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 small, rounded shell pendant/bead with a single central perforation, photographed against a light background.
The object appears as an oval to teardrop-shaped shell piece (cream/white ground with brown mottling). A dark, circular hole passes through the center, consistent with a bead or pendant suspension opening. The surface shows natural-looking discoloration/striations and some darker patches near the lower edge. A small area of red pigment or staining is visible at the upper left rim. No clearly readable hieroglyphic, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible on the object or in the image. No deities or royal names/cartouches can be identified due to the lack of clear inscriptions or iconography.
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.