Ostrakon

Art Historical Context

Step into the everyday world of 7th-century Coptic Egypt with this unassuming ostrakon—a small pottery fragment, just 3⅜ x 3 inches, bearing an ink inscription. Part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Medieval Art collection (acquired through the Rogers Fund in 1912), this shard exemplifies humble ceramics repurposed for practical use. In ancient and early medieval Egypt, broken potsherds like this were ideal writing surfaces: cheap, abundant, and durable compared to costly papyrus. Ostraka were the notebooks of antiquity, scratched or inked with everything from letters and accounts to praye...