Well preserved shabti figure, bright blue glaze with details in black: defined eyebrows and eyes, striated tripartite wig, implements, basket thrown over right shoulder and seven horizontal bands of hieroglyphs around front with a single column on back. Arms, hands and rear of the shabti are well defined, distinction made between the wig and narrowing of the back.
Inscriptions / Translations: (1) The illuminated one, the Osiris, the wab priest Neferu, (2) he says: O, this shabti (3) which has been allotted to do [any] work (4) which is done in the netherworld; (5) to cultivate the fields, in order (6) to flood the riverbank, to transport (7) by boat sand (8 - back) from east to west and vice-versa, 'Here I am' [you shall ] say.
Bibliography: H. D. Schneider, ‘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’, 3 vols., Leiden 1977.
For background on shabtis, see, for instance, J. H. Taylor, ‘Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt’, London 2001, 112-135.
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