Were Egyptian 'Pot Burials' a Symbol of Rebirth?

By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | January 17, 2017

Ancient Egyptians who buried their deceased kin in pots may have chosen the burial vessels as symbols of the womb and rebirth, scientists argue in a new paper.

Credit: Adaima excavation. Crubezy & Midant-Reynes, IFAO

Pot burials in ancient Egypt have long been considered the domain of the very poor. In a paper published in the journal Antiquity, however, archaeologists Ronika Power of the University of Cambridge and Yann Tristant of Macquarie University in Australia assert that pots weren't just a last-ditch choice for the desperate. Instead, they wrote, pots may have symbolized eggs or the womb, and their use may have indicated beliefs that the dead would be reborn in the afterlife.

"[I]t is hard to dismiss the visual similarities between pots laden with human bodies with limbs contracted into the so-called 'foetal' or 'sleeping' position and gravid uteri or eggs," the researchers wrote. "It is clear that further study is required to untangle the symbolic meaning of this particular mode of burial, which has clear associations with gestation and (re)birth."

High-status dead?

Children, infants and fetuses in ancient Egypt are often found buried in pots, and for that reason, researchers have downplayed the importance of this ritual as mere rubbish disposal, according to the study researchers. But being buried in a recycled household pot doesn't necessarily indicate that the babies and children interred in this way were considered nothing more than garbage, Power and Tristant wrote. Ancient cultures recycled everything, they said, and even high-status people were sometimes buried in reused tombs or sarcophagi.

The importance of death in everyday Egyptian life

By Garry Shaw for Apollo Magazine

Often, exhibitions of ancient Egyptian artefacts divide their galleries into objects of ‘daily life’ and those associated with ‘burial and the afterlife’, despite most of the objects deriving from the excavation of burials, and the majority of these having been used in life. The Egyptians themselves would probably have been bemused by this division; to them, death was a transition to a different state of being, where life continued. True death only occurred following the judgement by Osiris, king of the blessed dead, when a person could be sentenced to obliteration. To some degree then, preparation for death was a bit like considering what to pack for a move abroad; many of the items used in life would be just as useful in the beyond.

Nevertheless, throughout the Pharaonic Period (3030–332 BC) – the timeframe usually covered by ‘ancient Egypt’ – certain objects specifically associated with death and the rituals necessary for continued survival, such as coffins, had to be specially produced. This is why today, thousands of Egyptian coffins can be found in museums across the world – they are a staple of any collection, and along with mummies, are what museum-goers expect to see. Whether box-like or anthropoid, their wooden surfaces painted with images in striking colours of unusual deities and hieroglyphs, coffins represent ancient Egypt, symbolise it, and in turn, reinforce the popular cliché that the ancient Egyptians were a civilisation obsessed with death – a cliché often countered by Egyptologists, who insist that the Egyptians dedicated so much time to preparing for death because they loved life and feared its end.

Guidebook to the Ancient Egyptian afterlife

In ancient Egypt, the end of life marked the start of a challenging journey – one that could be smoothed using the spells compiled in a Book of the Dead. Rob Attar explores how these books were used to ensure a speedy and successful path through the next world.

Wearing clean clothes and white sandals, you stand in a long hall supported by columns. On a throne at the far end of the room you see the figure of Osiris, the god of the underworld. You are surrounded by 42 gods, terrifying mummified figures including the Swallower of shades, the Bone-breaker and the Eater of entrails.

In front of you is the god Thoth in the form of a baboon. He sits atop a pair of scales that will very shortly decide your eternal fate. This is judgment day and, should you fail the test, you will experience the agonising second death. But you show no fear because you are a possessor of the Book of the Dead – a tome that contains within its texts the secrets to surviving the afterlife.

You turn to the first of the gods and begin to speak: “O Far-strider who came forth from Heliopolis, I have done no falsehood.” Then you turn to the second: “O Fire-embracer who came forth from Kheraha, I have not robbed...”

Coming forth by day

For ancient Egyptians, life on earth could be very short, so the rituals surrounding death were an integral part of their culture. Many of the best-known relics from Egypt – pyramids, tombs and mummies – reveal the time and resources that the people of the Nile were prepared to spend to ensure a successful afterlife. Spells or formulae that could aid your path through the next world first appeared on the walls of pyramids during the Egyptian Fifth Dynasty, around 2350 BC. Some 400 years later, in the time of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, these Pyramid Texts evolved into Coffin Texts that were inscribed on coffins, tomb walls and, sometimes, sheets of papyrus.

Surprising New Finds from Ancient Egyptian Star Charts

Planetarium software, among other things, shows how ancient Egyptians planned to navigate the sky after death

By Christine Gorman | Sep 15, 2015

Ancient Egyptians expected to be very busy in the afterlife. Thousands of years ago they painted big beautiful eyes on the outside of their coffins so that they could see what was going on in the world. Some of the nobility around the upper Egyptian city of Asyut even had detailed tables of star movements drawn on the inside of their coffins. The depictions look like timetables or spreadsheets of when various stars first appear (or disappear) over the horizon at different times of the year—only a lot more beautiful.

Scholars have long believed that the star charts represented a very early type of clock, for telling time at night, which might be important for certain religious rituals. But Sarah Symons of McMaster University in Ontario thinks it more likely that the tables represent a kind of map for the dead to properly navigate the sky, where they would live forevermore as stars. Her conclusions are based on years of research into ancient Egyptian beliefs, extensive surveys of the 27 known star tables or fragments of tables in the world and, using planetarium software, the ability to easily recreate the nighttime sky as it appeared more than 4000-odd years ago along the Nile. Symons and co-author Elizabeth Tasker of Hokkaido University in Japan describe the work in the October issue of Scientific American.

The basic layout of the star charts has, of course, been known for decades, as Symons and Tasker write in "Stars of the Dead." A complete table "is divided into quarters by a horizontal and a vertical strip. The horizontal strip contains a line from a religious text making an offering to a number of Egyptian gods, and the vertical strip pictures four images of the gods themselves. . ."

Ecrire à ses morts: enquête sur un usage rituel de l'écrit dans l'Egypte pharaonique - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.01.53

Sylvie Donnat Beauquier, Ecrire à ses morts: enquête sur un usage rituel de l'écrit dans l'Egypte pharaonique. Collection Horos​.   Grenoble:  Jérôme Millon Editions​, 2014.  Pp. 286.  ISBN 9782841372522.  €26.00 (pb). 

One of the most characteristic aspects of pharaonic culture is undoubtedly the funerary domain. Massive monuments like the pyramids, beautifully decorated royal and private tombs, extensive ritual texts carved on temples or inscribed in coffins, even contemporary popular icons of the Egyptian past like mummies or the Book of the Dead, attest to the importance of death and deceased people in Egyptian beliefs and in contemporary interpretations of pharaonic civilization. In fact Egyptology has devoted most of its archaeological and philological work to the study of texts and monuments related to the mortuary sphere, especially those belonging to members of the royalty and of the elite who ruled the country. Furthermore, these researches have been mainly focused on art and religious history, while the social aspects of death and its importance in cementing interpersonal ties among the living ones, especially among common people, have not received as much attention. In the last decades Egyptologists have become increasingly aware, however, of the existence of extensive kin networks in Egyptian society, a circumstance usually concealed behind the use of rather general and imprecise kinship terms like “brother”, “sister”, “son” or “child” to refer, in fact, to collateral or descendant members of one's family as well as to subordinates. The epigraphic and ritual sources of the end of the 3rd millennium suddenly contain a plethora of terms evoking extensive kin groups, but the precise meaning of many of them still eludes us and in many cases it is only possible to suggest approximate translations like “household” or “extended family”. Irrespective, the influence of these networks left their mark in the domain of funerary beliefs.

Museum Pieces - A Worshipper Kneeling Before the God Anubis

Photocredit: Walters Art Museum

A Worshipper Kneeling Before the God Anubis

A bronze statuette of the anthropomorphic god Anubis facing a kneeling worshipper. He has the head of a jackal and the body of a human male. The piece has been cast in three sections and then joined. The eyes of Anubis are inlaid with gold and there are traces of gilding on the shoulders, wrists, ankles, neck, wig, and ears. The gilding was delicately applied to the eyes, eyebrows and muzzle, but in other areas it appears to have been applied in a more careless fashion. The piece is well preserved in general but there is a break on the lower back corner of the base and there is some green and bright blue corrosion on the lower side of the base. 

A hieroglyphic inscription runs around the main base, the base of the Anubis figure and along the back pillar of the worshiper, identifying the dedicant as one Wdja-Hor-resnet, son of Ankh-pa-khered, who is asking for the blessings of the god Anubis. The figure of Anubis is in a striding position with his proper left leg advanced. His proper right arm hangs at his side and the right hand is clenched into a fist with the thumb protruding. The proper left arm is raised and bent at the elbow and there is a drilled hole in the hand for the insertion of an object. Earlier photographs of this piece in Darresy's "Statues de Divinités," show that the missing object was a "was" scepter. He wears a tripartite wig, "shendyt" kilt with deep pleats and a striated belt. A broad collar, armlets and bracelets are incised and gilded. Anklets are suggested by the gilding around the ankles but they are not incised. The musculature of the limbs and the torso is clearly defined. The ears of the god are large and the inner detailing has been carefully modeled. The muzzle comes to a delicate point, accentuating the skillfully modeled eyes, sweeping brows, nose and mouth. 

There are two cobras at the feet of the deity facing the worshipper. The proper right cobra wears the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and the left cobra wears the White Crown of Upper Egypt. The head of the left cobra is raised slightly higher than that of the right. A worshipper kneels before the god with his back against an inscribed pillar which is pyramidal at the top. He kneels with both knees down on a flat rectangular base, which is attached to the larger main base below. He extends his hands to the god palms down. He wears a "shendyt" kilt, but the pleats are not carved with the same precision that is seen on the kilt of the god. The bent knees are squared off unnaturally and the legs blend together below the kilt. He has an inscribed broad collar. He also wears a skull cap, the front line of which is clearly marked across his brow. The face is round with full cheeks and no definition of the chin. The ears are large and set high. The eyes are natural and do not have cosmetic brows. The nose is straight and the mouth is small with slightly pursed lips. The overall surface of the worshipper is pitted whereas the figure of Anubis has a high polish.

[Translation] May Anubis, give life, health, long life and great and good old age to Wdja-Hor-resnet, son of Ankh-pa-khered, whose mother is Ta-gemiw(t), who is born (made) of the Mistress of the house, Hy-inty for Pen-pa-djew./ May Anubis give life to Wdje-hor-resnet, son of Ankh-pa-khered./ May Anubis, who is before the place of the divine booth, give life, health, strength, a long life, and a great old age and happiness to the son of Ankh-pa-khered, whose mother is Ta-gemiw(t), who is Mistress of the House, Hy-inty for Pen-pa-djew.

Acquired by Henry Walters, 1930

PERIOD: ca. 747-525 BCE (Third Intermediate Period-Late Period, 25th-26th dynasty)

MEDIUM: bronze with gilt, gold inlay

ACCESSION NUMBER: 54.400

MEASUREMENTS: H: 8 3/16 x W: 5 11/16 x D: 2 1/16 in. (20.8 x 14.4 x 5.3 cm)

Read more about Anubis...

'Evil Eye' Box and Other Ancient Treasures Found in Nile River Cemetery

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   August 12, 2014

A 2,000-year-old cemetery with several underground tombs has been discovered near the Nile River in Sudan.

Archaeologists excavated several of the underground tombs, finding artifacts such as a silver ring, engraved with an image of a god, and a faience box, decorated with large eyes, which a researcher believes protected against the evil eye.

Credit: © Berber-Abidiya Archaeological Project

Villagers discovered the cemetery accidently in 2002 while digging a ditch near the modern-day village of Dangeil, and archaeological excavations have been ongoing since then. The finds were reported recently in a new book.

The cemetery dates back to a time when a kingdom called Kush flourished in Sudan. Based in the ancient city of Meroe (just south of Dangeil) Kush controlled a vast territory; its northern border stretched to Roman-controlled Egypt. At times, it was ruled by a queen.

Although the Kushites built hundreds of pyramids, this particular cemetery contains no structures on the surface; the tombs are underground.

"As of now, we don't know exactly the size of the cemetery," Mahmoud Suliman Bashir, an archaeologist with Sudan's National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), said in an interview with Live Science.

Museum Pieces - Faience throwstick of Akhenaten

Photocredit: The British Museum

Faience throwstick of Akhenaten

From Tell el-Amarna, Egypt
18th Dynasty, around 1330 BC

Length: 39.000 cm (max.)
Width: 4.370 cm (max.)
Thickness: 1.760 cm (max.)

EA 34213

To ensure the king's regeneration

Wooden examples of throwsticks that were meant to be used have been found in the burials of Amenhotep II and Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, while model ones made of faience are known for most of the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC) kings until the early Twentieth Dynasty (about 1186-1069 BC).

While the wooden examples might actually have been used for hunting game birds, the faience ones could not be thrown without being broken. So what was their purpose? As is often the case in ancient Egypt, the explanation lies in the symbolism of rebirth and new life. Scenes of hunting game birds with throwsticks are common in New Kingdom private tombs. The Egyptian words for 'throwstick' and 'beget' (procreate) are very similar. Scenes of hunting game birds may therefore be an allusion to the creation of new life. The shiny and brilliant nature of faience suggests an association with the sun-god, Re; the blue-green colour is also associated with rebirth and new life.

This model, placed in the burial of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, 1352-1336 BC), would thus be a ritual object designed to ensure the king's regeneration after death.

F.D. Friedman (ed.), Gifts of the Nile: ancient Egy (London, Thames and Hudson, 1998)

Source: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/f/faience_throwstick_of_akhenate.aspx

Museum Pieces - Funerary model of cow giving birth

(Photocredit: Royal Ontario Museum)

Carved and painted wood
Centimetres: 47.2 (length), 21.6 (height), 17.8 (width)
c. 2000 BC
Early Middle Kingdom
Area of Origin: Meir?, Egypt
Area of Use: Meir ?; Egypt; Africa
910.18.16.1
ROM2004_1039_12






Funerary model of cow giving birth

This wooden tomb model dates to the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2055 -1650 BC) and, although such models are commonly placed in tombs at this time, this one is unique in its content. Middle Kingdom models depicting various aspects of daily life activities, especially food production, survive in many examples. The vignette of a cow giving birth is popular in tomb paintings from this period but this wooden model is the only three dimensional example extant. Tomb painting and models were placed in a tomb to ensure the deceased everlasting prosperity, for it was thought that both would magically come to life and work for the tomb owner in the Afterlife. Our model shows that animal husbandry was practised at this early date in ancient Egypt, with one man calming the cow while the other ensures a proper delivery.

Funerary models

Possibly as late as the Early Dynastic Period funerary sacrifices of royal retainers destined to serve the king in the afterlife may have taken place. These practices ceased and the tombs were furnished with figurines of servants and pictures instead.

The need for servants may have been most pressing to those who had been waited upon hand and foot during their lifetime, but people saw also the need to have models of granaries, houses, gardens, of farmers ploughing, of carpenters building furniture, weavers weaving cloth, of model tools and weapons, boats, furniture, animals and even of model offerings.

The models served various purposes. During the Middle Kingdom, when they were more fashionable than at any other time, clay house models, the so-called soul houses, were left on top of pit graves and had the function of offering tables, ensuring the continued existence in the afterlife.

Wooden models of farmers and artisans plying their trade placed in rock-cut tombs on the other hand were destined to increase the material well-being of the tomb owner, and clay granaries to ensure their food supply. The importance the Nile had as a waterway and the place navigation had in mythology is reflected in the great number of boat models; in the tomb of Meketre for instance they made up half of all the models. As funerary boats their role was to further the deceased person's progress through the underworld.

Sources: http://images.rom.on.ca/public/index.php?function=image&action=detail&sid=&ccid=&mid=12295

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/funerary_practices/funerary_objects.htm

Long-Lost Mummy of Pharaoh's Foster Brother Found

By Rossella Lorenzi

The mummy of the pharaoh Amenhotep II's foster brother may have been found in a former monastery, according to archival research into 19th-century documents.

The mummy, now reduced to a skeleton, is believed to be that of Qenamun, the chief steward of Amenhotep II (about 1427–1400 B.C.) who was the 7th Pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty and likely Tutankhamun's great-great-grandfather.

Qenamun was effectively Amenhotep II's foster brother, as his mother, Amenemipet, was the chief royal nurse of the future king. The two grew up together and the bond endured in adult life, with Qenamun enjoying a high and powerful status.

But the whereabouts of Qenamun's afterlife journey had remained a mystery -- no coffin nor mummy was found in his large and beautifully decorated tomb in Thebes.

"Identifying Qenamun has been like fitting together long-lost puzzle pieces," Marilina Betrò, professor of Egyptology at Pisa University, told Discovery News.

It all began two years ago when a skeleton resting in a cardboard box was found in a store room of a 14th-century monastery. Located in Calci, a village near Pisa, the monastery now houses one of the world's oldest natural history museums.

"Intriguingly, the skull bore an inscription in black ink stating it was one of the mummies brought from Egypt by Ippolito Rosellini, Europe's first Egyptology professor," Marilina Betrò told Discovery News. She holds the same chair at Pisa University that Rosellini did.

Unravelled after 3,000 years, the secrets of the singing mummy

By Fiona Macrae

Her body has lain undisturbed for almost 3,000 years.

Now, thanks to modern technology, the secrets of Tamut’s life are being unwrapped without upsetting her peace.

Using a CT scanner in London hospitals, experts from the British Museum peered through the intricately decorated burial case and the multiple layers of linen bandages to the person hidden inside.

The electronic excavation showed Tamut to have received the most lavish level of mummification, with amulets and other mystical jewels buried with her. 

These include artificial eyes, to allow her to see in the afterlife, thin plates of gold or another precious metal on her finger and toe nails and metal plates designed to magically heal the wounds left by the embalmer.

Some of the amulets were placed on her body – others were put inside, beside her vital organs.

Her hair was short, likely because she wore a wig, and examination of her pelvis suggests she was at least 35 when she died. The cause of death is unknown – but the scans provide a tantalising clue.

They show a large part of the femoral artery in her upper thigh to be clogged with fat, a piece of which could have broken off and triggered a heart attack or a stroke.

How Egyptians used gel and curling tongs to look their best 3,500 years ago

By Sarah Graham 

Ancient Egyptians used hair gel to style their locks in everyday life, researchers have found.
A study of male and female mummies has found fashion-conscious Egyptians made use of a fat-based product to keep their hair in place.

They used the styling gel on both long and short hair, tried to curl their hair with tongs and even plaited it in hair extensions to lengthen their tresses. It is thought they used these methods in both life and death, with corpses being styled to make sure they looked good in the afterlife. 

The incredible discovery was made by archaeological scientists who studied hair samples of 18 male and female mummies, aged from four to 58 years old.

The team, from the KNH Centre of Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, was led by Dr Natalie McCreesh who studied the mummies as part of her PhD.
Using light and electron microscopes, they found that nine of the mummies had coated their hair in the fatty substance, which is thought to be a beauty product.

Some of the mummies, which were artificially preserved, show the gel was used to prepare the body for the afterlife. But others, which were preserved naturally in dry sand, prove the product must also have been used in everyday life by the vain Egyptians. Bizarrely, even in the artificially-preserved bodies the hair did not contain resins or embalming materials, suggesting the hair was styled separately to the mummification process.

More mysteries of Tutankhamun

The mystery of the ancient Egyptian Boy King Tutankhamun continues to fascinate Egyptologists as a new controversy reveals, writes Nevine El-Aref

This week the ancient Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun is in the limelight once again, with the image of his golden mask decorated with precious stones featuring in many international magazines and newspapers.

However, the current interest in the boy king is not because of his treasured funerary collection, his lineage, or the causes behind his early death, but instead because of the way in which he was mummified.

According to a study carried out by professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo (AUC) Salima Ikram, Tutankhamun was unusually embalmed by priests of the god Amun in an attempt to quash the religious revolution carried out by his father and predecessor the monotheistic king Akhnaten.

The latter had called for the worship of only one deity, the sun god Aten, and the abandonment of the ancient Egyptians’ other gods.

When Akhnaten’s son Tutankhamun came to the throne, he returned Egypt to its traditional religion of worshipping a diverse set of deities at the top of which was the god Amun.
To ensure that this conversion continued after Tutankhamun’s death and to abort any further religious revolution, Ikram suggests in her paper that the priests mummified Tutankhamun’s corpse in an unusual way to make him appear as Osiris, the god of the afterlife and the land of Egypt.

King Tut's Mummified Erect Penis May Point to Ancient Religious Struggle

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor   |   January 02, 2014

Egypt's King Tutankhamun was embalmed in an unusual way, including having his penis mummified at a 90-degree angle, in an effort to combat a religious revolution unleashed by his father, a new study suggests.

The pharaoh was buried in Egypt's Valley of the Kings without a heart (or a replacement artifact known as a heart scarab); his penis was mummified erect; and his mummy and coffins were covered in a thick layer of black liquid that appear to have resulted in the boy-king catching fire.

These anomalies have received both scholarly and media attention in recent years, and a new paper in the journal Études et Travaux by Egyptologist Salima Ikram, a professor at the American University in Cairo, proposes a reason why they, and other Tutankhamun burial anomalies, exist.

The mummified erect penis and other burial anomalies  were not accidents during embalming, Ikram suggests, but rather deliberate attempts to make the king appear as Osiris, the god of the underworld, in as literal a way as possible. The erect penis evokes Osiris' regenerative powers; the black liquid made Tutankhamun's skin color resemble that of Osiris; and the lost heart recalled the story of the god being cut to pieces by his brother Seth and his heart buried.

'Meat Mummies' Kept Egyptian Royalty Well-Fed After Death

By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer   |   November 18, 2013

Care for some ribs? The royal mummies of ancient Egypt apparently did, as a new study finds that "meat mummies" left in Egyptian tombs as sustenance for the afterlife were treated with elaborate balms to preserve them.

Mummified cuts of meat are common finds in ancient Egyptian burials, with the oldest dating back to at least 3300 B.C. The tradition extended into the latest periods of mummification in the fourth century A.D. The famous pharaoh King Tutankhamun went to his final resting place accompanied by 48 cases of beef and poultry.

But meat mummies have been mostly unstudied until now. University of Bristol biogeochemist Richard Evershed and his colleagues were curious about how these cuts were prepared. They also wondered if the mummification methods for meat differed from how Egyptians mummified people or pets.

The team analyzed four samples from meat mummies archived at the Cairo and British museums. The oldest was a rack of cattle ribs from the tomb of Tjuiu, an Egyptian noblewoman, and her courtier Yuya. The beef dates back to between 1386 B.C. and 1349 B.C.

How Ancient Embalmers Pulled The Brains And Guts Out Of Mummies

by Pavithra Mohan 15 November 2013

We’ve unearthed mummy upon mummy from Egypt, the oldest dating back to 3500BC, but one thing has remained a bit of a mystery: what does the mummification process actually entail from a surgical point of view? How did they remove the brains, guts, and other vital organs — what tools did they use and how did they train for it? One anthropologist thinks he’s found out.

Much like a 46-million-year-old mosquito fossilised mid-meal, Egyptian mummification has long provided us embalmed snapshots of an ancient way of life. Just last week, we found out why King Tut’s mummy had not been preserved in the most kingly fashion: his body seemingly experienced ignition inside its sarcophagus due to a flammable cocktail of oxygen, embalming oils, and combustible linens.

One myth of mummy-making has long appealed to our, or perhaps just my, gross sensibilities: mushy brain parts were usually removed from Egyptian mummies and flushed out through the nose, we’ve been told. And that’s not all: more often than not, they were disemboweled and rid of their internal organs as well, to stop decomposition.

In a paper published in the December 2013 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, Dr. Andrew Wade at the University of Western Ontario investigated the literal ins and outs of organ-removal techniques. Wade looked at films and forensic scans from a sample of 50 human Egyptian mummies, noting that there were two main methods of both excerebration (brain removal) and evisceration (body organ removal). Occurrences of brain and organ removal actually increased over time, as mummification was expanded to non-royals.

Museum Pieces - Shabti of Akhenaten

Almost nothing remains of the burial equipment of Akhenaten. However, many Shabtis near his tomb were found. The Shabti shows Akhenaten, who can be identified by its characteristic features. Inscriptions were probably on the lower part of the Shabti, now missing. The King is wearing the nemes headscarf with Uraeus and the King beard. 

Shabtis were intended to perform work that the deceased was called upon to do in the afterlife. More than two hundred shabti fragments inscribed for Akhenaten are known, and their existence suggests that belief in the afterlife and certain aspects of traditional funerary practices survived during the Amarna period. However, Akhenaten's shabtis are inscribed only with the king's names and titles, not the standard shabti text.

Quartzite, fine-grained, white

H 12.78 cm, W 8.1 cm, D 5.7 cm 

Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Egyptian - Oriental Collection

Inv AE_INV_10166

Sources: http://www.khm.at/en/visit/collections/egyptian-and-near-eastern-collection/selected-masterpieces/?cHash=dfb045333efd096a1ea1afd262c4a608

http://bilddatenbank.khm.at/viewArtefact?id=316945

One Mummy, Many Coffins: Egyptians Intended to Transform Deceased from Human to Deity

Aug. 23, 2013 — The Egyptian elite was buried in a coffin placed inside another coffin -- in ensembles of up to eight coffins. This was intended to ensure the transformation of the deceased from human to deity, according to Anders Bettum, Egyptologist.

"Boxes and other forms of containers are technologies that arise at given points of time in various cultures. Everybody knows the ancient Egyptian practice of mummifying their dead. What is perhaps less known is that they placed the mummies inside layer upon layer of coffins," says Anders Bettum, Egyptologist at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo.

A similar idea can be found with Russian dolls, Chinese boxes and even Norwegian poetry traditions.

"The Egyptian coffin sets are based on the same principle that we can observe with Chinese boxes and Russian nested matryoshka dolls, where objects are nested inside each other to constitute a complete ensemble," he says.

Ancient Egyptian history encompasses a period of nearly three thousand years, up to the Roman conquest in the year 30 BCE. Today, museums all over the world possess mummies or coffins that have contained mummies of more or less prominent men and women.

The child king Tutankhamun (1334-24 BCE) was buried in as many as eight coffins, according to Bettum.

"For men and women who were members of the ancient Egyptian elite at that time, three or four coffins were not unusual," he adds.

The Mummy of Herakleides – Roman Egypt at the Getty Villa

Posted by: HeritageDaily, May 28, 2013

Written by Londyn Lamar

The Getty Villa in Malibu, California is the beautiful educational center dedicated to housing the artifacts and antiques from the ancient Etruscan, Greek, and Roman periods.

Although their busts and statues are remarkable, while I went to visit this beautiful museum on the cliffs of the Pacific Coast Highway, an acquisition that combined Roman and Egyptian culture snagged my interest. The Mummy of Herakleides, which is a Romano-Egyptian mummy found in Egypt about 150 A.D, emphasizes the traditions of both the Roman art style and the Egyptian tradition of life after death and their practices of caring for the dead and protecting them in the afterlife. The Roman style of individual portraiture, with the emphasis on the upper body and expression of the face and gestures, is evident in this depiction of Herakleides.

While the upper exterior of the dead permeates with the ideals and styles of the Roman Empire’s control Egypt, the body’s exterior as a whole demonstrates the ideals and practices of the Egyptians.

Herakleides went through the mummification process, and is not placed in a sarcophagus, similar to Etruscan tombs such as the Cerveteri Sarcophagus. Also, the designs on the body of the mummy are in the Egyptian style of depicting hieroglyphics and pictorial images, similar to the innermost coffin of Tutankhamen. Herakleides’s usage of the Egyptian processes illustrates his influence and fascination with the Egyptian traditions of the dead. The Mummy of Herakleides shows that Herakleides desired to portray his exterior portrait in the Roman style to demonstrate his lineage, but also wanted to illustrate his connection to the Egyptians through their mummification process and hieroglyphical designs.

Museum Pieces - Papyrus from the Book of the Dead of Nakht

Photocredit: British Museum (EA 10471/13)

From Thebes, Egypt
Late 18th Dynasty, 1350-1300 BC

Agricultural scenes

Nakht was a royal scribe and overseer of the army (general) at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (about 1550-1295 BC). His Book of the Dead is a beautifully illustrated example.

This papyrus shows Spell 110, a series of addresses to deities who dwell in the 'next world', specifically in the Field of Offering and the Field of Rushes. The deceased was expected to undertake agricultural work in the Field of Rushes.

The vignette evolved from a map of the Field in the earlier Coffin Texts. It shows areas of land surrounded by water. Nakht is shown with Thoth at top right, with the balance and feather of Maat (referring to the Judgement Scene). He then paddles his boat across the Lake of Offerings where two mummiform deities stand before a table of offerings. Nakht is also shown worshipping the Heron of Plenty. He is shown pulling flax, reaping, and ploughing below. The boat of Wennefer (a name for the god Osiris), shown with a head of a snake, is moored in a channel of the water at the bottom. Three deities of the ennead (group of nine gods) are shown bottom right.

R.O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of t, (revised ed. C. A. R. Andrews) (London, The British Museum Press, 1985)

R.B. Parkinson and S. Quirke, Papyrus, (Egyptian Bookshelf) (London, The British Museum Press, 1995)

E.R. Russmann, Eternal Egypt: masterworks of (University of California Press, 2001)

S. Quirke and A.J. Spencer, The British Museum book of anc (London, The British Museum Press, 1992)

Source: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/p/papyrus_from_the_book_of_the-5.aspx