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Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · statue

Palette with Double Bird Head

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Object Label: Egyptians rubbed palettes like these with small pebbles to grind green or black pigment for eye paint. These cosmetics accentuated the eyes and protected against sun glare and infection. Eye paint palettes were also thought to provide magical protection, which could be enhanced by giving them animal shapes such as the three examples shown here. The palettes were important possessions that were often buried with their owners. Caption: Palette with Double Bird Head, ca. 3300–3000 B.C.E.. Graywacke, shell, faience, limestone, garnet, 4 5/8 x 8 7/8 in. (11.8 x 22.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 09.889.161. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

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 gray stone palette shaped like a heart/teardrop with bird-head terminals: two projecting bird heads at the top and a central notch between them.

The object is a predynastic-style cosmetic palette carved from a dark gray stone. The top edge forms two small bird heads facing outward, separated by a shallow V-shaped indentation; each bird head has a small drilled/raised “eye” in a lighter spot. The body is smooth and minimally worked, with no clear raised pigment well or incised decoration visible in this view. The overall form matches a “double bird head” palette in silhouette. No readable hieroglyphic, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible, and no cartouche or royal name can be identified. Visible materials in the image appear to be only gray stone; no shell, faience, limestone, or garnet inlay is clearly discernible from the photograph.

decorative Predynastic Period, late Naqada II–Naqada III (per catalogue), visually consistent with a predynastic bird-headed cosmetic palette. good
Materials gray stone (likely graywacke)

Connections

Found at Edfu

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 09.889.161 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 3268 tier-2
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.