Talk to the Shabti

It's pronounced in two syllables, accent on the first one, where the first is pronounced "shob" (rhymes with "blob") and the second is pronounced "tee" (like the "T" in T-shirt). Shabti. And among other things, I think it's a huge, missed marketing opportunity for King Tut fans.

This past weekend I was in Dallas, lured by the dual attractions of the visiting Boy King exhibit and an American Girl store (we have neither famous dead pharohs nor two-story doll stores in Austin...yet). And as I stood in line, amazed by the fact that there would still BE a long line (hadn't everyone already seen this the last time it came around?) and trying to remember the words to the Steve Martin song, the furthest thing from my mind was work-life balance.

Imagine my astonishment, then, when I encountered a five-thousand-year-old nod to the value of work-life balance. There it was, in room four, number 17 on the audio tour: the Shabti (which I capitalize here out of reverence), about 7 inches tall, displayed in a glass case along with several other key items buried with a mummy considered essential for the afterlife. It was shaped like a sarcophagus and intricately carved with hieroglyphics, the Egyptian artistic equivalent to a Russian black lacquer box. Its purpose: to perform labor for the individual in the afterlife. Not a slave, mind you, but a substitute, so that whenever you would be called upon to contribute some kind of work, your shabti would stand in for you and perform the task.

Now, most of us, when we think of the afterlife, I would guess imagine it as a place of total relaxation and enjoyment, a sort of endless lying on the ground being fed grapes kind of place. Work? Who said anything about work in the afterlife? But I think the Egyptians are the wiser in this respect. They must have known that wherever there is a group of humans, there is going to be the equivalent of behind-the-scenes-of-the-Disney-magic that has to done. And when their number came up to perform this celestial maintenance, they were going to be prepared. They would have a shabti.

You might think that I have a tendency to see work-life everywhere, and probably I do. But this humbled me. We think of work-life balance as a "new" topic, something we are struggling with in our modern blackberry-crazy world that no ancient could have possibly foreseen. And yet, here we have an example of wisdom from five thousand years in the past that recognizes the need to prepare for a future filled with work. It put me in my place, and more than anything else in the exhibit, it connected me with those people from the distant past with whom I seemingly had so little in common. They, too, must have struggled with getting everything done -- even the royalty -- otherwise there would be no need for a shabti. Certainly not one so intricately carved and carefully prepared.

So when the end of the exhibit channeled us into the inevitable museum store full of Tut tchotchkes, I was disappointed to find no shabtis. I wanted one for my library, or maybe something small I could carry around in my pocket. Even a key chain that would hang from my rear-view-mirror would have sufficed.

That way, the next time someone made an outrageous request of me, instead of saying "talk to the hand" I could simply say "talk to the shabti".