SHABTIS

Death and the obsessive preoccupation with life thereafter provided ancient Egypt with one of its greatest industries. A small but important part was the manufacture of funerary statuettes, called shabtis, shawabtis or ushebtis, depending on when they were made. The word is ancient Egyptian, and may derive from Egyptian Swb 'stick' originally, perhaps reinterpreted as from Egyptian wSb 'answer', 'respond' in the first millennium BC.

In the New Kingdom (about 1550-1069 BC) and Late Period (about 1550 - 332 BC) these figures were carved in stone or wood or formed in faience. From the neck down the body was usually in the form of a mummy, but at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty there are also shabtis in daily life dress. Shabtis were usually represented with tools in their hands - baskets, mattocks and hoes. The number of shabtis in a standard elite burial grew over time, from one in the Eighteenth Dynasty, to several in the Nineteenth Dynasty, to one for every day of the year by the Third Intermediate Period.

In the early Third Intermediate Period (about 1069-850 BC), there was a special form of shabti with one hand to the side, the other holding a whip. These are 'overseers' to keep control of a set of ten: a typical elite burial would then have thirty-six overseers to keep control of the three hundred and sixty-five ordinary workers. In the Late Period the numbers remained in the hundreds, but the 'overseer' type was no longer used.

Funerary statuettes were included amongst the the burial artefacts of most individuals of sufficient means from the Middle Kingdom, around 1900 BC, until the end of the Ptolemaic Period nearly 2000 years later. They were intended to act as substitute workers for the deceased owner should he be called upon to do manual work, primarily of an agricultural nature, to ensure an everlasting supply of food in the afterlife.