Bead Inscribed for Treasurer Huy
Description
Object Label: Amulets In the New Kingdom, amulets represented magic in miniature form. At that time, the Egyptians frequently wore amulets proclaiming their devotion to the cult of major deities such as Thoth, god of wisdom, or Hathor, an ancient goddess associated with music and love. These charms were intended to provide protection from specific dangers. Amulets of birth-gods, for example, were believed to protect women during pregnancy and childbirth and to watch over a newborn in the first years of life. In the Eighteenth Dynasty, certain amulets began to be placed within mummy bandages to guarantee life after death. The most common included wedjat-eyes, signifying the restoration of wholeness; tyt-amulets, emblems of the goddess Isis, who restored her dead husband Osiris to life; and flowers, traditional symbols of fertility. Beads inscribed with a person’s name ensured that the memory of the individual would survive throughout eternity. So-called heart scarabs, known since the Thirteenth Dynasty, are frequently found on New Kingdom mummies. The Egyptians believed that a deceased person’s fate would be determined by weighing his or her heart against the “Feather of Truth” on a divine balance. Texts carved on heart scarabs prevented the deceased’s heart from revealing anything negative during the weighing ritual. Caption: Bead Inscribed for Treasurer Huy, ca. 1479–1390 B.C.E.. Steatite, glaze, 3/8 x 1 5/16 in. (1 x 3.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 44.123.144. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
The same text in other collections
Linked by shared inventory number
(BKM-Object 3476).
Each record below describes this same artifact or text from a different angle.
- Brooklyn 44.123.144 PNM text
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.
Photograph of a single small, vertically oriented Egyptian bead bearing incised hieroglyphs/pictographs on its visible surface.
The object appears as an elongated oval/teardrop-shaped bead with a flat(er) side facing the camera. The surface is worn and stained, with multiple carved signs arranged in stacked bands. The upper portion contains geometric signs resembling small squares/rectangles and a curved stroke; the central band includes a boxed or framed motif; the lower portion shows a larger incised form that could be a seated/standing figure-like sign or a stylized glyph. No clear royal cartouche or name box is legible in the provided image. The hieroglyphs are the only prominent markings; no Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible. The bead’s material/coloring looks like a light grey to brownish stone with patchy dark areas consistent with wear; glaze cannot be confirmed from the image alone, though the catalogue lists steatite and glaze.
Cross-references (3)
- BKM-Accession 44.123.144 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3476 tier-2
- PNM-Object pnm:83913766 tier-2 (inventory-match)
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- 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.