Shawabty of Ditamenpaankh (715–656 BCE): Art, History and Details

Shawabty of Ditamenpaankh (715–656 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

High demand for shawabtys in the Late Period, a time when as many as 400 or more shawabtys were placed in the tomb with the deceased, gave rise to a specialized container for storing them: the shawabty box. This example is inscribed for the lady of the house, Ditamenpaankh, and was probably one of a pair originally made for her. The single-masted boat on the box's lid is perhaps an allusion to the pilgrimage of the deceased to the holy city of Abydos, the cult city of Osiris, king of the dead. The shawabtys inside are crude, mass-produced examples cast in an open mold. Made of terracotta, their blue paint imitates more costly shawabtys made of faience. As for the shawabty spell, it has been removed from its traditional location on the shawabty's front and relocated onto the sides of box, where it needed only to be written once, thus expediting production.

Object facts

• Title: Shawabty of Ditamenpaankh
• Date: 715–656 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, Late period (715–332 BCE), Dynasty 25
• Type: Funerary Equipment
• Technique: terracotta
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.9 x 2.5 x 1.6 cm (2 11/16 x 1 x 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - Late Period
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1914.718.104

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.