This Element provides a new evaluation of burial customs in New Kingdom Egypt, from about 1550 to 1077 BC, with an emphasis on burials of the wider population. It also covers the regions then under Egyptian control: the Southern Levant and the area of Nubia as far as the Fourth Cataract. The inclusion of foreign countries provides insights not only into the interaction between the centre of the empire and its conquered regions, but also concerning what is typically Egyptian and to what extent the conquered regions were culturally influenced. It can be shown that burials in Lower Nubia closely follow those in Egypt. In the southern Levant, by contrast, cemeteries of the period often yield numerous Egyptian objects, but burial customs in general do not follow those in Egypt.
A Book Riot 100 Must-Read Book on Ancient History Death, burial, and the afterlife were as important to the ancient Egyptians as how they lived. This well-illustrated book explores all aspects of death in ancient Egypt, including beliefs of the afterlife, mummification, the protection of the body, tombs and their construction and decoration, funerary goods, and the funeral itself. It also addresses the relationship between the living and the dead, and the magico-religious interaction of these two in ancient Egyptian culture. Salima Ikram's own experience with experimental mummification and funerary archaeology lends the book many completely original and provocative insights. In addition, a full survey of current development in the field makes this a unique book that combines all aspects of death and burial in ancient Egypt into one volume.
Explains why ancient Egyptians of all classes were preoccupied with tombs, discusses the evolution of their burial practices, and includes illustrations, a map of the principal sites mentioned, a chronology, and a glossary.
Historical and Archaeological Aspects of Egyptian Funerary Culture, a thoroughly reworked translation of Les textes des sarcophages et la démocratie published in 2008, challenges the widespread idea that the “royal” Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom after a process of “democratisation” became, in the Middle Kingdom, accessible even to the average Egyptian in the form of the Coffin Texts. Rather they remained an element of elite funerary culture, and particularly so in the Upper Egyptian nomes. The author traces the emergence here of the so-called “nomarchs” and their survival in the Middle Kingdom. The site of Dayr al-Barshā, currently under excavation, shows how nomarch cemeteries could even develop into large-scale processional landscapes intended for the cult of the local ruler. This book also provides an updated list of the hundreds of (mostly unpublished) Middle Kingdom coffins and proposes a new reference system for these.
Provides a much needed summary overview of the key elements of Egyptian tomb form, use and decoration over time. The tombs, with their scenes, inscriptions, objects and human remains, represent our richest source of information for the understanding of Egyptian beliefs and practices, art and architecture and of many aspects of daily life. Detailed, scholarly reports on individual cemeteries and tombs are abundant but in this fully illustrated, more general work, reproduced in this facsimile edition, Kanawati provides an invaluable introduction to, and overview of, the key elements of Egyptian tombs from Predynastic to the Late Period. The Egyptian dead enjoyed a continued existence in both the Netherworld and the land of the living – the individual possessing multiple entities that experienced different destinies after death. The tomb provided an everlasting earthly dwelling and consisted of a chapel above ground where the deceased’s cult was maintained and offerings presented, and a burial chamber for the body. Either or both could be richly decorated with paintings, reliefs and inscriptions. Kanawati describes and illustrates the principal forms and features of architecture and nature and subject matter of decoration and demonstrates how tomb design and decoration changed through time.
Janet Richards considers social stratification in Middle Kingdom Egypt, exploring the assumption that a 'middle class' arose during this period. By focusing on the entire range of mortuary behavior, she shows how Middle Kingdom Egyptian practices and landscapes relating to death reveal information about the living society.
This volume challenges assumptions about—and highlights new approaches to—the study of ancient Egyptian society by tackling various thematic social issues through structured individual case studies. The reader will be presented with questions about the relevance of the past in the present. The chapters encourage an understanding of Egypt in its own terms through the lens of power, people, and place, offering a more nuanced understanding of the way Egyptian society was organized and illustrating the benefits of new approaches to topics in need of a critical re-examination. By re-evaluating traditional, long-held beliefs about a monolithic, unchanging ancient Egyptian society, this volume writes a new narrative—one unchecked assumption at a time. Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches is intended for anyone studying ancient Egypt or ancient societies more broadly, including undergraduate and graduate students, Egyptologists, and scholars in adjacent fields.
Egyptian coffins stand out in museum collections for their lively and radiant appearance. As a container of the mummy, coffins played a key role by protecting the body and, at the same time, integrating the deceased in the afterlife. The paramount importance of these objects and their purpose is detected in the ways they changed through time. For more than three thousand years, coffins and tombs had been designed to assure in the most efficient way possible a successful outcome for the difficult transition to the afterlife. This book examines eight non-royal tombs found relatively intact, from the plains of Saqqara to the sacred hills of Thebes. These almost undisturbed burial sites managed to escape ancient looters and so their discoveries, from Mariette’s exploration of the Mastaba of Ti in Saqqara to Schiaparelli’s discovery of the Tomb of Kha and Merit in Deir el-Medina, were sensational events in Egyptian archaeology. Each one of these sites unveils before our eyes a time capsule, where coffins and tombs were designed together as part of a social, political and religious order. From Predynastic times to the decline of the New Kingdom, this book explores each site revealing the interconnection between mummification practices, coffin decoration, burial equipment, tomb decoration and ritual landscapes. Through this analysis, the author aims to point out how the design of coffins changed through time in order to empower the deceased with different visions of immortality. By doing so, the study of coffins reveals a silent revolution which managed to open to ordinary men and women horizons of divinity previously reserved for the royal sphere. Coffins thus show us how identity was forged to create an immortal and divine self.
A meticulous study of the social, economic, and religious significance of coffin reuse and development during the Ramesside and early Third Intermediate periods, illustrated with over 900 images Funerary datasets are the chief source of social history in Egyptology, and the numerous tombs, coffins, Books of the Dead, and mummies of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties have not been fully utilized as social documents, mostly because the data of this time period is scattered and difficult to synthesize. This culmination of fifteen years of coffin study analyzes coffins and other funerary equipment of elites from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-second Dynasties to provide essential windows into social strategies and adaptations employed during the Bronze Age collapse and subsequent Iron Age reconsolidation. Many Twentieth to Twenty-second Dynasty coffins show evidence of reuse from other, older coffins, as well as obvious marks where gilding or inlay have been removed. Innovative vignettes painted onto coffin surfaces reflect new religious strategies and coping mechanisms within this time of crisis, while advances in mummification techniques reveal an Egyptian anxiety about long-term burial without coffins as a new style of stuffed and painted mummy was developed for the wealthy. It was in the context of necropolis insecurity, economic crisis, and group burial in reused and unpainted chambers that a complex, polychrome coffin style emerged. The first part of this book focuses on the theory and evidence of coffin reuse, contextualized within the social collapse that characterized the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties. The second part presents photo essays of annotated visual data for over sixty Egyptian coffins from the so-called Royal Caches, most of them from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Illustrated throughout with high-quality images, the line drawings and color and black-and-white photographs are ideal for careful study, especially evidenced in the digital edition, where pages can be enlarged for close examination.
