Innovation No. 54 of 77 in the book

Inlaid Jewelry

The lapis stripes on Tutankhamun's mask, cut to shape and locked into cells of gold

When

c. 1850 BCE

Dynasty

12th Dynasty

Era

Middle Kingdom

Everyone recognizes Tutankhamun's mask. The blue stripes on the headdress are not paint — each one is a piece of solid lapis lazuli, cut to shape and locked into its own gold compartment.

Goldsmiths soldered thin gold ribbons onto a gold base to make a honeycomb of tiny cells, then fitted each cell with cut lapis, turquoise or carnelian so precisely the seams almost vanish.

The earliest great example is Princess Sithathoriunet's pectoral, c. 1880 BCE — small enough to hold in your palm, holding 372 separately cut stones.

Egypt did not invent the idea of setting stones in soldered metal cells — Sumerian goldsmiths at Ur did it earlier. Egypt drove it to a precision nobody had reached, and Egypt's version is the one the world copied.

The payoff: colour that cannot fade, because it isn't pigment — it's rock. The same principle is in the hard enamel pin on a modern jacket.

Sithathoriunet's pectoral was lifted from her tomb at Lahun in 1914 and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her father was Senusret II. The design spells the king's name out in hieroglyphs — two falcons, a sun disc, and a promise of a million years. The pectorals of Princess Mereret, found at Dahshur, show the same standard of work.

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