Object Image

Gold necklace with crescent-shaped pendant

Some styles of Roman jewelry were both very long-lived and used throughout the Empire. The wheel-shaped finials and the crescent pendant, symbolic of the sun and moon, that decorate this necklace are found in jewelry from a hoard found in Britain dated to the mid-second century and in depictions on Roman mummy portraits from Egypt.

Credit: Rogers Fund, 1921

1st–3rd century A.D.
Gold
36.8 x 36.8cm
21.88.90
Image and text © Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018

Where you'll find this

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Permanent collection