OpenGlyph — Catalogue of the American Public DomainJurisdiction: United StatesRev. 2026.08
Images / art

Two archives, queried live.

Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 14 shown for “Papyrus fragment with a painting of Khepri, Shu, Tefnut, Thoth, and Isis in a solar boat” — 42 records examined, 22 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-03 23:15 UTC · fetched live for this request

Object
Public domainThe Met’s isPublicDomain field is true for this object.
CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian’s metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Not shownAnything failing its archive’s rights field is dropped server-side and never appears here.
Papyrus fragment with a painting of Khepri, Shu, Tefnut, Thoth, and Isis in a solar boat

Papyrus fragment with a painting of Khepri, Shu, Tefnut, Thoth, and Isis in a solar boat

Artist not stated in the record · 664 BCE or later

Public domainThe Met
Fragment

Fragment

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1811

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Stela of Ameny and his Wife Inet-Hapy

Stela of Ameny and his Wife Inet-Hapy

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1504–1396 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Textile

Textile

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1845

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Rade de Cherbourg (Port of Cherbourg)

Rade de Cherbourg (Port of Cherbourg)

Artist not stated in the record · 1780s

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Coverlet fragments

Coverlet fragments

Artist not stated in the record · 1840

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Fragment

Fragment

Artist not stated in the record · 1820–30

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Fragment of a Design for a Nef, or Fantastic Centerpiece in the Form of A Boat

Fragment of a Design for a Nef, or Fantastic Centerpiece in the Form of A Boat

Artist not stated in the record · 1600

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
'Egyptian' Pattern Berry Spoon, by Whiting Manufacturing Company, 1866 – 1926

'Egyptian' Pattern Berry Spoon

Whiting Manufacturing Company, 1866 – 1926 · ca. 1875

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge, by Thomas Cole, born Bolton-le-Moors, England 1801-died Catskill, NY 1848

The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge

Thomas Cole, born Bolton-le-Moors, England 1801-died Catskill, NY 1848 · 1829

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Fragment of inlay: a papyrus capital

Fragment of inlay: a papyrus capital

Artist not stated in the record · 1307-1196 BCE

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Panel

Panel

Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Untitled (moon over a harbor, wharf scene with full moon and masts of boats), by Edward Mitchell Bannister, born St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada 1828-died Providence, RI 1901

Untitled (moon over a harbor, wharf scene with full moon and masts of boats)

Edward Mitchell Bannister, born St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada 1828-died Providence, RI 1901 · ca. 1868

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Fragment

Fragment

Artist not stated in the record · early 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
What was queried

Where these records came from.

Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.

  • The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field: isPublicDomain. 2 matched · 2 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.2 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 7484862 matched · 40 examined · 22 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.12 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-03 23:15 UTC, during this request. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.

Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.

An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.