Shabti Box of Yuya

Shabti Box of Yuya

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This painted shabti box is inscribed for a man named Yuya whose daughter, Tiye became the principal queen of Amenhotep III. Although not of royal lineage, as in-laws of the king, Yuya and his wife Tjuyu were given a sumptuous burial in the royal cemetery now known as the Valley of the Kings. Their tomb (KV 46) was discovered in 1905 by Theodore M. Davis, an American businessman from Rhode Island. Because the tomb was intact, having escaped detection by ancient robbers, the majority of the objects were retained by the Egyptian Antiquities Service and are now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. However, Davies was allowed to keep a small portion of the finds which he later bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum. Three shabtis (30.8.56–.58) a second shabti box (30.8.60a, b), a group of shabti tools (30.8.61–64), a pair of sandals (10.184.1a, b), and two sealed storage jars (11.155.7, .9) from Yuya and Tjuyu’s tomb are also in the Museum's collection.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.