Shabti of Petosiris, son of Djedhor

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This small funerary figure (shabti) comes from the tomb of the Djedhor family, which contained the burials of Djedhor, his wife Nebtaihet, and their three sons. Petosiris, the owner of this shabti, was buried in one of the vaulted chambers along with his two brothers. The three coffins had been covered with sand, and the inhabitants’ canopic chests had been placed on top. Three of Petosiris’s three hundred and eighty-five shabtis were in his coffin and the rest were scattered over the sand. All of Petosiris’s shabtis are mummiform, and hold agricultural tools (a distinctively curved pick in the left hand, a hoe in the right, and a basket, held by a rope in the right hand, over one shoulder). Most were uninscribed, but thirty-six (for example, 02.4.110, bore his name, titles, and the name of his father Djedhor, along with lines from Spell 6 of the "Book of the Dead." This text promised that the shabti would carry out manual labor on behalf of the deceased in the afterlife.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art