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Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · statue

Funerary Figurine of Nesitanebetisheru

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: 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-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.

Blue faience funerary figurine of a seated/standing female figure wearing a broad wig and a tall headdress, with a vertical band of incised hieroglyphic text on the torso-base.

The image shows a small, glazed blue faience figurine photographed against a plain light background. The figure’s face is stylized with dark inlaid features; she wears a tripartite broad wig/headdress that frames the head and extends down behind the ears. The body is depicted as largely frontal, with arms held forward across the torso. A column of incised hieroglyphs runs vertically along the lower front/torso portion, and the upper field includes geometric/partly legible marks that may relate to the headdress or text. No cartouche or royal titulary is clearly legible in the provided view. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible.

funerary Third Intermediate Period (per catalogue); exact reading not clear enough to refine from image alone good
Deities unknown
Materials Faience (blue glaze)
Signs Incised vertical hieroglyphic text (multiple signs; not fully legible) ×25
Visible text "Vertical incised hieroglyphs on the lower front; individual signs not reliably readable at this resolution."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

Vertical incised hieroglyphs on the lower front; individual signs not reliably readable at this resolution.

Connections

Found at Thebes
Materials Faience

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.