Earring (New Kingdom, mid- to late Dynasty 18, about 1400–1295 BCE): Artwork and History

Earring (New Kingdom, mid- to late Dynasty 18, about 1400–1295 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Egyptian.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

An Ancient Egyptian craftsman created this earring by first softening green glass with heat and bending it around a rod. They then fused a twisted cane of white-and-blue glass to the main body of the earring. Though a portion of this piece has broken off, originally this earring would have had two loops at the top that allowed the wearer to string a wire through and hang it from their pierced ear. This particular style was popular during the New Kingdom (about 1550–1069 BCE), when Egyptian men, women, and children of all social classes wore earrings made from glass, precious metals, or stone.

Object facts

• Title: Earring
• Date: New Kingdom, mid- to late Dynasty 18, about 1400–1295 BCE
• Artist attribution: Egyptian
• Place of origin: Egypt
• Medium: Glass
• Dimensions: 2.7 × 2.3 × 0.6 cm (1 1/8 × 15/16 × 1/4 in.)
• Type: Costume and Accessories
• Department: Arts of Africa
• Reference number: 1894.921

Collection credit

Gift of Henry H. Getty and Charles L. Hutchinson

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.