The Global Shabti Project
This website hosts an amazing database dedicated to ancient Egyptian shabtis. Its goal is to unite scattered collections from museums and private owners into an accessible online resource for researchers and enthusiasts.
The site features high-resolution photos, videos, audio clips, detailed inscriptions, and bibliographic data on thousands of shabtis. It includes searchable databases, variant analyses, and tools for cross-referencing objects across global collections.
It aims to advance shabti scholarship by virtually reuniting fragmented collections, enabling precise studies without physical access.
It’s an ambitious project launched at the end of 2025. The website’s long .com name makes it hard to find, and the homepage and navigation are confusing. It would help if the home page were kept simple and focused solely on shabtis, searching, adding, locations. All the extras, such as contributors, supporters, and Abaset, distract from the main purpose. VB 1-2026
George Andrew Reisner at the Nuri: Camp sorting shabtis, March 19, 1917
Photograph internet copy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
For an interesting study on Senkamanisken, see The Enigmatic Foot Marks on the Serpentinite Shabtis of King Senkamanisken by Kathryn Howley. Howley describes 1,277 faience and serpentinite shabtis of the Kushite king Senkamanisken (c. 640–620 BCE), famed as the largest number known from a single tomb in either Egypt or Nubia.
