Stringing and Drilling Beads, Tomb of Rekhmire

Stringing and Drilling Beads, Tomb of Rekhmire

Nina de Garis Davies

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The two men depicted in this facsimile are copied from a scene in the painted tomb chapel of Vizier Rekhmire, the highest official in the government of the pharaohs Thutmose III and Amenhotep II. The men are making goods in the workshop of the Amun temple. The one on the left is stringing a beaded collar, a finished example of which is displayed nearby. Considering the collar’s color, it was probably made from faience beads. Using a bow drill, the man on the right is drilling holes in disks to manufacture stone beads. In Egyptian workshops, different type of crafts were manufactured within the same space.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Stringing and Drilling Beads, Tomb of RekhmireStringing and Drilling Beads, Tomb of RekhmireStringing and Drilling Beads, Tomb of RekhmireStringing and Drilling Beads, Tomb of RekhmireStringing and Drilling Beads, Tomb of Rekhmire

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.