The Titanic, shabti and further reading

Much to my surprise, my article Servant of the Deep: The mystery of the Titanic Shabti has consistently been the post popular post on this blog. As of now, it's been read 910 times since it went live on 24th January.

The Titanic seems to exert a continuing fascination with people and this will probably reach a new high next year which will be the 100th anniversary of the sinking. Add to the that an Ancient Egyptian mystery and you have a great story - well, at least I think so.

I had any email the other day from a follower of Egyptology News Network asking about any recommendations about good books about this eternally hypnotic story.

So for Tim - and any others who are interested - are my list of books. Some of these have been listed in the post, but I have also mentioned them here again.

Perhaps the classic book is A Night to Remember, Penguin Books, London, 1978 (first published 1956) by Walter Lord. It hasn't really dated and has fabulous photographs. Also made into a film of the same name. Highly recommended.

Titanic: Fortune and Fate, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998. This actually a catalogue of a Titanic artefact exhibition and contains a photograph of Molly Brown's shabti. It's where I first encountered the story.

The Loss of the Titanic, 1912, The Stationery Office, London, 1999 (first published 1912 and 1913). Perhaps a little bit of a dry read but this a British account of the sinking.

There is also Titanic: The Official Story, April 14-15, 1912 (facsimile documents from the archives of the Public Record Office, London), Random House, Inc, New York, 1997. A bit of a novelty but quite atmospheric.

The Riddle of the Titanic, Orion, London, 1995, by Robin Gardiner and Dan van der Vat. This is for those who like their conspiracy theories. Was it really the Titanic which sank?

Also worth reading are A Night Remembered, Hambledon and London, New York, 2004, by Stephanie Barczewski.

Kristen Iversen, and Muffet Brown's Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth, Johnson Books, 1999, provides a good overview of the woman who acquired the shabti, along with other Ancient Egyptian treasures, on a visit to Egypt before boarding the doomed liner to return home.

And for a balanced look at the story from the man who re-discovered the wreck - Robert Ballard - there's National Georgaphic's Secrets of the Titanic DVD set.

EXCLUSIVE: Servant of the Deep: The mystery of the Titanic Shabti

Once part of a cache of Egyptian treasures destined for display in an American museum, a solitary, battered and forgotten ushabti figure, which survived the sinking of the Titanic, has emerged from years of obscurity to take its place in the public eye. Paul Boughton reports. 

Above: The ‘Titanic ushabti’.

Of all the disasters and tragedies that have dogged human existence, the sinking of the RMS Titanic on its maiden voyage between Southampton and New York still maintains a powerful grip on the imagination. On 14th April 1912 at 11.40 pm, the world’s most luxurious ocean liner hit an ice- berg off the Newfoundland Banks. Within two-and-a- half hours, the Titanic sank. Of the two thousand, two hundred passengers and crew on board, only seven hundred and five souls were saved.

This story has been re-told over and over again in newspapers, books, magazines, television programmes, films – and even computer games. Surely there is nothing new to tell? But there is one story that has, I believe, been neglected.

It is the tale of a 2,700-year-old ushabti figure carried away from the stricken liner by the woman known to history as the ‘Unsinkable’ Molly Brown (1867-1932), otherwise the Denver millionairess Mrs. Margaret Tobin. The ‘unsinkable’ title was supposedly given to her after a press interview when she was safely on dry land in America. She put her survival down to “Typical Brown luck.” And she added, “We’re unsinkable.” For her, the ushabti was a lucky talisman.

This surviving ushabti was just part of a cargo of Egyptian antiquities being shipped to the United States by Molly following a visit to Egypt.

When she boarded the 46,328 ton Titanicon the evening of 10th April, 1912 in Cherbourg, France, Molly brought with her one crate of Egyptian souvenirs and three crates of ancient Egyptian figurines, the latter ultimately destined for the Denver Museum in the USA.

Above: The RMS Titanic departs Southampton on 10April 1912. Later that day, at Cherbourg,  Molly Brown would board the doomed liner with her Egyptian ‘treasures’.

Ushabtis (also known as shabtis or shawabtis) are figures placed in burials from the Middle Kingdom, between about 4,000 and 3,500 years ago, until the Ptolemaic Period, around 2,300 years ago. They evolved from the belief that the afterlife would be similar to the living world. In death, people believed, they would be surrounded by friends and family and would therefore need food and drink; the gods might even call on them to work. The ancient Egyptians hoped that a ushabti would magically do the work for them. They were servants for the afterlife.