Fragment of a Queen's Face
Artist unknown
1340 BC · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Only the mouth and chin survive, in honey-yellow jasper, and the break seems to concentrate the thing rather than diminish it.
★ 5.6
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
The Seated Scribe
Artist unknown
2500 BC · Louvre, Paris
His eyes are inlaid with rock crystal and copper, and unlike a pharaoh he was given a soft chest and a desk worker's belly.
★ 7.7
Bust of Nefertiti
1345 BC · Neues Museum, Berlin
One eye is inlaid and the other left blank, which suggests the bust was a master model kept in the sculptor's workshop at Amarna.
★ 9.4
Mask of Tutankhamun
Artist unknown
1323 BC · Grand Egyptian Museum, Giza
Eleven kilograms of gold inlaid with lapis and carnelian, lifted by Howard Carter from the innermost of three coffins in 1925.
★ 9.6