Shabty of the Priest Nes-iswt
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 Priest Nes-iswt, 664–525 B.C.E.. Faience, 5 3/4 x 1 3/4 x 1 1/4 in. (14.6 x 4.4 x 3.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.217E. (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 small ancient Egyptian ushabti figurine with hieroglyphs on its lower section.
This ushabti figurine is crafted from a greenish material, likely faience, representing a mummiform figure. The details include a typical crossed-arm posture and a tripartite wig. Its lower section features vertical rows of hieroglyphic inscriptions, which are characteristic of such funerary items, meant to serve the deceased in the afterlife. The craftsmanship and style suggest it originates from the later periods of ancient Egypt.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.217E tier-2
- BKM-Object 3989 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.