Book - Les serviteurs funéraires royaux et princiers de L'Ancienne Ëgypte

The collection of funeral servants (chaouabtis, ouchebtis) of the Egyptian Antiquities Department of the Louvre Museum includes more than 4,200 statuettes.
This first volume is devoted to figurines of pharaohs and members of the royal family.Object very representative of Egyptian civilization, the funeral servant is linked to a belief that the dead,
whether of royal descent or not, must participate the production of food essential for its survival in the hereafter. By taking the place of its owner, the chaouabti quickly faces the drawbacks of exhausting ... and eternal labor.
This magical role of chaouabti determined the typology of the object, whose allure remains almost constant throughout the two millennia during which its existence is attested.
The royal and princely chaouabtis do not escape this uniformity, the apparent monotony of which is however broken by numerous and precious variations of detail.
The Louvre collection has 167 copies, complete or fragmentary, belonging to the most illustrious pharaohs - Amnophis III, Sthi I, Ramss III and Ramss IV - and others less known, such as Senkamanisken, Pinedjem I and Npherits I.
The royal family is not left out, since the Louvre also retains the only known complete servant of Queen Tiy, and a sampling of statuettes belonging to royal wives and daughters of the Third Intermediate Period: Henouttaouy, Matkar, Karomama, Amnardis ...
The museum can also be proud of having the most complete series of chaouabtis of the famous son of Ramss II , Prince Khemouaset.
The chronological sections and the characters are presented in a general introduction which precedes the detailed study of the statuettes; to meet the expectations of researchers and collectors, the emphasis has been placed on bibliography and comparative bibliography