Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) · jewelry

Shell pendant or bead

Source of record: Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

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.

Small, oval, polished object with a central perforation or opening at the top, resembling a shell pendant/bead.

The image shows a single small artifact photographed against a plain light background. The object is elongated and oval in profile, with a smoothly polished surface and light beige to tan coloration with darker mottling or natural veining. At the upper end there appears to be a small drilled hole/opening, consistent with suspension or attachment as a pendant/bead. No carved decoration, inlays, or recognizable figures are visible. No hieroglyphic, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is present on the surface. The object’s form and material appearance are consistent with the catalogue description as a shell pendant or bead.

decorative Predynastic Period (per catalogue) good
Materials shell

Connections

Materials Shell
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.