sigmund freud's collection an archaeology of the mind

Shabti fi gure of Senna
Egyptian, New Kingdom (18th Dynasty), Tuthmosis III–Amenophis IV,
1479–1400 BC
limestone, 28.5 x 8.7 x 8.3 cm
LDFRD 3271
Collection Freud Museum London
Freud described mourning as work, an image personifi ed by the
Egyptian tomb object known as the shabti. 1 Meaning ‘I am here’,
shabtis or ‘answerers’, came to be regarded as deputies of the
deceased. Their job was to perform any agricultural tasks assigned
to the deceased in the next world. The Egyptians were obviously
concerned about the amount of work they might have to do. If a family
could afford it, hundreds of shabtis were interred in the tomb. Freud
owned several types of shabtis and he arranged them together on a
cabinet in his consulting room, just as they would have been arranged
in a tomb.
This shabti of a man has a sensitively modelled face with distinctive
eyes, large ears and a square beard. The hands are crossed on the
chest. Though the hieroglyphs have faded, the owner’s name was
Senna. The shabti is inscribed with a chapter from The Book of
the Dead. It is translated as follows: ‘O shabti allotted to me! If I be
summoned or if I be detailed to do any work which has to be done
in the realm of the dead, if indeed obstacles are implanted for you
therewith as a man at his duties, you shall detail yourself for me on
every occasion of making arable the fi elds, of fl ooding the banks, or of
conveying sand from east to west: ‘Here am I!’, you shall say.’ 2
1. Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, (1917[1915]), S.E. Vol. XIV, p. 244-245.
‘[W]hen the work of mourning is completed the ego becomes free and uninhibited again.’
2. Nicholas Reeves, in Lynn Gamwell and Richard Wells (ed.s), Sigmund Freud and Art: His
Personal Collection of Antiquities, State University of New York at Binghamton; Freud
Museum, London, 1989, p. 65.
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