Shell pendant or bead
Description
Pendant, shell. Predynastic Period, ca. 3850–2960 B.C. Shell. From: Egypt. Credit: Gift of Bashford Dean, 1916.
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 close-up of a small, rounded shell object resembling a pendant or bead, with a smooth exterior showing concentric growth lines.
The image shows a single, roughly oval-to-circular shell piece photographed against a plain light background. The shell surface is tan to light brown and displays clear, shallow concentric ridges/growth lines running across the visible face. A small darker spot and minor surface wear/patina are visible. Near the upper-left edge there are traces of reddish material that could be old pigment, staining, or residual adhesive, but no definite carved pattern is clearly visible. There is no visible suspension hole, stringing, or attachment hardware in this view. No legible hieroglyphs, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text are apparent. No cartouches or royal names are visible.
Connections
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.