A New Ushebti of the Divine Adoratrice Karomama Meritmut G,Identified in the Musée de la Princerie in Verdun (Département Meuse/France)

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The first known attestations of the divine adoratrice Karomama Meritmut, later referred to as ‘G’, came to light in 1844. During his stay in Thebes that year, Richard Lepsius purchased nine ushebtis and two canopic jars, which had belonged to Karomama Meritmut’s burial in the Third Intermediate Period necropolis located within the mortuary temple of Ramesses II, the Ramesseum. ¹ This shaft tomb must have been discovered by locals only shortly before. After Lepsius’ visit, it was probably quickly covered up again by the desert and its exact location was once more forgotten.

Sometime later, nearly all the complete ushebtis of Karomama Meritmut which had not been acquired by Lepsius ended up in various collections worldwide, after having been sold in Thebes between 1845 and 1868. ²

It was not until 2014 that a joint team of the Ägyptologisches Institut der Universität Leipzig and the Mission Archéologique de Thèbes-Ouest/Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique under the direction of Benoît Lurson was able to rediscover the shaft. During the cleaning of the collapsed chambers, 69 complete ushebtis and about 100 ushebti fragments, all belonging to Karomama, were found. ³ Therefore, it was interesting to learn, as B. Lurson kindly informed me in April 2018, that another previously unknown/unidentified and undamaged ushebti of this divine adoratrice had been identified in a small Egyptian collection in France.

The hitherto largely unknown small Egyptian collection of the Musée de la Princerie in Verdun (Lorraine, France) consists of 126 artifacts. ⁴ Among these are several ushebtis made of faience, wood, stone, and fired clay; faience amulets; bronze statuettes; remnants of human and animal mummies; and fragments of textile shrouds. Unfortunately, no detailed information on their provenance or modern object history survived, except for the acquisition dates, which range from 1874 to 1936. The ushebti of Karomama was one of the latest accessions.

The former owner of this ushebti was Charles Louis Nicolas Leroux, who died in 1933. His large collection of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities was assigned, as his legacy, to the Musée de la Princerie three years later in 1936. Leroux was Président du conseil des chemins de fer d’Alsace-Lorraine and Inspecteur général des ponts et chaussées in the region, but nothing more is known about him. He himself had obviously never been to Egypt or the Mediterranean and was not known for his interest in antiquities.

Therefore, it is more likely that this art collection was compiled by his father Louis-Hector Leroux (*27.12.1829 Verdun – †11.11.1900 Angers). ⁵ Louis-Hector was a relatively prosperous French neoclassical painter and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1877. Several of his paintings depict scenes from ancient Greek or Roman history. In 1857, he won the ‘2^e prix de Rome’. Therefore, being a ‘pensionnaire de l’Académie de France à Rome’ ⁶ granted him the right to reside for one year in the luxurious Villa Médicis, where, since 1803, the Académie de France à Rome is housed. Between 1860 and 1877, he often lived for short periods in Rome again. ⁷ It can be speculated that in Rome he came into contact with people who provided him an understanding for Ancient Egypt.

In 1865, Louis-Hector Leroux undertook a long journey throughout Egypt, sailing on the Nile up to the Third Cataract. During this trip, he bought all of his Egyptian artifacts, but unfortunately, no further details are known from his travels. Likely while in Thebes, Leroux bought the Karomama ushebti. Even at that time, more than twenty years after the partial plunder of the tomb, some of her ushebtis were still available on the local art market through the former looters or local dealers. Likewise, another of her ushebtis presently in the Louvre was demonstrably bought there on-site in 1868. ⁸ Later, in 1870, Leroux travelled around the Mediterranean. He died in 1900 in his son’s house in Angers; thus, Charles inherited the entire antiquities collection of his father. Most of his and his father’s papers and notes got lost in 1914, when the German Imperial forces seized and destroyed the small village of Dun-sur-Meuse, including the house of the Leroux family.

The ushebti Musée de la Princerie inv. 85.8.32 represents a mummiform worker ushebti, with a height of 14 cm, a width of 4.7 cm, and a depth of 3.3 cm (fig. 1). It wears the rounded and relatively bulky wig with the royal uraeus on its forehead that is typical of this period. Both ears are visible and there is no divine beard.

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Fig. 1.

Ushebti of Karomama, Musée de la Princerie inv. 85.8.32 (photo: © Musée de la Princerie, Ville de Verdun).

Due to the worn surface, the details of the face are blurred. Striking are the deep eyes and the small thick-lipped mouth with a smooth smile. Both arms are bent with the hands held opposite to each other in front of the lower chest enhancing the thumbs. Each hand holds a schematically carved broad hoe. The lower body is curved and was once covered with an inscription painted in black. Both feet are merely outlined. The rear shows raised buttocks. The wig has a trapezoidal extension at its bottom part and bears remnants of the black painted hairband.

The object is complete, but its green faience glaze is preserved only on small parts of the surface, mainly on the rear part. All inscriptions have disappeared, as well as all further painting, except for that of the ribbon on the back of the wig. Based on the description given above, the Verdun ushebti belongs to my class B–1 (worker ushebti wearing round wig, back part with trapezoidal extension), which represents the main part of all known ushebtis of Karomama, now being expanded by one further statuette.

This newly identified statuette sheds further light on the early selling and distribution of Karomama’s funerary equipment in the second half of the nineteenth century. Roughly 20 years after Lepsius’ visit to the Ramesseum, Leroux was one of the latest attested purchasers of a Karomama ushebti on-site.