Fragment of an Inlay Headdress (c. 1353–1295 BCE): Art, History and Details

Fragment of an Inlay Headdress (c. 1353–1295 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This fragment is part of the curled headdress of an inlay figure, probably of a queen, assembled of various materials fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The front part of the headdress (directly over the forehead) is to the left, followed by the ear tab and part of the cutout above the ear. The luster of the faience is marvelously preserved. Blue, primarily associated with lapis lazuli, was an appropriate color for kings' and gods' hair and was part of the apparatus signaling them as otherworldly beings.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment of an Inlay Headdress
• Date: c. 1353–1295 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: lavender blue faience with deep blue overglaze
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.7 x 7.7 x 2.8 cm (2 5/8 x 3 1/16 x 1 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - New Kingdom
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1920.1976

A detail from the museum

It has been suggested that this fragment was part of a headdress that belonged to a queen. The fine, carved details of this headdress attest to the great skill of its maker and the luster of the blue lapis lazuli faience would have been appropriate for Egyptian royalty.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cooney, John D. “Amarna Art in the Cleveland Museum.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 1 (January 1968): 2–17.
• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999
• Vandenbeusch, Marie, Aude Semat, and Margaret Maitland. Pharaoh: King of Ancient Egypt. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art ; London : The British Museum, 2016.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.