a tray on the head of a monkey. From Thebes, 18th Dynasty, 1549-1292 BCE. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London (with thanks to The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL).

Gold-mounted alabaster pilgrim bottle. It has a silver foot and was incised with blue-filled cartouches of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II and Queen Nefertari. From Thebes, Egypt. 19th Dynasty, 1292–1189 BCE. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian...

This is a painted cream-ware pottery bowl. It was reconstructed from fragments and has a rounded base, The interior was painted with brown vine stems and leaves. The exterior surface was painted with leaf motifs between parallel sets...

Wooden cosmetic spoon in the form of an ankh. The stem was depicted as a flowering papyrus stalk held by two figures of Bes (facing inwards). There is a green-blue paste inlay. From the tomb of the governor Menena at Sedment, Egypt, 18th...

This is a red burnished globular flask with a wide mouth. The flask has been incised with decoration of horizontal bands at the neck and shoulder above an impressed design of triangles. From cemetery 300 at Meroe, Sudan. Meroitic period...

This is a pinkish pottery bottle, through which Christian pilgrims took water from the healing spring of St. Menas near Alexandria. From Alexandria, Egypt. Byzantine period, 4th to 7th centuries CE. Unpublished. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian...

This painted wooden stela depicts a man (his name is identified as Ihefy and his title was "the doorkeeper of the house of Amun") adoring the hawk-headed god Horus. Horus sits on a throne and holds a flail. There is a red and blue lotus bloom...