Glass bead

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These beads probably belong to a type known as Nuzi beads, named after the site of Nuzi (present-day Yorgan Tepe, Iraq) where similar examples were discovered in the 1920s. Others have been found at sites across the ancient Near East, as well as at the Hittite capital of Hattusa (present-day Bogazkale, Turkey) and Mycenae in Greece. Made in the same mold, these two beads are the only known examples of this type from Cyprus.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art