Faience shabti of Sety I
From the tomb of Sety I, Valley of the Kings,
Egypt
19th Dynasty, around 1290 BC
Upper part of a blue faience funerary
figure
Shabti figures first became part of the Egyptian funerary
tradition in the Middle Kingdom (about 2040-1750 BC). A number of
royal examples are known from the New Kingdom (about 1550-1070 BC),
the earliest of which is that of Ahmose, now also in the British
Museum; there were of course several hundred in the tomb of
Tutankhamun. No shabti has been found in the tombs of any
subsequent kings until Sety I (1294-1279 BC), in whose tomb the
remains of hundreds were found. Many of these shabti were
of wood, and some were crudely shaped; it is said that visitors to
the tomb after its discovery by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817 lit them
for use as torches. This is one of the finest of the many faience
shabti found there.
The figure wears the nemes head-dress of a king,
emphasized by the cobra on his brow. The identity of the object as
a shabti is made clear by the hoes which the figure holds,
and the presence of the 'shabti spell', the text from the
Book of the Dead, which indicates that the shabti
must do the work that its owner is expected to do in the Afterlife.
This text and the details of the figure have been painted in black
and applied prior to firing.
F.D. Friedman (ed.), Gifts of the Nile: ancient Egy (London, Thames and Hudson, 1998)