Apollo Art Auctions
Lot 95
New Kingdom period, Ca. 1292 -1077 BC, 19th - 20th Dynasty, Ramesside Period. A mummiform ushabti formed of painted pottery is wearing a bipartite or duplex wig that is painted black. The upper part has faint striations in the modelling at the front, and the long side lappets have echeloned curls falling by the sides of the face. The back of the wig shows no details. The arms are crossed holding a pair of hoes. The Ancient Egyptians believed even after getting to the afterlife that life would not be easy. In result, they took magical servant figures with then called shabtis. The dead would ask the shabti make their afterlife as easy and trouble-free as possible. Shabtis were made solely to do manual labour for the deceased in the afterlife. As a result, they were commonly depicted with arms crossed, holding hoes and baskets. Towards the end of the Pharaonic period, they had become so necessary and elaborate that some tombs contained one worker for every day of the year and thirty-six overseers, each responsible for ten laborers The idea of shabtis first appeared as wax figures in the 11th Dynasty, during the First Intermediate Period, (Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich ÄS 6085). These gradually moved onto figures formed of stone and wood in mummiform shape. By the time of the New Kingdom during the Reign of Thutmose IV these became more stylised and would carry agricultural tools to assist them plough the fields, bring in the harvest and fill in the water channels. These figures were an important object in the tombs of the deceased and by the time of the Third Intermediate Period, tombs would carry them in chests in large supplies. These shabtis would come alive on the command of the dead and were called upon with magic from the Book of the Dead. J.-F. Aubert/ L. Aubert, Statuettes _gyptiennes, chaouabtis, ouchebtis, Paris 1974, pp. 122-123. W. M. F. Petrie, Shabtis, London 1935, pl. XXXV, no. 240. M. J. Raven, A transom-window from Tuna el-Gebel, in: OMRO 69, 1989, pp. 51-64. H. Schneider, Shabtis. An introduction to the history of ancient Egyptian funerary statuettes, Leiden 1977, I, p. 206. R. Weill, Quelques types de figurines fun_raires des XIXe et XXe dynasties, in: Mon. Piot 25, 1921/2, pp. 419-438. The World Museum, Liverpool. https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/shabti-of-khonsuSize: L:210mm / W:60mm ; 245gProvenance: Private London collection; ex. B. Kickx and J. Peeters collections, pre 1978, Belgium.
