Abstract
The earliest funerary statuettes were included in the funeral trousseaux of the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom in the form of single specimens. During the New Kingdom, the number of statuettes per deceased grew considerably, until, at the dawn of the 1st millennium B.C. ,they constitutedveritable troops of several hundred statuettes. They then became an essential part of the funeral trousseau, before their use declined during the Ptolemaic period. In this seminar, we will examine the iconography of statuettes from the 1st millennium B.C. and the texts of chapters 6and 166 of the Book of the Dead, in order to highlight their role(s) as images of the deceased and as substitutes (servants) destined to carry out agricultural work in the place of the deceased.
Knowledge of ancient Egyptian essential.
