
Amulet Plaque
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Thirty-two amuletic images are chased into this nearly rectangular piece of gold sheet. Two holes at its top corners may have been intended for a string, possibly used to place the object around the neck of a deceased person. Small individual gold amulets with the depiction of an object or a deity are numerous and were often made out of stamped gold foil and placed on Late Period and Ptolemaic mummies. However, relatively large golden amulet plaques with multiple images, such as this piece, are very rare. For more information, please see the curatorial interpretation below.
Egyptian Art
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
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.