Shabti for Padi-(Hor)-Mehen

Shabti for Padi-(Hor)-Mehen

A shabti of the Egyptian Late Period in an olive green faience, with areas of a brighter green, probably the original colour, on the nose and shoulders. The shabti is mummiform with a nemes headdress and false beard with crosshatching. The arms are crossed over the chest and hold flails. The figure stands on a base and the back is blank except for a horizontal line below the shoulders. The base at the back right is damaged showing a lighter coloured substrate. The left flail is similarly damaged. The front of the figure is inscribed with well-formed hieroglyphs reading: sHD Wsir pA-Di-mH-n ms-n s-t-ir-bw-? Translation: Shine Osiris for Padi Mehen, born to Setirbu. Such inscriptions are formulaic and usually start with an invocation (Shine Osiris) and then name the individual and sometimes their title and parentage. More elaborate shabtis include part of Chapter 6 of the Book of the Dead, known as the shabti spell.

Several other shabti figures for the same man are known in collections in Europe and North Ameria, or have been offered for sale in recent years. In addition, two canopic jars for the same man were purchased at Mallawi, Egypt, for the Cairo Museum in 1917. Together these artefacts show that the man's name was actually Padi-Hor-Mehen, with the present piece and one in Basel not including the middle ('Hor') part of his name. The canopic jars are thought to be from the necropolis at Meir near Mallawi. It is likely that Padi-Hor-Mehen's tomb was in this location, but that it was never formally excavated. It seems likely that the tomb was opened, and its contents dispersed, not long before 1917. Several excavations where undertaken at Meir, including by Ahmed Kamal (1910-14) and Aylward Blackman (1912-14).

Shabti figures from the Late Period are numerous, and up to 400 could be included in an individual elite tomb. The shabti (or 'ushabti', literally 'answerer') represented a worker who would magically come to life in the afterlife to complete work on behalf of the deceased for the gods, hence the depiction of shabtis holding agricultural tools. Although the number and complexity of grave goods decreased in the Late Period, the number of shabtis increased and it was only elites who could afford the expense of such elaborate burials.

Sgt Richard Cecil Johnson bought this shabti for 5 shillings from an academic (possibly British) following a lecture given to Australian soldiers in early 1915. It is said to be from a tomb the academic had recently opened. Shabti figurines are well known souvenirs from the First World War but few are originals. It has not been possible to identify the academic or the location of the tomb it was found in but it is possible that the academic was Aylward Blackman and that rather than excavating the tomb, he had purchased antiquities discovered in the local area and was selling them on to soldiers. This practice was not unheard of in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

664 BC - 332 BC

Height: 129.5 mm

Width: 34.5 mm

Depth: 26 mm

Weight: 83.9 g

C.003.001

CC0 - Public Domain - No Rights Reserved.

Acquired by Sgt Richard Cecil Johnson, Cairo, Egypt, 1915.

A Brisbane Private Collection

Beck, S and L. Kilroe, British Museum, Personal Communication, 20 February, 2020.

Blackman, A. 1914-53. The Rock Tombs of Meir: Parts I-VI. London, Egypt Exploration Society.

British Museum, London, No. EA71275 (same man)

Chiddingstone Castle Collection, UK, nos. 01.0283 & 01.0346 = Houston Museum of Natural Sciences Loan Nos. 04.2013.0283 & 0346 (both same man).

Hardwick, T, Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, Personal Communication, 21 February, 2020.

Schneider, H. D. (1977). Shabtis: an introduction to the history of ancient Egyptian funerary statuettes with a catalogue of the collection of Shabtis in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden. Compare Nos. 5.3.1.105 (30th Dynasty to Ptolemaic) and 5.3.1.140 (26th or 27th Dynasty).

Janes, G. 2002, Shabtis: a private view. Paris, Cybele, no. 89 (same man)

Janes, G. 2016.The Shabti collections. Vol 6: A selection from World Museum, Liverpool. Lymm, Olicar House Publications.

Museum fur Volkurkunde, Basel, No. 5224 (same man)

Nicholson, I. and P. Shaw. 1995. The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. London, British Museum Press: 'Shabti' pp. 266-67.

Quirke, S. and J. Spencer (1992). The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt, London, Thames and Hudson: 96-7.

Watson, P. (2012). Catalogue of Inscribed Shabtis in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Birmingham, Birmingham Museums Trust. See No. 76 and nos 87-94 for close parallels to the inscription and name.

P.003

Mr James Donaldson