Description
Statuette funéraire royale en bois bitumé, coiffée de la perruque tripartite, bras croisés, gravée de six lignes d'inscriptions hiéroglyphiques reprenant le chapitre VI du Livre des Morts.
Lacunes aux pieds et à la main droite.
Haut. : 19 cm
Tombe de Séti Ier, découverte par Giovanni Battista Belzoni dans la Vallée des Rois (KV 17), 1817
Collection particulière d'un ancien pharmacien, reçu en cadeau dans les années 1980
Boisseau Pomez, Hôtel des ventes de Troyes, 28 mai 2020 : n°145 (ill.)
Collection particulière parisienne
Discovered by Giovanni Battista Belzoni in October 1817, the shabtis of Seti I originate from tomb KV 17, one of the largest and most richly decorated royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, extending for approximately 137 metres.
In his account, published in London in 1820, Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, Belzoni describes the discovery of “an immense quantity of small wooden figures of mummies six or eight inches long, and covered with asphaltum to preserve them” (Narrative, 1820, p. 235).
The group, probably comprising several hundred statuettes, was subsequently dispersed among European and American collections. Its exact number remains uncertain, estimates ranging from approximately 700 examples to nearly one thousand.
