They don't know what it was for. They don't know when. Narrowed it down to 1,800 years. Unknown, Zoomorphic Stone Figure, 5th century BCE–13th century CE. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Before Julius Caesar was born, someone in Ecuador might have made this. Or it was made 1,300 years after his death. The Met's date range covers both. Ceramic. Painted. Eleven inches tall. An animal figure from a culture the museum can't precisely name. They don't know who made it.

The lions on the reverse were a heraldic device. Whoever issued this badge had lions in their coat of arms. Italian or Spanish, ca. 1300. Nobody knows which lord sent this messenger, or where he was going.

Unknown, Messenger Badge, ca. 1300. The Met.

In 1300, if you carried this badge, you could cross borders. Guards would let you pass. Lords would feed you. It was the medieval equivalent of a diplomatic passport, except made of copper, gold, and enamel, and small enough to fit in your palm.

Flip it over and the real devotion shows up.

The reverse side depicts two widows kneeling before the Virgin and Child. The Latin inscription around the rim is the opening of their prayer. This side was the private one. You held the medallion in your hands during prayer, recto facing up, then tur...

She was a widow. So she commissioned a portrait the size of a coffee saucer.

This copper medallion, 3 7/16 inches across, was made around 1530 for a noblewoman in mourning. Possibly Margaret of Lorraine, a French duchess who became a nun after her husband died. The enamel is painted, fired in la...

He died in 1894 with almost nothing. Adolphe Sax, Bass Saxtuba in E-flat, 1855. The Met.

This is one of those inventions: the saxtuba, a bass brass instrument designed for Napoleon III's military bands. It stands 51 inches tall. About four feet three inches of brass, built in Paris in 1855. French instrument makers copied his designs the moment his patents expired.

The man who invented the saxophone went bankrupt three times. Adolphe Sax spent most of his adult life in French courts, defending patents on instrument families he'd built from scratch. He won most of the cases. He still ended up broke.

Italian, Cinquedea, ca. 1500. The Met.

Wealthy Italians in 1500 wore these on the street, not the battlefield. Tucked behind the belt, handle angled left, visible to everyone who passed. This one has a horn grip and plain copper fittings. No mythological scenes. Blade: 7 5/8 inches. Weight: 8 ounces. Maker: unknown.

The blade is wider than almost any other dagger of its era. Wide enough to etch. Wide enough to show off. Smiths in Ferrara covered these with Hercules, Diana, scenes from Ovid. The wider the blade, the more art, the higher the price.

He wrote about it, lectured about it, and posed for portraits constantly. He understood that every image was an argument. The plate is 5½ by 4⅛ inches. About the size of a playing card. Samuel J. Miller, Frederick Douglass, 1847-52. The Art Institute of Chicago.

Miller, owned a portrait studio in Akron. Daguerreotypes were made on silver-coated copper plates. Each one is unique. No negatives, no copies. You're looking at the actual surface that was in the room with him. Douglass believed photography could change how Black Americans were seen.

Frederick Douglass was the most photographed American of the 19th century. Not Lincoln. Not Grant. A man born into slavery. He sat for this daguerreotype in Akron, Ohio, sometime between 1847 and 1852. He was around 30. He'd escaped slavery less than a decade earlier. The photographer, Samuel J.

The style is Egyptian, the winged sphinx a motif that traveled from the Nile delta up through the Levant and into Mesopotamia over centuries of trade. Thousands of these were found in that one well. Thousands. Unknown artist, Decorative Plaque: Winged Sphinx, 900–800 BCE. Cleveland Museum of Art.

A 7th century BC army sacked the palace, looted it, and threw what they didn't want into the pit. The plaque is about 6 inches tall. Ivory, carved around 900–800 BCE in Phoenicia, probably inlaid in furniture at the Assyrian palace of King Shalmaneser II.

Agatha Christie's husband pulled this out of a well. Sir Max Mallowan, the archaeologist she married, was excavating Nimrud in 1951 when he found thousands of these ivory carvings dumped at the bottom of a well.

They're standing next to each other the way two countries sign a treaty. The attribution has been argued over for centuries. Nobody has landed on a name that sticks. Unknown, Portrait of a Couple, c. 1580–88. Cleveland Museum of Art.

The jewels said she could afford to make that statement loudly. The man beside her carries a sword and wears slashed silk sleeves. Both of their ages are inscribed in the painting: he's 35, she's 28. We don't know their names. They're not looking at each other. They're not touching.

She's wearing a dead weasel on her hip. On purpose. In 1580s northern Italy, a marten skin dangling from a woman's waist, its head encrusted with gems, was a statement of virtue. The animal was a symbol of fidelity and loyalty in marriage.

Different workshops, different regions, different hands. It ended up together in a single matched set. The combined weight: 103 pounds of steel, leather, and craft. The horse still had to run. Unknown maker, Armor for Man and Horse, ca. 1450–1550. The Met.

The horse was carrying over 100 pounds of steel before a rider even climbed on. The shaffron, the steel face guard for the horse, is 22 inches long and weighs nearly 4 pounds on its own. Just for the face. Armor like this was built across three cultures and likely assembled over decades.

The horse carried more armor than most knights. This is a complete Islamic war kit from the late 1400s to early 1500s, Syrian, Iranian, and Turkish in origin. The man's armor weighs 31 pounds. The horse's armor weighs 72 pounds.

The men those exploits belonged to were no longer allowed to fight. Unknown artist, Hide Shirt, c. 1890. Cleveland Museum of Art.

government had confined the Lakota to reservations. The chiefs were gone. So the shirts passed to battle veterans instead. The locks of human hair running along the arms and shoulders weren't decorative. Family members donated them. Each lock represented a war exploit.

Wearing this shirt was a privilege you could lose. Among the Lakota, only head chiefs had the right to wear painted hide shirts. Not for life. You earned it through bravery and sacrifice, and you lost it if you failed your people. This one dates to around 1890. By then, the U.S.

The monastery was destroyed during the French Revolution. Claus de Werve, Mourner from the Tomb of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1364–1404), 1404–10. Cleveland Museum of Art.

Most tomb sculpture of this period was flat relief, carved into the side of a pedestal, meant to be seen at a distance. These figures stand fully in the round. They turn. They face each other. One is mid-stride. The figure is 16 inches tall. Philip's tomb now sits in a museum in Dijon.

All three were connected to the Burgundian court. Sluter and de Werve were from Haarlem. The material is vizille alabaster. It's translucent. Polishes to near-glass. Soft enough to carve cloth folds that look like they move.