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Notes and Communications

New and Old Light on Shawabtis From Mesoamerica

John Gee

In 1992, FARMS republished a notice about two inscribed Egyptian shawabti-figurines (also called ushabtis) from Acajutla, Sonsonate, El Salvador (fig. 1). Because the figurines would prove cultural contact between Egypt and Mesoamerica, the article suggested that "these figurines may be very important indeed." A note appended to the article remarked that this report "still calls for further information." That further information is the focus of this note.

Originally published in 1940 by Mariano Cuevas, the shawabtis were discovered in 1914 three meters below the surface, on the property of the Reverend Senior Velloso, archbishop of El Salvador, near Acajutla, Sonsonate, El Salvador.

The FARMS article announcing the two figurines warned that "premature enthusiasm ought to be avoided." Some of the reasons were given in the article itself: (1) "More text may be inscribed on the backs." (2) The poor quality of the photographs made it very difficult to read the texts, and thus "detailed photos are necessary for closer study." (3) Though the figurines were found in Acajutla, "they were not examined in place by archaeologists," and thus "we cannot be certain where they first surfaced." Other cautionary statements were made by John Sorenson when he discussed the figurines at a conference on transoceanic contact:

The most convincing type of cultural parallel would be, ideally, something discrete, concrete, and visible, like two patently Egyptian statuettes that purportedly "come from three meters in depth at the eastern benches of Acajutla," El Salvador (and are now [1971] in the Museo Nacional "David J. Guzman," San Salvador). If one could locate and accept without question a number of such evidences, at least the bare-bones historical problem of intercontinental contacts might be simplified. (Yet even if the statuettes-or a Roman figurine-could be proved ancient and authentic, we would probably be unable to connect them in any meaningful way with the process of Mesoamerican cultural growth.) But of course items like these have so often proved elusive, unreliable, faked or with such other disabilities as evidence that they must be ignored for practical purposes.