Siltstone palette decorated around the edge with incised lines. 122mm long. This has a drilled hole near the edge of one short end. There are traces of a reddish substance (ochre?) on one side. Predynastic, Naqada II-III (4000-3100BC). See C. Regner 1996. Gift from University of Wales Aberystwyth. See Needler, W. 'Predynastic and Archaic Egypt in The Brooklyn Museum' p 319-326 for further information and references. Such items would have been used to grind up minerals to make eye make-up. Some examples have traces of green malachite, a copper ore. In the later Dynastic Period, the black mineral, galena was more commonly used. While both men and women used eye make-up in ancient Egypt, it seems that cosmetic palettes such as this were more commonly placed in men's rather than women's graves (e.g. Ellis 1992; Hassan and Smith 2002). Ellis, C. 1992. A statistical analysis of the protodynastic burials in the "Valley" Cemetery of Kafr Tarkhan. In E.C.M. van den Brink (ed.) The Nile Delta in Transition: 4th-3rd Millenium BC. Tel Aviv: Israel Exploration Society 241-258. Hassan, F.A. and Smith, S.J. 2002. Soul birds and heavenly cows: Transforming gender in Predynastic Egypt. In S.M. Nelson and M. Rosen-Ayalan (eds.) In Pursuit of Gender. Worldwide Archaeological Approaches. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 43-65.