Broad collar
Medium:Multicolored glazed composition (faience)
Geography: Excavated at Harageh, Egypt
Date: c. 1985-1773 BC
Period: 12th Dynasty, Middle Kingdom
Dimensions:(H x W x D x L): 30.9 × 37.5 × 0.5 × 78 cm
Object number: 910.81.8
Gallery Location:Galleries of Africa: Egypt
Description
One of the most characteristic forms of Egyptian jewellery is the broad collar or weskhet. Such collars are seen on statues and in tomb-paintings from the end of the Third Dynasty. Both men and women wore them, in life and in the tomb. When worn in life, the heavy necklaces often required a counterpoise at the back, but they were simply laid over the shoulders and breast of the dead.
This weskhet collar was made from beads obtained by Currelly at the middle Kingdom cemetery of Harageh, close to el-Lahun. It was restrung in the museum during the last century. The faience cylinder beads are made of red, blue, green and white which might have been more vivid when new, almost four thousand years ago.
