banner-onlineshop

Small terracotta ushabti

Price: on request
Sold
Object number
AR2968C
Object: Small terracotta ushabti

Material: Orange-brown terracotta with white slip.

Period: 22nd to 25th dynasty,
c. 946 BC to 664 BC.
Third Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt.

Description:    Small mummy shaped terracotta figurine with molded front side and flat rear side. Tripartite wig, arms in front of the chest, the rest of the body schematical.

Background: In Ancient Egypt, a tradition of equipping the graves of the deceased with small funerary figurines gradually became established. The figurines were made of clay, stone, wood or metal, some were covered with faience. They were named with the ancient Egyptian word for "answerer". Transcriptions for this are ushabti, shabti or shawabti.
Most commonly used and apparently popular were terracotta ushabtis covered with a fine greenish or blue faience. They were usually 10cm to 20cm tall. Those who could afford it had the ushabtis elaborately engraved or simply painted. The fine engravings of many pieces survived until today. Paint suffered more from the ravages of time, but fortunately some painted figures too have been preserved. The majority of the ushabtis found shows strong erosion and can only be recognized as such by their outlines. Or they were already that basic in their appearence when made in order to cut costs.
Ushabtis have been resting with the deceased since the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt around the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest known figurines date from the 11th Dynasty. It seems they represented the dead initially, but their function changed until the New Kingdom. At that time the ushabti were to serve as workers in the afterlife, standing in for the deceased, so that he or she was freed from hard physical labour (6th chapter of the Book of the Dead).
With this change in purpose it made sense to add more ushabtis to the grave increasing the labour force. This resulted in up to 365 ushabtis per tomb, e.g. for Tut-Anch-Amun - one "answerer" for each day of the solar year.
Either the figures were placed directly in the grave or else richly painted or otherwise decorated vessels were used for storage, the best known type being the so-called wooden ushabti boxes.

Dimensions: 52mm height.

Condition: Very good condition. Fully intact with small remains of the original slip.

Provenance: Acquired by us in 2017 from an European auction house. Previously in the Frech private collection E. Acquired 1981 August 18th from Pierre Vérité gallery in Paris, France (a copy of the purchase documents will be provided). The figurine comes from a group of three ushabtis that are said to originate from the same tomb (our object numbers AR2968A, AR2968B and AR2968C).

References: Cf. H. A. Schlögl, Die ägyptischen Totenfiguren, Katalog aus den Sammlungen des Nationalmuseums in Poznan, p. 35, no. 6.
Cf. H. A. Schlögl, Corpus der ägyptischen Totenfiguren der öffentlichen Sammlungen Krakaus, p. 211, no. 34.

Literature: A good introduction and overview on Egyptian ushabtis in just one volume is given by Glenn Janes in Shabtis: A Private View - Ancient Egyptian Funerary Statuettes in European Private Collections.

Authenticity: We unconditionally guarantee the authenticity of every artefact, all items are subject to our lifetime return policy on authenticity.