Shabti Amulet

56.20.631.87

Information

Miniature sized shabti, pierced hoizontally (at elbow level) and vertically for threading. Blue glazed faience, with a lappet-wig, a modelled face and crossed arms. Perhaps a funerary amulet, threaded with others as part of a collar or shroud. This is one of a large group of pierced mummiform figures found in a tomb at Gurob, dated to the reign of Ramesses II. Flinders Petrie describes them along with other funerary amulets, including a heart scarab, "sixty or seventy ushabti figures (pl. XXIV, 11) in violet and green glazed pottery; having cross holes and vertical holes, also, these were probably threaded in a kind of rectangular pectoral, like the mimusops leaves." ('Kahun, Gurob and Hawara', p.36). 62 of these mummifrom figures are now in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London, arranged as a bead pectoral (accession number UC27793). Compare with other examples of faience and beeswax in the British Museum (EA9290, EA53993, EA37481, EA9288, EA53993).