Building a Shrine Part 2: Nebt-Het Statue Creation

My dilemma was that there is no Veronese bronze Nebt-het (as far as I can tell). Eventually, I decided that my only option was to alter a different Veronese statue and make a Nebt-het of my own. After all, I am a creator’s kid so brining my creative talents to bare in these sort of situations is more or less a duty. (Once again, warning: there are a lot of pictures in the post as I decided to show the creation process)

Since I already had a Veronese Ma’at on hand, I decided to use Her to create Nebt-het. However, I desperately didn’t want to deface the Ma’at statue in anyway— I just couldn’t bear to cut off that beautiful feather. Then I had a flash of insight: if I could find a way to use the feather as an armature for the new headdress, I would be able to create a removable headdress that snapped around the feather. All I needed was a design that allowed me to keep the feather.

I spent a lot of time looking and found a headdress design I loved (go see the inspiration here). I got out my premo clay, clay tools and Ma’at sculpture. Here is the original sculpture and the tools I had:

 I mixed clay colors and created a shade fairly close to the original statue material. Then I molded and shaped the new headdress directly into the statue. Working off the artists rendition and adding my own touches and working to personal taste I was eventually able to come up with this:

I then took my mica powders (which I use sort of like a glaze in that I apply them to raw clay and then bake the powders into the finished piece) and my paint brushes and worked on the coloring. I don’t have a picture of the raw colored clay, but it looks the same after being cured:

I want to stress (for anyone trying this at home) that I took the headdress off the statue and baked it separately. Please do not bake your statues. I also want to mention that I cooked the clay for only half the recommended time and immediately dunked it in ice water as soon as it came out. This halts the half finished cooking process and keeps some of the clay’s plasticity so that it snaps onto Her feather a little easier and has less chance of developing cracks over time (though you can see a small one in the finished piece).

 And here is what she looks like with Her new headdress installed:

Ma’at becomes Nebt-het! Nehktet!

And finally, here She is installed in the shrine:

You can see that Set has already been added. There is a candle and “sun” pyrite disc next to him that marks where Ra will go and the two candles on the right side of the shrine at Nebt-het’s level, mark where Sekhmet and Her-Wer will eventually be installed when they arrive.

I will post pics once all the statues arrive and I put the finishing touches on the shrine. (^-^)