Shebyu collar

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{{Italic title|string=Shebyu}}

File:Shebiu Necklace of Amenhotep MET LC-36 3 154 EGDP026321.jpg beads from the burial of Amenhotep]]

The shebyu collar is an ancient Egyptian necklace composed of one or more strands of disc beads. Collars specifically called shebyu by the ancient Egyptians are the two-stranded kind given to officials as part of a royal reward. However, the term is used in Egyptology to refer to any necklace composed of lenticular or disc beads regardless of the material.{{sfn|Brand|2006|p=17}}

The first mention of a shebyu collar comes from the tomb of Ahmose-Pennekhbet, in the reign of Ahmose I, who mentions the king gave him a collar as part of a royal reward. It is commonly depicted in art from the reign of Thutmose III onward in the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty.{{sfn|Brand|2006|p=18}} They are often depicted as being yellow (made of gold) but are occasionally multi-coloured, which matches some known examples.{{sfn|Brand|2006|p=20}}

The earliest physical example of a necklace thought to be a shebyu collar comes from the grave of the Qurna Queen, a woman of the Seventeenth Dynasty buried at Dra' Abu el-Naga'. Her collar is of four strands of gold rings. The earliest known shebyu of lenticular beads was discovered on the body of the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty foreman Kha, who was buried in TT8.{{sfn|Brand|2006|p=18}} His collar is only a single strand of large beads, leading to the suggestion that it may represent only the outermost strand.{{sfn|Binder|2008|p=43}} Tutankhamun was buried with several shebyu collars. The ones he wore in life are single stranded but were probably worn in pairs; his gold mask was equipped with a triple stranded example. Three and five stranded collars come from the burial of Psusennes I at Tanis.{{sfn|Brand|2006|pp=18-19}}