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December 2005

 

  • A trawl through eBay at the end of the year.
  • If you bought one of these and want to try to get your money back, contact me!
  • BUT one of them was sold  openly as a fake! The more reproductions and fakes which are sold clearly indicating that fact, the better!
  • I've tried to raise interest in creating a petition to send to eBay asking them to create a new category of "Reproduction and in the style of".

















 

These specimens with supposed hieroglyphs are worth looking at as these marks are not hieroglyphs at all!

Nor do ushabtis have suspension holes through their heads.

 

 


















 

And ushabtis are not hollow!










6th February 2006.

Indinickycat sent me this one in the cause of truth and scientific enquiry.

It was subjected to the good old hammer test.

 

 

 



 

And this is what it looks like inside.

Bear in mind that it was guaranteed as genuinely ancient.

 




 

Whereas it should, if of genuine ancient faience, look more like this.

 

 




 

If you came directly here from the home page you will probably want to start reading this section from the beginning. Click here.

 

From Chris

End of March 2006

I am sending you a few photos of a couple of pieces. The pottery one I purchased myself from Sadigh, while the other was purchased from someone I believe bought it at Sadigh

 

They both look odd to me.

The shapes and the glyphs.

We shall get some authoratitive responses.

In  the meanwhile, join the yahoo group!

 

  From Dik

 

I looked trough my archive and I can't find a reference that comes close to the wooden one.

The shape looks fine, but the beard laps on the front seems to be too short.

First I thought perhaps the glyph's were added later on and the shabti could be right, but now I think he is not ok at all.

As for the glyphs, it starts with a strange sign for the s from shd, the Osiris throne is to small, they are very badly written.

Imho I vote for not genuine.

 




  From Chris

I actually found the receipt that I purchased the pottery and faience ushabti from Sadigh in 1994. The wooden one was purchased in 1991. Thanks again for all your help. I subscribed to the Yahoo site as well. Gosh, there's a ton of emails there. It'll keep me busy for awhile.

From Dik

13th April 06

Both are definitely fakes.

The wooden one has hoes but no hands to hold them ;-). The vertical register with the bandages is strange, I would expect if there are bandages there would be (on this type) a vertical one in the middle, the patina, shape of wig and face is wrong, the glyph's are terrible. It is a mixture of a Pthah Soker and a NK shabti.

 

The biggest problems on the terracotta one are the glyph's (the text does not make sense, shdj (the hd is not ok) asir st? anch=f r or n ????? maA xrw)

 

Don't like the face either, altough I did not get a better picture of the face. I don't like the patina. I think if he makes it a little wet he would not smell the swamp smell or rotten wood smell you have with the original ones.

 

From Miguel

29th April 06

  • The wooden shabti is certainly odd. I can't remember seeing a similarshabti before. I agree with Dik.
  • As for the pottery shabti, I would say the inscription seems to be modern: sHD wsir Ast-nfr(.t) mAa-xrw [May the Osiris Isetnofret shine, justified].
  • Although the text might be OK, I find that the handwriting is less convincing as if written by someone who is not very used to writing glyphs not a scribe.
  • As Dik said, many of the glyphs are rather clumsy, and the space between glyphs is not balanced in some occasions-notice Ast. I can't see the glyph nfr clearly, but I reached that conclusion because of the phonetic support *f* + *r*. Well, if it is *nfr*, it looks horrible. If it is anx, as Dik suggested, well...nonsensical, as he rightly said.

 

 





 

 

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