ostracon ancient art
catalogue

Egyptian Cache II Shabti for Nesy-per-nub, 21st Dynasty, 1069-945 BC

Deep blue glazed faience shabti for Nesy-per-nub, one of the important priests in the second Cache of Deir El Bahri. His shabtis display text variants that refer to his various titles.

The two columns of hieroglyphic text read: (1) O shabti, say: I will irrigate [the riparian lands] (2) for the Osiris, the 'Scribe of the temple of Mut', Nesy-per-nub, justified.

The hieroglyph for the goddess Mut is cursorily rendered. Strangely enough, the craftsman forgot the phoneme 'per' within the name of the deceased.

Funerary statuette in the form of a mummy with arms crossed over the chest. The striped tripartite wig secured by a fillet tied behind. Face and features modeled, eyes and eyebrows lined black. On the chest a rare hearth-shaped pendant.

The hoes in each hand lightly modeled and lined black. The crosshatched seed-bag faintly indicated on the lower back.
 

The Second Cache of Deir el-Bahari, also known as Bab el-Gasus, was a collective reburial for Theban priests of Amun and their families. The Cache was created during the late 21st Dynasty, around 950 BC.

The tomb with the intact burials of 153 individuals was uncovered by Egyptian authorities in February 1891. The large quantity of coffins posed serious storage problems for the then Giza Museum. The Egyptian Khedival government therefore decided in 1893 to donate half of the coffin sets to 17 Western countries.
Many shabtis and further funerary items also found their way outside Egypt.

De Haan/Renaut list 80 shabtis for Nesy-per-nub known to date, 28 of which being in private collections.

Intact and rare. High quality shabti with superb deep blue glaze. Few patches of blistered glaze with sandy encrustation most noticeable on the right side of the inscription.

H. 15.3 cm (6 in), W. 4.2 cm (1.7 in)

Deir el-Bahri, Cache II, 1891.
Belgium private collection by succession.

9800 USD

Literature:
Glenn Janes. Shabtis. A Private View. Paris 2002. Cf. no. 52, pp. 101-102.
Hermann Schlögl, Andreas Brodbeck. Ägyptische Totenfiguren aus öffentlichen und privaten Sammlungen der Schweiz. Freiburg/Göttingen 1990. Cf. no. 154, p. 230.
Niek de Haan, Patrice Renaut. The Shabtis of Nesy-per-nub. Academia 2021.