OpenGlyph — Catalogue of the American Public DomainJurisdiction: United StatesRev. 2026.08
Images / art

Two archives, queried live.

Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 17 shown for “Carnelian engraved scarab” — 64 records examined, 35 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-28 14:19 UTC · fetched live for this request

Object
Public domainThe Met’s isPublicDomain field is true for this object.
CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian’s metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Not shownAnything failing its archive’s rights field is dropped server-side and never appears here.
Carnelian engraved scarab

Carnelian engraved scarab

Artist not stated in the record · late 7th–early 6th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Seal

Seal

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1840

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Set of jewelry

Set of jewelry

Artist not stated in the record · early 5th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Snuff bottle

Snuff bottle

Artist not stated in the record · 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · early 4th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Scarab Beetle

Scarab Beetle

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · late 6th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Scarab Beetle

Scarab Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1967

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Carnelian scaraboid

Carnelian scaraboid

Artist not stated in the record · early 5th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Tumble Bug, Scarab Beetle, Scarab Beetle

Tumble Bug, Scarab Beetle, Scarab Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1937

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · 5th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · 4th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · late 6th–early 5th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · 4th–3rd century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · 3rd century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · 3rd century BCE

Public domainThe Met
Carnelian scarab

Carnelian scarab

Artist not stated in the record · early 5th century BCE

Public domainThe Met
What was queried

Where these records came from.

Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.

  • The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field: isPublicDomain. 293 matched · 24 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.12 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 198028 matched · 40 examined · 35 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.5 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-08-28 14:19 UTC, during this request. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.

Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.

An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.