A light green, superbly-modelled shabti with tripartite wig and plaited beard, crossed hands holding tools, dorsal pillar and square base; bands of elaborate funerary hieroglyphic text on the lower body, in part reading: 'Smen Ta Wa priest of the food temple of Ptah and superior of the Pharaoh's food'.

PROVENANCE:
Private French collection, Paris art market, 1980s.

FOOTNOTES:
A shabti of this superb quality can only have been made for a person of very high status. Ptah is the ultimate creator god, considered the demiurge, the artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe, who existed before all things, and by his wilfulness, imagined the world into existence.