Palette in the Form of a Turtle (c. 3500–3050 BCE): Art, History and Details

Palette in the Form of a Turtle (c. 3500–3050 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Stone palettes were used for grinding eyepaint worn by men and women alike for cosmetic purposes and to protect against sun glare and eye infections. There were two types of eyepaint: green, made from malachite (copper ore), and black, made from galena (lead ore). Small quantities of ore are sometimes found in graves alongside the palettes.

Object facts

• Title: Palette in the Form of a Turtle
• Date: c. 3500–3050 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, Predynastic (5000–2950 BCE), Naqada IIa–IIIa (3650–3000 BCE)
• Type: Tools and Equipment
• Technique: graywacke
• Dimensions: Overall: 7.8 cm (3 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - Predynastic
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1989.47

A detail from the museum

This is an ancient makeup palette used to blend and apply cosmetics.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• E. H. T. “The Year in Review: Selections 1989.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 2 (February 1990): 38–78.
• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999

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.