Anonymous Shabty
Description
Object Label: A shabty was supposed to take the place of its owner whenever heavy labor was required in the afterlife. This finely detailed example carries two hand hoes, two baskets, and a yoke. It is unusual for so fine a shabty to lack the owner’s name, which bound it in eternal service to the individual. There are traces of paint on the eyes and eyebrows; perhaps the name was also painted. The damage at the bottom of the chin, apparently caused by the removal of a beard, suggests that this shabty was originally made for a man and later reworked for a woman. Caption: Anonymous Shabty, ca. 1400–1390 or ca. 1390–1352 B.C.E.. Limestone, pigment, 9 13/16 x 3 1/8 in. (25 x 7.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.121E. (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 shabti figure bearing agricultural tools.
This artifact is a shabti figurine, likely used in funerary contexts to serve the deceased in the afterlife. The figure is depicted holding hoes, wearing a tripartite wig, and is carved from stone. The craftsmanship suggests attention to detail typical of burial-related artifacts.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.121E tier-2
- BKM-Object 3970 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.