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Details
LOT 0498
Egyptian Wooden Shabti
NEW KINGDOM, 19TH-20TH DYNASTY, CIRCA 1315-1081 B.C.
7 1/2 in. (46 grams, 19 cm high).
A carved wood shabti figure modelled mummiform with arms folded across the chest and wearing a tripartite wig, painted detailing to the front and rear of the body; remains of polychrome pigmentation.
Provenance
Acquired early 1990s.
Ex private American collection; thence by descent.
Private Swiss collection since 1998.
Literature
Cf. Franzmeier, H., Die Gräberfelder von Sedment im Neuen Reich II, Leiden, 2017, pls.1859 and 1865, for similar wooden shabtis found in tombs at Sedment.
Footnotes
Many crude wooden shabtis of this type were found at Gurob and Sedment; they range from having minimal decoration and no inscription to being entirely painted and inscribed.
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The figure comes from the catacombs at Saqqara where the sacred Apis bulls were buried, known today as the Serapeum. The Apis bull was associated principally with the gods Ptah, patron deity of Memphis, and Osiris, and when one died it was afforded the kind of lavish burial befitting a pharaoh. All bull-headed shabtis date to the 19th and 20th Dynasties and were left as offerings beside the huge granite sarcophagi of the deified bulls. These shabtis were among hundreds of objects recovered from the catacombs by Auguste Mariette during his excavations there between 1850-1853. The Musée du Louvre in Paris holds the largest collection of artefacts from the Serapeum outside Egypt, including around 120 Apis shabtis. They reveal that the this fragment with its sun-disc is from a rare variant of this shabti type; just 5 of the Louvre examples have sun-discs (S 1823, N 5234 51-54), the remaining shabtis have a bull’s head with short stubby horns and no sun-disc.
