Description: Overseer shabti figure wearing kilt, legs and feet shaped, proper right hand bent holding whip, proper left arm extended at side, decayed pale green glaze with details of hair, eyes, eye brows, whip, and vertical column of hieroglyphs in front painted in black.
Cultural Significance: Typical Third Intermediate Overseer Shabti of faience, during this period it was usual for burials to include a shabti for each day and a small number of overseer or reis shabtis (around a total together of 400 being included in a burial) to provide a tomb owner with workers in the afterlife to fulfil their obligations to farm in the afterlife fields. A number of similar overseer shabtis with just the Osiris name inscribed on the kilt are known in collections and NML documentation notes that all with provenance indicate that they originate from Abydos and attribute them to IsetemKhebit. These examples were distributed by the Egypt Research Account, excavated at Abydos by John Garstang at North Cemeteries, Cemetery E in 1900. Shabtis of Isetemkhebit mentioned in J. Garstang, El Arabah, p. 43. Contiguous excavations by the EEF also found shabtis and other material with the name Isetemkhebit (D. Randall-MacIver & A.C. Mace, El Amrah and Abydos 1899-1901, Egypt Exploration Fund, London 1902, 99, tomb 37, Pl. LVII, 19, 20).
Comparanda: Harris Museum, Preston; National Museums Liverpool 24.9.00.113; 24.9.00.172; 52.55.139; UCL 40291; Bolton 1900.54.138.

Inscriptions / Translations:  Osiris

Notes:  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. Schneider classification: IXA/W30/H33/I12/Tp8a front/P

Note that the provenance might be EEF/ERA excavations between 1880 and first years of 1900, probably Abydos. It is noted by Nicholas Reeves in his essay in the Egyptian Art at Eton College Exhibition Catalogue that David Randall MacIver sent a consignment of material from the Abydos Excavations (p.4).