Shebyu collar
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The shebyu collar is an ancient Egyptian necklace composed of one or more strands of disc beads. Collars specifically called shebyu by the ancient Egyptians are the two-stranded kind given to officials as part of a royal reward. However, the term is used in Egyptology to refer to any necklace composed of lenticular or disc beads regardless of the material.[1]
The first mention of a shebyu collar comes from the tomb of Ahmose-Pennekhbet, in the reign of Ahmose I, who mentions the king gave him a collar as part of a royal reward. It is commonly depicted in art from the reign of Thutmose III onward in the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty.[2] They are often depicted as being yellow (made of gold) but are occasionally multi-coloured, which matches some known examples.[3]
The earliest physical example of a necklace thought to be a shebyu collar comes from the grave of the Qurna Queen, a woman of the Seventeenth Dynasty buried at Dra' Abu el-Naga'. Her collar is of four strands of gold rings. The earliest known shebyu of lenticular beads was discovered on the body of the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty foreman Kha, who was buried in TT8.[2] His collar is only a single strand of large beads, leading to the suggestion that it may represent only the outermost strand.[4] Tutankhamun was buried with several shebyu collars. The ones he wore in life are single stranded but were probably worn in pairs; his gold mask was equipped with a triple stranded example. Three and five stranded collars come from the burial of Psusennes I at Tanis.[5]
Citations
[edit]- ^ Brand 2006, p. 17.
- ^ a b Brand 2006, p. 18.
- ^ Brand 2006, p. 20.
- ^ Binder 2008, p. 43.
- ^ Brand 2006, pp. 18–19.
References
[edit]- Binder, Susanne (2008). The Gold of Honour in New Kingdom Egypt. Oxford: Aris and Phillips. ISBN 978-0-85668-899-7.
- Brand, Peter (2006). "The Shebyu-Collar in the New Kingdom Part I". Studies in Memory of Nicholas B. Millet (Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities). 33: 17–28. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
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