Hello Anne. There are quite a few dialogues here that concern nila beads. Here's one from 2006 that turned into a somewhat heated debate.

I believe I can be rightly credited as the first bead researcher to propose that burial beads from Niger River sites in Mali are not "Roman," but rather date from the Islamic Period. As early as 1983. In 1986 I attempted to convince Lois Dubin to not place them at CE 500. But we agreed to disagree. In the meantime, when we worked on the 2009 edition of The History of Beads, they were placed at CE 1200—which would be more accurate. So eventually I convinced her. Mali beads were also described as being from the Islamic Period by Agusto Panini in his book, Middle Eastern and Venetian Glass Beads, by reference to my work in this arena, in 2008.

As I have said numerous times, reliable information about beads is readily available—but mythology and mistaken ideas get promoted faster and more widely by people who ae not informed.

I can't view the auction you posted, because the link now shows a necklace of (mainly) Mali millefiori eye beads. The image I saw previously was a strand of typical Egyptian burial beads—these being cylindrical and discoidal faience beads, and no glass beads. See the screenshot here.

Jamey