A national study of all the Egyptian artefacts in museums across Scotland has confirmed that two of the objects in our collection - once thought to be modern copies - are in fact genuine Egyptian antiquities over 3,000 years old!
The two figures - called Shabtis - were glazed ceramic funerary figures, made to accompany the deceased to the after-life. Thanks to the research by Dr Dan Potter of the National Museums of Scotland, and his translation of the hieroglyphics, we now know that these Shabtis belonged to a person named Nespautitawy.
The name is very specific to a certain time, dating the pieces to between 1186 and 945 BC - which is equivalent to the end of the New Kingdom or beginning of the Third Intermediate period.
Intriguingly, there are coffins in Vienna that belong to someone with the same name though it would be hard to say if it is the same person.
The name suggests that the shabtis were collected in or around Luxor.
The pieces were collected by Abercorn schoolmaster Christopher Dawson whose collection was gifted by his family to the then Linlithgow Town Council upon his death. His collection also included objects collected in the Americas and New Zealand, some of which was donated to him by the Earl of Hopetoun, which was used to help teach his pupils.
The shabtis are part of our Dawson display in Gallery 3; we look forward to being able to show them off properly when the museum re-opens!
Read more about the National Ancient Egyptian Collections review on the NMS website here - with Linlithgow now firmly on the Scottish Ancient Egyptian map!
