Ushebti; Egypt, New Empire, 1526-1070 B.C.

Ushebti; Egypt, New Empire, 1526-1070 BC.
Wood.
It shows wear caused by the passage of time and slight erosion of the surface. It shows possible traces of bitumen or resin.
Provenance: Georges Savès collection.
Measurements: 12,5 cm (height).

Ushebti carved in wood. The ushebtis, Egyptian term that means "those who answer", are small statuettes that, in the Ancient Egypt, were deposited in the tombs as part of the funerary trousseau of the deceased, and whose function was to substitute him in the works that he had to carry out in the Beyond. Most of them were made of ceramic, wood or stone, although in the richest tombs they could be found carved in lapis lazuli. The oldest preserved examples come from the Middle Empire, although we already find references to them in texts from the end of the Ancient Empire. The ushebtis are, after the sacred scarabs, the most numerous and possibly the most characteristic pieces of Egyptian art that have survived to the present day. Throughout time they always maintained the same function in the religious sphere but, while during the Middle Empire they were conceived as the representation of their owner before Osiris in the work of tillage in the kingdom of the shadows, replicas of the deceased, from the New Empire they came to be seen as servants or slaves of the deceased, being made in large quantities.

This piece comes from the collection of Georges Savès (1908-1985), a French numismatist and collector with a deep vocation for archaeological study. Heir to a family tradition of collecting, he devoted himself fully to historical and numismatic research since the 1950s, especially on Toulouse and Gallic coins. Throughout his life, he assembled an eclectic collection of archaeological, ethnographic and artistic pieces, enriched in 1966 with the acquisition of part of the Roger Bédiat collection. Author of specialized studies, his legacy remains a reference in the academic and patrimonial fields.