Amulet Atlas

organizationsThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

also: the Met · Metropolitan Museum

organizationNorth AmericaUnited States of America

New York museum founded in 1870, holding about 1.5 million works across seventeen curatorial departments. Its Egyptian department runs to more than 26,000 pieces, almost all of them on display across forty galleries, and almost half of those came out of the museum's own excavations between 1906 and 1941. Since 2017 every image of a public-domain work in the collection has carried a CC0 dedication.

cited

When

1870 to the present still carried cited

Period1870 to now
How the date is knowntextual — a dated text describes it
NoteAct of incorporation 13 April 1870; the first portion of the Fifth Avenue building was built in 1880.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The story

The New York State Legislature incorporated the museum on 13 April 1870; an 1893 act required that the collections be kept open and accessible free of charge throughout the year. The Egyptian holdings began as private collections and were then built by digging: the excavation seasons from 1906 to 1941 supply almost half the current collection, which is why a Met amulet more often has a find-spot than a bought one does.

The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, opened in 1982 around Nelson Rockefeller's gift of more than 3,000 pieces, holds over 11,000 works from sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific and the Americas. The museum's own account notes what changed with that wing: the material was now shown as art, in a Western art museum, where before objects from those regions had been treated as ethnographic work.

The acquisition record is contested and documented. The Euphronios Krater, bought with deaccession proceeds under Thomas Hoving, proved to be looted and went back to Italy in 2006. In September 2022 New York law enforcement seized 27 objects on three warrants for return to Italy and Egypt; in March 2023 fifteen more tied to Subhash Kapoor; in December 2023 the museum announced the return of fourteen Khmer sculptures to Cambodia and two to Thailand. In April 2023 ProPublica reported on the museum's Indigenous American holdings and on a loan-versus-own distinction that kept objects outside the reach of NAGPRA, since objects on loan do not trigger the repatriation process. The museum has since issued a statement on collecting practices and hired a provenance-research manager with a team of three.

cited

Now

The Open Access initiative began at the start of 2017. In the museum's own words six months in: "It's been six months since the Met launched its Open Access initiative, which made available all 375,000+ images of public-domain works in the Met collection under Creative Commons Zero (CC0)." Open access images and data have since been viewed over 1.2 billion times with over 7 million downloads. CC0 is on Wikimedia Commons' accepted list, so a Met amulet photograph can be hosted, reused and altered here with no permission sought. The dedication covers the museum's images of public-domain works; it says nothing about who the objects belong to.

cited

What is on record about it

What this is near

placeThe Egyptian galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Artthe forty rooms inside it this atlas sends a reader tocarriesWedjat eyeheld here and photographed here, under a licence that lets this atlas reproduce the photographcarriesScarabanother Egyptian class the 1906–1941 excavations supplied with find-spots attachedorgWikimedia Commonswhere its CC0 images can legally live, which is why Met pictures turn up across this atlascontrastThe British Museumthe comparison case: a similar collection published under a non-commercial licence insteadorgThe Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Actthe US law its Indigenous American holdings were reported in 2023 to have sat outside, via loans rather than ownershipstoryFree to usethe long read on licensing; CC0 here is the case that worksstoryWho owns a charmthe long read on ownership, where seizures and returns since 2006 are the evidence

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

orgThe Egyptian galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Artthe institution these rooms sit in, and the licence that lets this atlas show its photographscontrastThe British Museumthe comparison case: the same kind of collection, released under CC0 insteadcontrastThe Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Actthe museum reported in 2023 to have held Indigenous American objects on loan rather than owning them, which kept them outside this ActorgWikimedia Commonsthe collection whose CC0 release clears this bar, which is why Met photographs run through these records

Where this came from

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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