Ball Bead with the Names of Hatshepsut and the Overseer of Work Senenmut
Description
New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, Joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, ca. 1479–1458 B.C. Glass. Diam. 2 cm (13/16 in). Probably from: Upper Egypt, Thebes. Subject: Hieroglyphs. Credit: Purchase, Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1926.
The same text in other collections
Linked as the same object. Each record below describes this same artifact or text from a different angle.
- MMA 26.7.746 PNM text
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 single spherical, grayish-blue glass ball bead inscribed with incised marks that resemble horizontal lines and short hieroglyph-like strokes.
The image shows one ball bead photographed against a light background. The bead is mostly intact and evenly rounded, with surface wear and scattered dark specks/imperfections. Across the visible face there is a band of shallow, incised linear/curvilinear strokes arranged in a way that could be decorative or pseudo-hieroglyphic; no clearly readable cartouche or full name is distinctly legible at this resolution. No associated strings, mounting, or other components are visible. The overall appearance (translucent/opaque glass with weathering) matches the catalogued material as glass, though the exact inscription content cannot be confidently transcribed.
Cross-references (1)
- PNM-Object pnm:83915905 tier-2 (inventory-match)
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.