Egyptian Ushabti Figure

A Ushabti is mainly a small figure that was placed in tombs, along with other grave goods, with the intention to act as servants for the deceased, should they be called upon to do manual labor after death in the afterlife.

It was normal for the figures to carry a hoe on their shoulder and a basket on their backs, giving the intention that they were to farm for the deceased. Some were written on by the use of hieroglyphs, typically found on the legs. They had inscriptions asserting their readiness to answer the gods' summons to work.

The practice of using ushabtis started in 2600-2100 BC, with the use of life-sized reserve heads made from limestone, which were buried with the mummy. Many ushabtis were produced in multiples. At times they covered the floor around a sarcophagus. A few exceptional ushabtis are of a larger size or they were produced as a one-of-a-kind master work.

Due to the ushabti's commonness through all Egyptian time periods, and the worlds museums desire to represent Ancient Egyptian artifacts, the ushabti is one of the most commonly represented objects in Egyptology displays. They were produced in huge numbers, along with scarabs, and they are the most numerous of all ancient Egyptian antiquities to survive.

It is not uncommon to find a ushabti with the feet missing or glued back into place. Grave robbers would break the legs to keep the spirits from following them or so they believed.

Mine is blue and is completely in tact. Some were made without feet and this is one of them. It is also designed as a female.

 

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Nice write-up, @Collecting Nut! Mine has an inscription visible, but I don't know what it says. Are there any readers of hieroglyphs out there who can discern anything from what is seen here?





Faience Ushabti - 27th Dynasty or Later Style (525 - 332 BC)
Ushabti wearing tripartite wig and false beard and carrying a hoe and pick. Seed sack slung over left shoulder. T-Band of hieroglyphic inscription spanning the waist and continuing down the front of the leg case. Back pillar. 12 cm long by 3.1 cm wide by 2.2 cm deep.


To add a coin, here's one struck in Egypt in a later period.



Ptolemaic Kingdom. Ptolemy II Philadelphos (285-246 BC).
AR Tetradrachm, 12.42 g. Alexandria mint.
Diademed head of Ptolemy right, wearing aegis. / ΠTOΛEMAIOY BAΣIΛEΩΣ, eagle standing left on thunderbolt; ΣT, monogram and ΠT to left, shield to right.
Svoronos 538; SNG Copenhagen 103.

 

Nice ones. Why do you think it is female?

Here's mine




Demotic Inscription on reverse. Basket over shoulder on reverse. Farming tools in hands.

64mm; 10.91g

c. 600 BC

 

This is my only one, with cordial thanks to @Alegandron and @DonnaML for their advice. This was from The Time Machine, on VCoins, at @Alegandron's suggestion. He's particularly good for consistently responsible listings at the budget end of life.


This one was dated c. 1075-712 BCE, vaguely corresponding to the 19th-25th Dynasties; effectively from the Ramessids, to Piankhi and them of the Napatan Nubian one. The chronological range was enough to sell it. Nope, not a lot of detail, but I like the tie of the nemes in the back.

 

The person I bought it from says so and he claims to have bought it from an Egyptian Antiquities Dealer.

 

I don't doubt it's authentic. It just doesn't look like the female type.

 

Thank you for the kind comments.

I really like your Ushabti! Cool find! Congrats.

 

So fun! It's incredible that making Ushabti was an industry of its own. MILLIONS of these things were made in antiquity... and still we have to look out for fakes.
Disney's Fantasia was based on an ancient Egyptian story of a man and his Ushabtis.
Here are my two:

 

Speaking of fakes, what do you guys think about this one?



This one was purchased from a reputable dealer.

 

Looks good to me but I’m not an expert. Also looks like it had its legs broken and replied.

 

Here’s mine - faience ushabti, 26th Dynasty, 664-525 BC, Front - “May he be illuminated, the Osiris (an official?) (of the Beginning of the season, or “top of the year of what Horus gives festival”) Ankh hered (“the child lives”)..” Back - “…engendered of the lord of the house, Aet?, child of the Lady Weret jhen, among the blessed dead”

 

The first one looks a bit dubious to me.

 

I have a few ushabtis myself.

This ushabti has no inscription, and its body is quite worn, but it has always very much appealed to me because of the amazing detail of its face and beard. (Before I bought it, a photo of it was actually used by the dealer in its Yellow Pages listing, back when such things as Yellow Pages still existed!)

Egypt, 26th (Saite) Dynasty (664–525 BCE), green faience Ushabti, 4 1/4" high. Purchased from Harmer, Rooke Numismatists, Ltd., New York City, Nov. 8, 1982.

Inside the bell jar where I keep it:





A closeup of this ushabti with a limestone Sekhmet:



The ushabti on the left does have an inscription; here are a few photos of it (most together with a bronze Osiris figure) in which you can see the inscription:







I had no idea what the inscription on this ushabti says until a few years ago, when I posted a photo of it on a yahoo group I used to belong to. I then received an email from Niek de Haan (of the website http://www.shabticollections.com), very kindly informing me that he recognized the smile on my ushabti, and that it's apparently one of a number of very similar ushabtis all created for the same person in the 30th Dynasty. An example is the one illustrated in the 1990 book entitled Ägyptische Totenfiguren aus öffentlichen und privaten Sammlungen der Schweiz, by Hermann A. Schlögl and Andreas Brodbeck (Freiburg 1990). It's object number 191 on page 274. (See this copy of page 274, plus an enlargement of one of the photos on that page, both of which Mr. de Haan sent me.)





As you can see, the appearance and inscription are nearly identical to mine.

According to Mr. de Haan, the inscription on my ushabti (as translated from the German-language transcription in the book) means "the illuminated one, the Osiris, the overseer of the army (general), Hor-em-achbit, born to Hathor-em-achet [his mother], true of voice."

It was nice to find that out finally, more than 30 years after I bought the ushabti!

 

My third, smaller, ushabti, made of glazed blue faience. The feet were broken off at some point and glued back on.











It isn't unusual for an ushabti never to have been inscribed. As I've explained before, by the New Kingdom there were as many 401 ushabtis in each tomb (theoretically, 365 workers and 36 overseers, although the latter disappeared eventually). Accordingly, it's my understanding that the majority were always uninscribed. (Sometimes, forgers take genuine uninscribed ushabtis and apply fake hieroglyphic inscriptions -- often nonsensical, I believe -- to make them more valuable.) Also by the New Kingdom, mass production using molds was already common. See the summary of the history of ushabtis at https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/shabti/. (Which is why my inscribed ushabti of the general Hor-em-achbit is so similar to several others I've seen.) I also own a small paperback book published in the UK in 1995, by Harry M. Stewart, called "Egyptian Ushabtis." (Even more useful and interesting, with many color photographs, is a 1994 paperback book called "Amulets of Ancient Egypt" by Carol Andrews, a curator at the British Museum.)

 

I have always wondered about these when I see them on VCoins. Here is a current search - lowest price to highest VCOINS
They currently run from $42 up to $3000.00
The dealer Zurqieh seems to sell them by the gross. Are they authentic??

 

People say he has a good reputation, but where does he get them all if they're all authentic? It's not as if genuine ushabtis are found in Dubai, where he's located, after all! Are they smuggled out of Egypt, which I don't believe permits the export of antiquities any longer? I know that many, many thousands were sent out of Egypt when it was legal to do so, but how do so many of them find their way to this one dealer?

I bought all three of mine between 30 and 40 years ago, all from well-known dealers in the NYC/NJ area (Harmer Rooke, Royal Athena, and Arnold Saslow). It's no guarantee of anything, but I've had all my antiquities appraised for both authenticity and value, once in 1987 (for those I already had at the time) and again last year.

 

That is a very interesting thread. I love ancient Egypt and its artefacts. I have travelled a lot in Egypt to the touristic and the not so touristic sites. I don't want to discourage anybody, but I read Amelia Edwards' book "A Thousand Miles up the Nile", which is based on her travels in 1873. In the book Edwards described how (in 1873) there are so many scarabs and ushapties on sale in Egypt that have just been manufactured by local craftsmen.

 

Something like Wer-es-em born again my he live forever. You read the hieroglyphs from right to left. The owl symbol on the top line is the letter "m". I can't make out all of the rest of the inscription as the engraving of the symbols in the vertical line, read top to bottom is a bit hard to decipher.

 

Thought occurred to me just now, seeing two examples, is it possible that breaking the feet off an ushabti carried some kind of ritual meaning? Right, likely of a nefarious nature?

 

Read my opening post, next to the last paragraph.