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.
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.
Shabtis - A Private View is a unique catalogue of shabtis in European private collections. It contains examples of funerary statuettes produced for many illustrious persons, including a number of royal examples. Each has been fully researched and includes listings of similar examples in museums and collections around the world. The book also includes Hans D. Schneider’s ‘Typology and Classification of Shabtis’, reproduced with his kind permission.
The book is beautifully illustrated in colour and includes a CD-ROM enabling the photographic illustrations in the catalogue to be displayed and viewed at high resolution and enlarged for closer inspection. Selected statuettes can be rotated in three dimensions.
292pp
Over 175 full colour illustrations
