CHAPTER VI.

[From the Papyrus of Nebseni (Brit. Mus. No. 9900, sheet 10). ]
Vignette: A standing, bearded male figure, or a man stretching out his hands to a god.
Text: (1) Tue CHAPTER OF MAKING THE sHABTI?! FIGURE TO DO WORK FOR A MAN IN THE UNDERWORLD, The scribe Nebseni, the draughtsman in the Temples (2) of the North and South, the man highly venerated in the Temple of Ptah, saith :—
“Q thou shabti figure (3) of the scribe Nebseni, the “son of the scribe Thena, victorious, and of the lady of
1 The original meaning of thesvord shabti is unknown, but at a comparatively late period the word was connected with the word
usheb » os , ‘*to answer,” probably because the figure is
supposed to answer the address of the deceased. Several forms of the Chapter are known, and the oldest seems to date from the Vith Dynasty; they are found on figures made of stone, wood, porcelain, &c., and all great collections of Egyptian antiquities contain hundreds of examples of them.
54 AGRICULTURAL LABOURS [{Chap. vi. 4
“the house Mutrestha, victorious, (4) if I be called, o1 “Gf I be adjudged to do any work whatsoever of the “Jabours which are to be done in the underworld— “behold, [for thee] opposition will there be (5) set ‘‘aside—by a man in his turn, let the judgment fall “upon thee instead of upon me always, in the matter “of sowing the fields, of filling (6) the water-courses “with water, and of bringing the sands of this east [to] “the west.”
[The shabti figure answereth], “Verily I am here “land will come] whithersoever thou biddest me.”