Cleveland Museum of Art

Vulture Headdress Inlay

Date: 100–1 BCE
Medium: gold and semi-precious stones
Culture: Egypt, Greco-Roman period (332 BCE–395 CE), Ptolemaic dynasty (305–30 BCE)
Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 101378

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

The vulture headdress was worn by goddesses and queens. This inlay in the form of a vulture headdress has more than 100 stones: lapis lazuli (dark blue), turquoise (light blue), petrified wood (red), and an unidentified white stone painstakingly cut to shape and separated by thin plates of gold. Body, wing, and tail feathers are carefully distinguished in minute detail. When creating this headdress, artisans used numerous semiprecious stones with inset partitions to keep them separate. To ensure that the stones would stay in place, a resin-like material was used as an adhesive.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust
Provenance: Said to be from the "Treasure of Dendara." | -1920: Ralph H. Blanchard, Cairo, Egypt, through Howard Carter, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 1920-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Part of a LinkedCulture topic

Ancient Egyptian Glass Inlays
These objects are decorative glass and faience inlays from ancient Egypt, primarily from the Ptolemaic Dynasty and Roman Period, used for ornamentation in jewelry, architecture, and other decorative applications.
12 objects from 3 institutions