Funerary Figurine of Nesitanebetisheru
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: Funerary Figurine of Nesitanebetisheru, ca. 1075–945 B.C.E.. Faience, 5 7/8 × 2 11/16 × 1 3/8 in. (15 × 6.9 × 3.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Theodora Wilbour, and Victor Wilbour honoring the wishes of their mother, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, as a memorial to their father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 16.183. (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 blue faience shabti figurine with hieroglyphic inscriptions.
This artifact is a shabti figurine crafted from bright blue faience. It features painted black-detailed elements such as the hair and face, along with numerous rows of hieroglyphic inscriptions on its body. The piece exhibits characteristic details such as crossed arms which hint at its funerary purpose.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 16.183 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3154 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.