Collector Antiquities: Fake shabtis, section 6, page 3

Regrettably these fakes are provided with a veneer of authenticity as two have been sold by a well known auction house: and appear to have been read by their experts.

This is extremely surprising as the inscriptions both front and back are nonsense!

Another specialist auction house has offered them with the suggested reading of the name here as Kheby.

Most of the back inscription is completely unreadable.

With imagination one might see a partial reading as Ha-Mer, the second 'Ha' rather corrupted and the second 'Mer' the alternative sign used: which is odd in itself.

One auction house offers a provenance going back to 1978 in Belgium. This I think highly unlikely!

On the front the faker has tried to copy the standard invocation to Osiris as one sees on so many shabtis but has confused Gardiner sign N8 and F31.

An ancient Egyptian with limited writing skills but working in a factory making ushabtis would be highly unlikely to make this mistake.

But a modern faker wholly unfamiliar with hieroglyphs and just trying to copy shapes, could easily make this mistake: and did!

This is rather oddly repeated twice in this fake inscription.

The back of these shabtis bears something that gives the impression of being a hieroglyph inscription but is total nonsense. It cannot be 'read' as suggested by that auction house.

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Inscribed both front and back.

Most are sold on eBay.

One might forgive an eBay seller for being unable to read hieroglyphs and fall for this fake but this seller knows more or less nothing about ancient Egyptian artefacts as he/she offers strings of faience beads (of dubious authenticity) with scarabs attached like these!

Someone selling supposed Egyptian antiquities should simply not fall for these ridiculous things!

The earliest I can find these online is at a non specialist gallery in the USA in 2018

Another specialist auction house has offered them with the suggested reading of the name here as Kheby.

Most of the back inscription is completely unreadable.

With imagination one might see a partial reading as Ha-Mer, the second 'Ha' rather corrupted and the second 'Mer' the alternative sign used: which is odd in itself.

One auction house offers a provenance going back to 1978 in Belgium. This I think highly unlikely!

On the front the faker has tried to copy the standard invocation to Osiris as one sees on so many shabtis but has confused Gardiner sign N8 and F31.

An ancient Egyptian with limited writing skills but working in a factory making ushabtis would be highly unlikely to make this mistake.

But a modern faker wholly unfamiliar with hieroglyphs and just trying to copy shapes, could easily make this mistake: and did!

This is rather oddly repeated twice in this fake inscription.

The back of these shabtis bears something that gives the impression of being a hieroglyph inscription but is total nonsense. It cannot be 'read' as suggested by that auction house.

Worth looking at them closely.

Deliberately broken and repaired as many fakes are.

May '26

Yet more on the market. Now being "read" as for Ha-Bener-Re

We acquire a example to examine more closely >>>> next page