A bright blue faience shabti for Iww-Mes. The figure is of typical mummiform shape, wearing a lappet wig, hands holding agricultural tools, with a seed basket on the back. The shabti bears a frontal panel in hieratic script written in black detail, which would serve to magically activate the shabti to perform manual labour in the afterlife for the deceased person it names, Iwww-Mes.
Fixed to a black wooden display stand.
 
Ancient Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, 21st Dynasty: Circa 1069-946 B.C.
 
Very Fine condition: Complete and intact
Height 11.8 cms (4.6 ins).
 
Provenance: Bodo Bleß (1940-2022) collection, Berlin, formed from ca. 1960 onwards.
 
Notes: Bodo Bruno Bernhard Bleß (1940-2022) was born in Berlin during World War II. On finishing school in 1955 he was apprenticed to the goldsmith Dietrich Schenk in Berlin and eventually took over the running of the business and moved to Neukölln. Marrying his wife Margot in 1962, the couple were enthusiastic travellers in Europe, collecting ancient Egyptian works on the art market in the Netherlands and in London, where they were well-known as collectors of Egyptian funerary works, particularly shabtis.
 
For quicker and easier inscription, particularly on the narrow, curved surfaces of shabtis, during periods when shabtis were produced in large quantities (e.g., the Third Intermediate Period or Late Period), hieratic was often used because it was faster to write than hieroglyphs, making it more practical for workshops to inscribe dozens or even hundreds of figurines. While hieroglyphs remained the preferred script for monumental and elite inscriptions, and wealthier individuals could afford shabtis with detailed hieroglyphic inscriptions carved or painted by skilled artisans, those with fewer resources often relied on simpler figurines with hieratic inscriptions.
 
See our blog post on shabtis