The ultimate labour saving devices - they worked for eternity

Shabtis or ushabtis populated ancient Egyptian tombs. Macabre little manikins, they were designed to labour for the dead in the afterlife. Some tombs stacked as many as three hundred and sixty five with the dead, one for every day of the year, plus a few extras as overseers. They just don't build labour-saving devices the way they used to. And now shabtis are at the heart of a new murder mystery - THE SHABTI DOLL MURDERS on Kindle.