Ancient Egyptian faience ushabti, 600 BCE - 500 BCE
Faience
height 19.1 cm
height 7 1/2 in
height 7 1/2 in
PH.0161
This beautiful faience Ushabti dated to Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt, which was the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC. The dynasty’s reign (664–525...
This beautiful faience Ushabti dated to Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt, which was the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC. The dynasty’s reign (664–525 BC) is also called the Saite Period after the city of Sais, where pharaohs had their capital, and marks the beginning of the Late Period of ancient Egypt.
Ushabtis (or shabtis) were funerary figurines placed in tombs among the grave goods and were intended to act as substitutes for the deceased, should he be called upon to do the manual labor in the afterlife. They were used from the Middle Kingdom (around 1900 BC) until the end of the Ptolemaic Period, nearly 2000 years later. Ushabtis were believed to magically animate after the dead had been judged, and work for the dead person as a substitute labourer in the field of Osiris. This is why they carry hoes, to execute the hard manual labours mentioned in the Book of the Dead: “whether it be to plough the fields, or to fill the channels with water, or to carry sand from the East to the West”
Originally, a single ushabti was placed in any given tomb, but by the New Kingdom (around 1570 BC), the statues had come to be regarded as servants and slaves for the deceased rather than a substitute, and many might be found buried together, along with an overseer figure. In the course of Egyptian history, ushabtis were created from wood, stone, metal and faience.
Egyptian faience is a type of heated quartz ceramic displaying surface vitrification which creates a bright lustre of various colours, with blue-green being the most common. Although faience should not be considered as a category of pottery, as it doesn’t contain any clay and instead contains the major elemental components of glass (silica, or silicon dioxide, or quartz, the primary constituents of sand), faience is frequently discussed in studies relative to ancient pottery. Notably, faience is though considerably more porous than glass and can thus be cast in molds to create vessels or objects. Egyptian faience was widely used for objects of smaller dimensions from beads to figurines and statuettes and faience artefacts have been unearthed in both elite classes and lower classes urban and funerary contexts. It was the most common material for the creation of scarabs and other forms of amulets, including ushabti figures, cosmetic articles, bowls and drinking cups and it was frequently employed in the production of ancient Egyptian jewellery, as the glaze made it smooth against the skin. Egyptian faience was both exported widely in the ancient world and produced in a number of local workshops in numerous locations, and exported faience articles have been retrieved in Mesopotamia, in numerous localities around the Mediterranean basin but also in northern Europe as far away as Scotland. In the cultural renaissance of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (Saite period), a green faience the color of the Nile and evocative of the verdant landscape in springtime was particularly popular.
The Late Period of ancient Egypt refers to the last flowering of native Egyptian rulers from the 26th Saite Dynasty into the Achaemenid Persian conquests and ended with the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. This last period lasted from 664 BC until 332 BC. Libyans and Persians alternated rule with native Egyptians, but the arts continued to flourish within traditional conventions. With the Egyptian territories being conquered by the Macedonian army in the latter half of the 4th century, starts the last glorious era for Egypt, the Hellenistic period.
Ushabtis (or shabtis) were funerary figurines placed in tombs among the grave goods and were intended to act as substitutes for the deceased, should he be called upon to do the manual labor in the afterlife. They were used from the Middle Kingdom (around 1900 BC) until the end of the Ptolemaic Period, nearly 2000 years later. Ushabtis were believed to magically animate after the dead had been judged, and work for the dead person as a substitute labourer in the field of Osiris. This is why they carry hoes, to execute the hard manual labours mentioned in the Book of the Dead: “whether it be to plough the fields, or to fill the channels with water, or to carry sand from the East to the West”
Originally, a single ushabti was placed in any given tomb, but by the New Kingdom (around 1570 BC), the statues had come to be regarded as servants and slaves for the deceased rather than a substitute, and many might be found buried together, along with an overseer figure. In the course of Egyptian history, ushabtis were created from wood, stone, metal and faience.
Egyptian faience is a type of heated quartz ceramic displaying surface vitrification which creates a bright lustre of various colours, with blue-green being the most common. Although faience should not be considered as a category of pottery, as it doesn’t contain any clay and instead contains the major elemental components of glass (silica, or silicon dioxide, or quartz, the primary constituents of sand), faience is frequently discussed in studies relative to ancient pottery. Notably, faience is though considerably more porous than glass and can thus be cast in molds to create vessels or objects. Egyptian faience was widely used for objects of smaller dimensions from beads to figurines and statuettes and faience artefacts have been unearthed in both elite classes and lower classes urban and funerary contexts. It was the most common material for the creation of scarabs and other forms of amulets, including ushabti figures, cosmetic articles, bowls and drinking cups and it was frequently employed in the production of ancient Egyptian jewellery, as the glaze made it smooth against the skin. Egyptian faience was both exported widely in the ancient world and produced in a number of local workshops in numerous locations, and exported faience articles have been retrieved in Mesopotamia, in numerous localities around the Mediterranean basin but also in northern Europe as far away as Scotland. In the cultural renaissance of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (Saite period), a green faience the color of the Nile and evocative of the verdant landscape in springtime was particularly popular.
The Late Period of ancient Egypt refers to the last flowering of native Egyptian rulers from the 26th Saite Dynasty into the Achaemenid Persian conquests and ended with the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. This last period lasted from 664 BC until 332 BC. Libyans and Persians alternated rule with native Egyptians, but the arts continued to flourish within traditional conventions. With the Egyptian territories being conquered by the Macedonian army in the latter half of the 4th century, starts the last glorious era for Egypt, the Hellenistic period.