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-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A small glazed faience funerary statuette (shabti/canopic-style figure) with a human mummiform body wearing a tripartite wig and holding its chest.
The object is a standing, mummiform/embracing funerary figure shown frontally against a plain background. The head has a stylized human face under a close-fitting wig; a projecting band-like headdress/cloth is visible around the upper head and shoulders. Both arms are held close across the chest/abdomen, with hands indicated by molded details. The torso and base bear incised or molded columns of funerary inscription-like decoration (vertical register elements and seated/standing figure-like hieroglyph blocks), though the individual signs are not fully legible at this resolution. The surface appears greenish-blue with mottling and wear consistent with a glazed ceramic (faience).
Connections
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.