Ushabti of Amun-meku
Ushabti of Amun-meku
Egypt
Late 18th/Early 19th Dynasty, circa 1320-1250 B.C.,
Steatite
H: 16.5 cm
PoR
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A black steatite ushabti for Amun-meku, sculpted in typical mummiform pose. The ushabti holds a pair of hoes, one in each hand, with a seed bag over the left shoulder. The ushabti wears a double wig of zigzag and echeloned curls. Five lines of inscription are engraved into the lower body:
1 The illuminated one, the Osiris Amun-meku (?) /Mek-amun (?) O
2 this shabti, if one counts (you), if one reckons (you) to accomplish
3 all duties to be done in the necropolis/netherworld, to cultivate
4 the fields, to irrigate the riparian lands, to transport by boat
5 the sand/fertile silt from the east to the west, now indeed…
Ushabtis were intended to spare their owners from manual corvée labour in the afterlife, as a stand-in for both the deceased and their servants. In the 18th Dynasty, these statues were referred to as ‘shabti’, but by the Late Period the word ‘ushabti’ came into use. ‘Ushabti’ may derive from the verb ‘wesheb’, meaning to answer, in reference to Chapter Six of the Book of the Dead (known as the Ushabti Chapter), which describes how ushabti should answer the call to work in lieu of their owners. This passage is frequently inscribed on the front of ushabti.
Antiquities, Sotheby’s, London, 6 December 2006, Lot 75.
Patricia Usick, A Curious and Convivial Traveller: Edward Roger Pratt in Greece and Egypt 1832-34, British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 6 (Leuven, Paris, and Bristol, CT, 2020), p. 30, fig. 31.
Previously in the Private Collection of Edward Roger Pratt (1789-1863), Ryston Hall, Norfolk.
Private English Collection, until 2006.
Sold at: Antiquities, Sotheby’s, London, 6 December 2006, Lot 75.
Private Collection, Kentucky, U.S.A., 1998-2023, acquired from the above, accompanied by dated purchase invoice.
With IADAA Certificate, this item has been checked against the Interpol database.
Edward Roger Pratt (1789-1863) was the eldest of the thirteen children of Edward Roger Pratt senior (1756-1838), and heir to the house and estates of Ryston Hall in Norfolk. As the landowner of this large estate, Pratt junior spent each summer travelling around Europe, and from 1832 to 1834 he extended his annual tour to cover Greece and Egypt. He recorded his travels in his consistent diary entries. On 4 September 1832, Pratt left England and arrived in Greece by the end of the month. He travelled through Greece until June 1833, when he went to visit family members in Italy and Switzerland. He set out for Alexandria in Autumn of that year and arrived there on 25 December 1833. From there, he undertook a solo voyage up the Nile, travelling as far as Wadi Halfa at the Second Cataract.
Pratt’s diaries from this trip barely mention collecting antiquities, but he definitely acquired several of ancient Egypt works, such as canopic jars, bronze figures, and ushabtis. He also had two large and important New Kingdom stelae, which were sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 17 December 1998 as lots 24 and 26, the latter of which is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His collection may have been partially acquired in Egypt, and some in London on his return – at least one object in his possession was bought at the 13 March 1837 Sotheby’s sale of Giovanni d’Athanasi’s collection. It is clear that Pratt had a passion for ancient monuments; his journal records his particularly thorough trips to ancient sites, and he exhibits clear anger at any signs of their mistreatment at the hands of his contemporary tourists. Pratt’s Egyptian journal was also accompanied with a 136-page scrapbook of his tracings and drawings of many temples, tombs, landscapes, and reliefs. He supplemented these with illustrative prints taken from Vivant Denon’s Voyage dans la basse et la haute Egypte (1802). Unusually for traveller of this period who was not an archaeologist, he took a number of paper squeezes of reliefs. Pratt may have been inspired to this through his meeting with antiquarian and collection Robert Hay, and his artist, A. Dupuy, during the voyage.
