
08/19/2025
From the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt, this golden bracelet dates to around 1323 BCE, during the Eighteenth Dynasty. It was one of the treasures sealed within the boy-king’s burial chamber, crafted as both an adornment and a talisman for the afterlife, ensuring protection and divine favor.
The bracelet is fashioned from solid gold, richly decorated with intricate geometric patterns in repoussé and granulation. At its center rests a polished stone framed by two protective falcons, their beaks poised as guardians of the king’s soul. The workmanship reveals the mastery of New Kingdom artisans, who combined symbolic iconography with refined technique. Its preservation across three millennia offers scholars rare insight into royal jewelry, funerary rites, and the symbolic language of Egyptian belief.
Beyond its material beauty, the bracelet reflects the paradox of power and fragility: a delicate ornament designed to shield eternity. The entwined gold and stone embody the unity of earth and divinity, permanence and mortality. In its silent gleam, one senses not just the wealth of a pharaoh, but the human longing to carry protection and memory into the uncharted realms beyond death.