This small glass fragment, catalogued in the Freer Gallery of Art's collection (acquired 1909, formally accessioned 1920), is identified as a piece of inlay work—a decorative element originally set into a larger composite surface such as furniture, a casket, or architectural paneling. Its exact Egyptian provenance is unspecified beyond a Cairo acquisition context; it entered the Western market through the collection of Giovanni Dattari, a prominent Italian numismatist and antiquities dealer based in Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fragment is consistent with a long tradition of Egyptian and Near Eastern glass inlay production spanning roughly the second millennium BC through the Roman period, during which craftsmen shaped colored glass into tessellated or fitted decorative panels. Without more precise stratigraphic data, a firm date range remains difficult to establish, though Ptolemaic or Roman-period manufacture (circa third century BC to fourth century AD) is broadly plausible given comparable material in Dattari-sourced assemblages. From a biblical-historical standpoint, glass and luxury inlay craftsmanship of this type reflect the broader material culture of Egypt and the ancient Levant that forms the backdrop of numerous scriptural passages. References to colored glass and precious inlays appear in descriptions of royal and cultic furnishings (cf. Ezekiel 27 on Tyrian trade goods; Revelation 21's imagery of translucent materials), though no direct textual connection to this specific fragment can be drawn. Its value lies in illustrating the artisanal sophistication of the region rather than in confirming any particular biblical narrative. Sources: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives (SI 189, Miscellaneous List); Smithsonian Open Access (CC0) collection record; D. Whitehouse, 'Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass' (Corning Museum, 1997) for comparative typology.
This glass inlay fragment attests the refined decorative craftsmanship of Egypt and the broader ancient Near East, providing material context for scriptural references to luxury goods and ornamental arts in the biblical world. Its provenance through a major early twentieth-century Cairo collection also illustrates the acquisition history that shaped foundational museum holdings of ancient Near Eastern material culture.