Shabty of Seti I
Description
Object Label: The Egyptians manufactured funerary figurines, originally called shabties, as early as Dynasty 12 (1932–1759 B.C.E.). The earliest shabties are inscribed with either the deceased’s name (see nos. 1 and 2) or a simple form of Chapter 6 of the Book of the Dead. The rarity and high quality of the early shabties suggest that they were costly items produced for privileged persons. Later, Chapter 6 began appearing more frequently on funerary figurines. The text mentions that they do agricultural tasks for the dead person: irrigating the fields, cultivating crops, and clearing away sand that blew in from the nearby desert. As substitutes for the deceased, these figurines were sometimes given their own sarcophagi (see no. 6). To emphasize the agricultural function of the figurines, hoes and grain baskets were added to them (no. 8). Wood (nos. 9–11), stone (nos. 12–14, 16), faience (no. 17), metal, and other materials were used beginning in Dynasty 18. By the end of the New Kingdom, statuettes for a single person were often mold-made by the hundreds and even thousands. Faience became the medium of choice, first in blue and later in light green or light blue (nos. 17, 20, 21). Caption: Shabty of Seti I, ca. 1290–1279 B.C.E.. Faience, 5 11/16 × 1 15/16 × 1 in. (14.5 × 5 × 2.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 11.686. (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 blue-green faience shabti (mummiform/standing figure) with a long back pillar and incised/darkened inscription bands on the torso and legs.
The image shows a single glazed figurine photographed against a plain background. The figure is mummiform/standing in profile with a stylized head covered by a wig/headdress and a face with simple painted/incised features. The arms are shown crossed and held at the chest, and the torso has vertical strap-like details. Multiple bands of hieroglyphic text are incised along the front/back pillar and across the lower body/legs; the characters are filled with a darker pigment/line work, forming a dense inscription area. No other objects are visible. The glaze is turquoise/blue-green with darker speckling and wear consistent with a faience surface.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 11.686 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3076 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.