Shabti box of Hor

From the tomb of the priest Hor, probably at Deir el-Bahari, Thebes, Egypt
25th Dynasty, around 680 BC

The lid of this rectangular shabti box is lost. The exterior of the box was prepared to receive paint with a layer of plaster. The decoration consists of columns of inscription. It was applied in blue paint on a background of white. This combination of colours was popular on funerary equipment and was used, for example, on coffins of the Middle Kingdom (about 2040-1750 BC), like that of Sebekhetepi, also in the British Museum.

The inscription, in large hieroglyphs, consists of five columns on the long sides, and three on the short ones. It starts with the ancestry of Hor, who is given the title 'Prophet of Montu'. It became popular to include several generations of genealogy on private monuments around the beginning of the first millennium BC. Hor's parents are named as Ankhhor and Karoma, and his grandfather as Iufau. Some individuals traced their ancestry back for over ten generations. The rest of Hor's inscription consists of extracts from the Book of the Dead, designed to make sure that the deceased reached the Afterlife. It acted as a guide to overcoming many obstacles on the way.