Scale from Armor

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although bronze and iron scales have been found in Egypt, body armor—a foreign import—was probably not commonly worn there. Two sets of armor appear in a presentation scene in the tomb of Kenamun at Thebes, and a cuirass of leather scales was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. The ten scales (11.215.452a-j) were excavated from the palace of Amenhotep III, but their position, embedded in an enclosure wall, does not allow us to speculate as to who might have worn them. The scales would have been sewn to a linen or leather backing. Although they vary, they still might have constituted the same armor.

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art