This volume presents detailed results on the manufacturing technology and elemental composition of some 136 objects in the collections of six European museums, with discussion of the findings in historical and cultural contexts. The starting point was the remarkable jewellery buried with a woman and a child who lived about 1650-1550 BC at Qurna, the West Bank of ancient Thebes in Upper Egypt. The questions generated from this find led to investigation of assemblages and individual artefacts from earlier periods in varied social contexts, from the rural environment of Qau and Badari, to sites connected with urban or royal centres, such as Riqqa, Haraga and Lahun.