Piece number 3 in our series of artifacts  #zmeaonline that will be part of the exhibition of the Project „Gods and Mortals of Ancient Egypt” is also a Ushabti statuette (mummy funerary statuette), a special piece, made with care and special refinement.

As I mentioned before, the purpose of a Ushabti was to act as a substitute for the deceased, should the gods ask for any tasks in the afterlife. On the statuette are rendered 8 horizontal lines of hieroglyphic writing, with the inscription arranged in a circle, containing the name of the deceased and a version of Chapter VI of the Book of the Dead. The character represented on the statuette has the name Uah-Ib-Re-Em-Akhet inscribed on it. The face of this „respondent” is expressive, oval in shape, with large ears and well-defined eyes. He is represented with a fake, braided beard, rendered by striations in the shape of fir needles and wearing a smooth wig. The arms of the statuette are covered with a shroud, crossed on the chest, with the right hand placed over the left hand. A hoe is shown over the right shoulder, and a pickaxe and the braided cord of a bag full of seeds are shown over the left shoulder. The Egyptians were heavily dependent on agriculture in their daily lives and believed that the afterlife would be similar, so most ushabti are depicted holding such tools to continue farming instead of the deceased in the afterlife.

Our piece, dated 664-525 BC, belongs to the late period, Dynasty XXVI, when such statuettes become a routine in the funeral ritual, and their quality shows a complete mastery of the technique of pouring and perfecting the glaze.

When analyzing the state of preservation, it was found that the piece shows deposits of dirty dust located in the pores, mainly stored on the back, inscription, legs. There was an erosion of the colored glaze layer on an area of about 60% and a veil with ocher-gray chromatic deviation on about 40%. Earth deposits in cracks, fissures and inscriptions are also present.

The curative conservation-restoration activities were carried out through minimal interventions on the cultural property. Thus, for the rendering of the unitary aspect of the piece, surgical aspirator, compressor, soft brush were used for the dry / wet removal of the weakly adherent deposits. The mechanical removal of strongly adherent deposits was done with bamboo stick and fiberglass stick and steel wool 0000. The body of the statuette was cleaned with solution, ammonium carbonate, various concentrations , using fast-drying water-based color.

Gods and Mortals of Ancient Egypt (ZMEA), funded by the RO-Culture Program, contract no. RO-CULTURA-A1-2 / 2020 / 31.01.2020.

RO-Culture program https://www.ro-cultura.ro/

Project Management Unit – PMU https://www.umpcultura.ro/