TEFAF New York 2025

Petrie discovered a total of 399 ushabtis of Horoudja at
Hawara in the Fayoum, Egypt, in 1888 in an intact tomb knee
deep in flood water: 203 were aligned in rows facing the
limestone sarcophagus with 196 found in a niche on the
opposite wall of the tomb. Described by Petrie as of the finest
quality, the various types of shabti, indicate that 17 different
moulds were used for their manufacture. There are examples in
many museums around the world including Berlin, Brussels,
Cambridge, Chicago, Copenhagen, London, New York, and
Oxford. Many of the shabtis were badly damaged by water, but
this example is better than most, with much of the surface still
showing glaze.

Petrie left a particularly graphic account of the discovery, ‘...first
one swings down a rope ladder for 25 feet, then squeezes
through the top of a doorway nearly choked, and at once slides
down the slope inside into the water. The whole of the walls are
pitch black, owing to some deposit or growth when the water has
filled the chambers. So it is very dark and the candle only just
shews where you collide with floating coffins or some skulls that
go bobbing around. One wades in carefully, the ground being
strewn with sodden wood, bones and mud... Down a well, forty
feet deep, and in a pitch-black chamber, splashing about in bitter
water, and toiling by candle-light, all the work had to be done...
While thus mining the way to the expected burial we lit on a
hole in the masonry filled with large ushabtis standing in rows,
two hundred in all, of the finest workmanship; and, before long,
on the other side of the sarcophagus, two hundred more were
found in a similar recess.’