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.
Photograph of a single small, rounded shell item resembling a pendant/bead, shown against a plain light background.
The object is photographed from above/straight-on. It has a smooth, rounded, teardrop-to-oval form with a pale tan to light brown surface consistent with shell. No drilled hole, suspension loop, or attachment element is clearly visible in this image. There are no readable hieroglyphs, cartouches, or other markings visible on the surface; a reddish speck/mark is visible near the upper-left edge, but it is unclear whether it is modern residue or part of the object. The surface shows subtle mottling/striations typical of shell material and minor wear.
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.