A rare Egyptian Breccia Bead Necklace, Middle Kingdom, ca. 2040 - 1783 BCE

The barrel-shaped bead is carved from fine speckled brown breccia, an extremely unusual medium for Egyptian beads!

This type of bead became part of the essential personal adornments for funerary rituals during the Middle Kingdom. Hung around the neck or on the breast of the deceased, such beads were initially worn singularly on a cord tied closely to the throat or flanked either end by a round or cylindrical bead of green faience or feldspar.

Dimensions: Bead length: 3/8 inch (0.95 cm). Strung on an 18K gold chain with an adjustable length of up to 18 inches.

Condition: Intact and in excellent condition overall.

Provenance: Private collection of Lady Gloria Dale (1922 - 2013 ), Lady Gloria Dale, artist, British crafts patron, and wife of the late Sir William Dale, died December 18th in a hospice in Hampstead, London. She was 91. She and Sir William, a leading British Commonwealth lawyer and instructor in legislative drafting and international law, married in 1966. Lady Dale, who resided in Lincoln"s Inn for the past 20 years, began a crafts career in her late 20s in Washington DC where she first made award-winning, artist-designed hand-tufted rugs that were exhibited in America (including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City), Italy and England during the 1960s. After she and Sir William returned to London from eight years of living in Beirut Lebanon in the early 1970s, she began to design jewelry using antique beads she collected throughout the Middle East. She later donated a collection of those antique beads to the British Museum.