Home › Browse › BKM › Object 18336
Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · other

Shabty of the Chief Steward Pedi-neit

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Object Label: Shabties were included in tombs to perform agricultural work in place of the deceased in the afterlife. Many of them are inscribed with Chapter 6 of The Book of the Dead, which says they will dig irrigation ditches, cultivate crops, and carry sand. Others only bear the name and title of the owner. The earlier examples included here are inscribed in ink while in the later examples the text is part of the mold, which clearly saved labor. Shabties and scarabs, beetle-shaped amulets associated with rebirth and the sun god, are the most common Egyptian antiquities to survive to modern times. Caption: Shabty of the Chief Steward Pedi-neit, ca. 595–589 B.C.E.. Faience, 5 1/4 x 1 3/8 x 1 1/4 in. (13.3 x 3.5 x 3.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.213E. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06

Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.

A shabti figurine with hieroglyphic inscriptions.

The image depicts a shabti, a funerary figurine typically placed in tombs among the grave goods to serve the deceased in the afterlife. The figure is depicted with crossed arms and is inscribed with vertical columns of hieroglyphs. The style reflects typical funerary art, with inscriptions that were intended to animate the shabti to perform tasks for the deceased.

funerary New Kingdom good
Materials faience
Signs Djed pillar ×3 Ankh ×2 Was scepter
Visible text "Wsir nb xprr n ii nsw HqA nb tAwy"

Connections

Found at Thebes
Materials Faience

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 37.213E tier-2
  • BKM-Object 3988 tier-2
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
  • AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
  • Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
  • Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.