Rediscovered: The Shabti of Senseneb, a Museum Provenance Study

Abstract

In 2021 the Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney, received a new donation of an Egyptian shabti in a model coffin. It was given to the donor’s grandfather by the Sixth Earl of Carnarvon in gratitude for the safe return of artifacts accidentally left in an item of furniture sold through a London auction house in the mid-1920s. The shabti was originally discovered by the Earl’s father during his excavations of the Theban Valley, in the tomb of Tetiky, an important administrator of the early New Kingdom. This paper presents the curatorial investigation of the artifact’s provenance, contextualizes the artifact as part of an assemblage that is dispersed globally in museum collections, and determines how it came to be hidden in a cupboard. This paper hopes to serve as a case study in recontextualizing archaeological artifacts as part of dispersed assemblages in multiple collections through detailed interconnected provenance studies.