S is for Shabti

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  Everyone else is almost caught up to me now, but if you’re still sticking to the officially scheduled letter of the day, you can find my Post for R here.

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my brand-sparkly-new collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        For S we’re going into the “Other” category for a poem inspired by the mythology of ancient Egyptian funerary practices.  So, you’re going to live forever in an afterlife that’s really pretty much exactly like this life.  In other words, all the work still needs to be done – and who wants to spend an eternal afterlife doing the chores?  That’s where the shabti comes in.

        A shabti (sometimes also called ushabti or shawabti) is a model figurine of a person, inscribed with magical spells so that when called upon in the afterlife, it will step up and do all the required work, leaving its master to “live” an afterlife of leisure.  The people of the highest wealth and status might include dozens or even hundreds of shabtis in their tombs to make sure they were properly served.  For me the idea of shabtis, like all those stories about beings created for the sole purpose of serving their masters, raises the question of how they feel about this situation.

     For a long time I waited, silent in the sand.

     Feet planted, arms crossed, silent in my row.

     For a long time I waited to respond to the command.

     All was stillness, all was darkness, unvarying and slow.

 

     For a long time I waited, patient for the call

     To plow, to clear obstructions, to carry stones or sand.

     For a long time I waited, my obedience a scrawl

     Of symbols down my legs: my statement and my stand.

 

     “I am here; I answer,” my painted spell declares,

     To the master in whose likeness I am made.

     All around me in the darkness are my master’s painted prayers…

     But his heart has not returned from being weighed.

        Once again I have given you here only half the poem, in an unabashedly unsubtle attempt to entice you to want to read more, thus having to purchase a copy of Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns for yourself.  And in case you need further enticement, But wait!

There’s more!  S is also for Scheherazade, about whom you can read the poem which I posted here.  (Plus, you can read about some other authors’ Scheherazade retellings at this post.)  And S is also for Siren.  I’ve got a short story and a poem about sirens in my book, but in this prior post on The Lure of Sirens you can read all about the varied ways sirens have been depicted in art from ancient Greece up to my own rubber block print (which is in the book - in three variations, no less!)

        The moral of shabtis is that although humans never stop trying to figure out ways to make someone else do the work for them, enslaving another sentient being is never okay.

        However, if you persist in making shabtis despite Moral #1, it’s worth it to pay a little extra for a scribe with clear handwriting, lest you end up with garbled spells and malfunctioning shabtis for all eternity.

  The ancient Egyptians tended to pack for the afterlife like going to a deserted island, so I’ll go with that classic question: what three things would you take?

[Picture: Shabti, rubber block reduction print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com),

Siren Song, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]