Mummification and Coffins in Ancient Egypt

The blog post for this week is written by Averil Anderson. Averil has been fascinated by Egypt ever since she visited the 1972 Tutankhamun exhibition in London. In 1990, she visited Egypt for the first time on a Nile Cruise and fell in love with the place, the history, the atmosphere and the people. Eventually, Averil took her interest a step further with the University of Manchester Online Certificate and Diploma. This luckily led her to The McManus Museum Dundee's Collections Unit where she has been volunteering since 2011 researching the Egyptology Collection.

I am writing this blog post about Week 3 of Ken Griffin’s Funerary Artefacts of Ancient Egypt course (for which I am very grateful in these Lockdown times!) with this week dealing with Mummification and Coffins, which I find fascinating. First up is mummification, which is not everyone’s favourite topic, but disposal of the dead and its accompanying ritual is an essential part of the fabric of society,  especially so in the hot climate of Egypt. To the Egyptians, it was vital to keep the body intact beyond death since he body harboured the ba and the ka. It was, therefore, vital to turn the corpse into a sꜥh (eternal and perfect image of the deceased). The body was mummified primarily to stop deterioration, with the dry climate and burial in the sand naturally mummifying the dead. The first known mummification was at Hierakonpolis, c. 3700 BC, but mummification was carried out over a 4000-year period of Egyptian history. Over time, rituals became part of the process accompanied with mummification materials having religious and preservative functions.

Fig. 1: Mummy covering (W894)

A great example of the art is the mummy of Ramesses III, who died during the Harem Conspiracy. We saw a mummy covering (W894), which shows a priest dressed as Anubis attending to the mummy resting on a bier. The priest is aided Isis and Nephthys (fig. 1). Mummification is said to take 70 days, although there is no complete ancient text that gives comprehensive instructions. We do have scenes on coffins, in tombs, and on papyrus, such as NMS A1956.313. Mummification would have developed over time, so one single source could give us the whole picture. The most well-known written sources are those of Herodotus (450 BCE) and Diodorus Siculus (100 BCE), which were unlikely to be first hand accounts. Herodotus tells us there were three forms of mummification depending on the wealth of the deceased’s family. The most costly and elaborate version is described as follows:

“They take first a crooked piece of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the nostrils, thus getting rid of a portion, while the skull is cleared of the rest by rinsing with drugs; next they make a cut along the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and take out the whole contents of the abdomen, which they then cleanse, washing it thoroughly with palm wine, and again frequently with an infusion of pounded aromatics. After this they fill the cavity with the purest bruised myrrh, with cassia, and every other sort of spicery except frankincense, and sew up the opening. Then the body is placed in natron for seventy days, and covered entirely over. After the expiration of that space of time, which must not be exceeded, the body is washed, and wrapped round, from head to foot, with bandages of fine linen cloth, smeared over with gum, which is used generally by the Egyptians in the place of glue, and in this state it is given back to the relations, who enclose it in a wooden case which they have had made for the purpose, shaped into the figure of a man. Then fastening the case, they place it in a sepulchral chamber, upright against the wall. Such is the most costly way of embalming the dead.”

For the second type, Herodotus says that “If persons wish to avoid expense, and choose the second process, the following is the method pursued:- Syringes are filled with oil made from the cedar-tree, which is then, without any incision or disembowelling, injected into the abdomen. The passage by which it might be likely to return is stopped, and the body laid in natron the prescribed number of days. At the end of the time the cedar-oil is allowed to make its escape; and such is its power that it brings with it the whole stomach and intestines in a liquid state. The natron meanwhile has dissolved the flesh, and so nothing is left of the dead body but the skin and the bones. It is returned in this condition to the relatives, without any further trouble being bestowed upon it.”

The third and most basic: “The third method of embalming, which is practised in the case of the poorer classes, is to clear out the intestines with a clyster, and let the body lie in natron the seventy days, after which it is at once given to those who come to fetch it away.”

One can only imagine this was a delicate and somewhat smelly process that most people would be happy to hand over to professionals. We must remember that any mummification would have been for the wealthy in society and not the average Egyptian. We also hear that during the Late Period mummification could last between 20–70 days. The stelae of Psamtek, son of Iahweben (610 BC), unusually tells us his date of birth, his length of life, his date of death, and that he spent 32 days in the pr-nfr being made ready for his burial. We have developed our knowledge about mummification through mummy unwrappings, and now the non-destructive radiography and computerised tomography (CT) scanning. There has also been a modern mummifications by Dr Bob Brier to test the theories. He was due to come to talk to Egyptology Scotland Kelvingrove in August, but sadly this has been postponed as with so many things.

Fig. 2: Deir el-Bahari shroud (W922)

The mummy was first washed soon after death with a solution of natron salt in the purification tent (i͗bw n wꜥb). Horus and Thoth are often depicted purifying the deceased or the Pharaoh. Additionally, some goddesses perform the nyny rite/gesture on the deceased, as can be seen in the tomb of Tutankhamun or in the doorways to some tombs in the Valley of the Queens. In the wꜥbt or pr nfr, the brain was removed along with the other internal organs, The heart was the only organ to remain in the body as it was the seat of intellect and memory.  The liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines were embalmed separately before the body was then washed again with palm wine and completely covered in natron (changed daily according to Salima Ikram) for 40 days. The body was then packed with linen, sawdust, earth, and aromatic resins to give the body shape. The resins and bitumen also protected the body against moisture. The eyes (replaced with onions or rock crystal) and eyebrows were spruced up and even prosthetic limbs (BM EA 29996) and finger coverings could be included to make the body whole for the afterlife.

Fig. 3: Mummy label (W549)

Mummies then were wrapped in linen, often bed sheets but there is an example in Lyon of a sail being used. Wrappings came in five different qualities from fine to coarse. Incantations would be said as the body was wrapped, right down to the individual fingers and toes, while amulets and spells from the Books of the Dead were often enclosed. An example is W922 from the Egypt Centre (fig. 2). The mummy mask (W917) was a vital piece of the mummy trappings, painted in an image of the deceased, which also provided additional protection for the head. In the Graeco-Roman Period, mummy labels (W549) were common, often telling us about the deceased (fig. 3). We must also note the disposal of any “waste products” and the funerary meal, which were gathered together and buried in a deposit near the tomb. This is perhaps also shown on tomb walls, such as that of Ramose (TT 55), as the mysterious “tekenu”, a human shaped bundle on a sledge. The tekenu was something I only heard about recently and I wonder if any “body” shaped bundles have ever been found? Another rabbit hole to wander down…

Fig. 4: Old Kingdom coffin from Giza (BM EA 71620)

The four (or maybe up to 6 according to recent discoveries at Saqqara) canopic jars contained the following organs:

Son of Horus

Depiction

Associated Organ

Protective Deity

Orientation

Qebehsenuef	Falcon headed	Intestines	Selket	West
Duamutef	Jackal Headed	Stomach	Neith	East
Imset(y)	Human headed	Liver	Isis	South
Hapy	Baboon headed	Lungs	Nephthys	North

The second half of the lecture concentrated on coffins. They tell us about the development of beliefs in the afterlife and religious thoughts. We can also examine the materials and techniques used in their production. The coffin was a container to protect the deceased from tomb robbers and scavenging animals, which enabled their wellbeing in the afterlife. The coffin with its religious scenes and magical texts enclosing the mummy ensured “a good burial”.

Fig. 5: Coffin depicting the goddess Nut (BM EA 75193)

The earliest coffins were a “house” for the deceased. They resembled buildings and had the palace façade design, as can be seen with BM EA 71620 (fig. 4). In the Old Kingdom, more emphasis was on the orientation and decoration of the coffin. The long sides were oriented east-west and the head of the deceased faced east. As time went on the insides of the coffins were decorated with funerary items, while the coffin was a miniature tomb in its own right. The lid was associated with the sky and the case with the earth. The goddess Nut is often seen stretching protectively over the deceased (W646), and the deceased was identified with Osiris or Re, both of whom were reborn each day (fig. 5). In the Old Kingdom, the complete coffin could be identified as the womb of Nut as she was the mother of Osiris (and therefore the deceased). She would symbolically give birth to him each day.

Fig. 6: Middle Kingdom coffin from Deir el-Bersha (BM EA 30842)

The concept of the coffin as a cocoon is apparent in the word for a coffin, sḥwt, meaning egg. A sarcophagus could also be part of the burial assemblage and would hold the coffin. There is some debate on the use of the word, although it is generally accepted that a sarcophagus is stone and rectangular. Anthropoid coffins, on the other hand, could be regarded as “coffins” rather than “sarcophagi”, regardless of the material, and are seen as a substitute for the deceased should their mummy be destroyed. The Egyptian word for a sarcophagus was nb-ankh, possessor or lord of life, reinforcing the idea that it aided in the renewal of life for the deceased . In the Predynastic Period, the body was placed in a shallow pit covered by matting. Wicker baskets and pot burials were later used. It was not until the Early Dynastic Period that coffins were commonplace. The first clearly established royal coffins date to the Third Dynasty. They were often plain with flat or vaulted lids. The decoration included false doors and eyes for the deceased to “see” out into the land of the living (MMA26.3.9a). Middle Kingdom coffins were decorated on the inside with a frieze of objects for everyday life (BM EA 30842) and included clothing, jewellery, weapons, perfume (much as we might include a loved ones treasured items in their coffin today), as well as the Coffin Texts (fig. 6). In the Twelfth Dynasty, the outside of the coffins were decorated with vertical and horizontal bands of hieroglyphs (W304). There were, however, regional variations between Beni Hasan, Deir el-Bersha, and Meir in the North and Asyut, Akhmim, and Thebes in the South.

Fig. 7: Rishi coffin (NMS A.1909.527.1 A)

In the Second Intermediate Period, the anthropoid coffin has become standard. It was an image of the deceased that could house not only his body but his ka and ba. They were of the rishi (feathered) type, again symbolising the protection offered (fig. 7). In the Eighteenth Dynasty, anthropoid coffins were painted white with bands of hieroglyphs running up the middle of the coffin and four bands around the sides imitating mummy wrappings (MMA 14.10.2a, b). The coffin of Amenhotep II shows the Sons of Horus between the texts. Other scenes can include funereal rituals while the lid usually depicting the outstretched figure Nekhbet or Nut. By the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, non-royal coffins were more commonly covered with black pitch, with the higher quality including gilded faces and bands made of gold (fig. 8).

Fig. 8: Eighteenth Dynasty coffin fragment (EC425)

New Kingdom coffins could be made of a variety of woods, including cedar, sycamore fig, or acacia. Gold and silver were reserved for kings. By the Nineteenth Dynasty, a mummy board was placed on the body of many burials showing the deceased in daily life. The “yellow” coffins were attested from Thebes and Memphis and were decorated with vignettes of spells 1 and 17 of the Book of the Dead. In anthropoid coffins, the forearms were crossed at the chest, with men having clenched fists and women having open hands. In the Twenty-first Dynasty, new compositions were added emphasising solar religion with the myth of Osiris, the revival of the deceased, and the triumph over Apophis. The colour palette also broadened, and scenes could now include vignettes from the Amduat or rituals associated with the Sed-festival (fig. 9).

Fig. 9: Interior coffin decoration of BM EA 22900

In the Third Intermediate Period, coffins continued to change. There were many regional variations at this time and individual  workshops can be identified. The coffins were now deep enough to hold the mummy with a flat or convex lid. Another style can be seen in BM EA 15655 and part of a similar coffin is in the Egypt Centre (W1044a & b). The inside of the coffin had texts from the Book of the Dead, usually accompanied by Nut (fig. 10). The outside depicted solar scenes and the Four Sons of Horus on the side walls, with a recumbent jackal atop the vaulted roof and falcons on the posts.

Coffin of Ankhpakhered (AB118)

In the Late Period, more texts are included. Passages from the Saite version of the Book of the Dead included less animated scenes. By the end of the Pharaonic Period, coffins varied considerably again according to region and foreign influences. In the Roman Period, W1042a shows us that decoration is less skilled, with the hieroglyphs often impossible to decipher. The emphasis was now placed on how it looked and not so much on what it said (fig. 11). Shrouds and other mummy coverings appear including the Fayum portraits.

Fig. 11: Roman Period coffin from Tuna el-Gebel (W1042a)

This has been a whirlwind trip through mummies and coffins giving a brief outline of the enormous and fascinating subject. I am now very keen to visit the Egypt Centre when life is able to return to “normal”, especially now I have had a look at the new database Abaset (currently only available to participants of the course) and can see there is much more coffin related material than the lecture allowed time for! I can’t wait for Ken’s next lecture on Magic and Ritual!

Bibliography

Amenta, Alessia and Hélène Guichard (eds) 2017. Proceedings First Vatican Coffin Conference 19–22 June 2013, 2 vols. Città del Vaticano: Edizioni Musei Vaticani.

Brier, Bob 1994. Egyptian mummies: unraveling the secrets of an ancient art. New York: William Morrow.

Corbelli, Judith A. 2006. The art of death in Graeco-Roman Egypt. Shire Egyptology 28. Princes Risborough: Shire Publications.

Faulkner, Raymond O. and Carol Andrews 1985. The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. London: Guild Publishing.

Ikram, Salima and Aidan Dodson 1998. The mummy in ancient Egypt: equipping the dead for eternity. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Maitland, Margaret 2017. The tomb: ancient Egyptian burial. Edinburgh: NMS Enterprises Ltd.

Manley, Bill and Aidan Dodson 2010. Life everlasting. National Museums Scotland collection of ancient Egyptian coffins. Edinburgh: NMS Enterprises Ltd.

Miniaci, Gianluca 2011. Rishi coffins and the funerary culture of Second Intermediate Period Egypt. GHP Egyptology 17. London: Golden House.

Strudwick, Helen and Julie Dawson (eds) 2019. Ancient Egyptian coffins. Past, present, future. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Strudwick, Nigel and John H. Taylor (eds) 2003. The Theban necropolis. Past, present, and future. London: British Museum Press.

Taylor, John H. 1989. Egyptian coffins. Dyfed: Shire Egyptology.

Taylor, John H. 2010. Egyptian mummies. London: British Museum Press.

West, Glennise 2019. The tekenu and ancient Egyptian funerary ritual. Archeopress Egyptology 23. Oxford: Archeopress.

Willems, Harco 1988. Chests of life: a study of the typology and conceptual development of Middle Kingdom standard class coffins. Mededelingen en Verhandelingen van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap “Ex Oriente Lux” 25. Leiden: Ex Oriente Lux.

The Funerary Figures of the Ancient Egyptians

The blog post for this week is written by Vanessa Foott. Vanessa’s lifelong passion is ancient Egypt and for the last five years she has been studying Egyptology at the University of Manchester. She is very excited to be starting their Masters Degree in Egyptology in October so she is practically a professional student! Vanessa has filled her time since retiring from her main career by travelling all over the country attending and also giving talks on Egyptology, representing the Egypt Exploration Society as one of their Local Ambassadors, and writing articles for Nile Magazine. Lockdown has put an end to all the travelling, which is a shame since she was due to be in Egypt at present doing voluntary fieldwork. Luckily, there are a wealth of excellent lectures being held online and she is able to write about one of them today!

I am writing this week’s blog about the second part of Ken’s course The Funerary Culture of the Ancient Egyptians, the topic being ‘Funerary Figures’. I hope I can do this justice after last week’s very eloquent contribution by the Reverend Jim Collins, who was able to offer an insight from a ‘professional’ point of view!

We started with an interesting, and some might say, uncomfortable, look at the possibility of a very short-lived trend of human sacrifice during the First Dynasty, a subject also touched on in last Monday’s episode of Egypt’s Unexplained Files on the History Channel. The evidence for this comes from the tomb of Hor-Aha at Abydos (fig. 1) whose burial was accompanied by a number of subsidiary burials of men who apparently died at the same time and were buried with their own grave goods (Morris 2007). The whole area was roofed as one and covered in a sand mound. The Egyptians quickly realised that bumping off servants, although great for the deceased king, was probably not such a good idea for those left behind and something different had to be planned to provide for the afterlife.

Fig. 1: Plan of burial complex of Hor-Aha, courtesy of https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ museums-static/digitalegypt/abydos/abydostombhoraha.html

During the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties, we begin to see stone servant figures being included in the tombs of the elite. These are usually made of limestone, which can be painted and represent single figures either grinding grain or brewing beer, less common are ones baking or doing butchery. Occasional ones are shown stone working or producing pottery. By far, the largest corpus are those relating to food production, which leads to the conclusion that these were being produced to aid the deceased in having sustenance for the afterlife. Figure 2 is an example of a butcher found in the tomb of Ny-kau-Inpu at Giza thought to date from the Fifth Dynasty. The statue is in its original state with the exception of the knife, which has been restored. This figure shows a high standard of craftsmanship as the gap between the legs and the arms has been made, something that is hard to do when working in stone when one slip of the chisel could ruin the whole piece.

Fig. 2: OIM 10626, courtesy of The Oriental Institute of Chicago

The stone figures were gradually replaced by wooden ones, which were easier to manufacture. Not only were servant figures included in the tomb, but also wooden statues of the tomb owner, which could be used to house the kꜣ (an aspect of the soul), should anything happen to the body. W688 is one such and is shown in fig. 3. Luckily, Ken and Sam Powell have located the missing leg and base and the item has been sent to Cardiff University Conservation Department for restoration. The Egypt Centre actually has over 100 elements from wooden servant figures, including the figures, numerous arms, legs, bases and oars, which are in the process of being painstakingly matched up.

Fig. 3: Wooden figure of a tomb owner (W688)

Moving into the First Intermediate Period, dozens of these figures could be found in a single burial and groups of figures began to be included. The quality of the workmanship varies greatly from really exquisite figures such as W434 (fig. 4) to more basic examples like W436 (fig. 5) as the masses began to believe that an afterlife was available not only to the king and the elite. Although the most popular figure groups related to food production, many burials included models of boats, which through magic would enable the deceased to travel in the afterlife. These may enable the deceased to undertake a pilgrimage to Abydos, the cult centre of Osiris, and may also be connected with the journey of Ra across the sky in his two boats—one for the night and one for the day—in which he would be accompanied by the deceased.

Fig. 4: Finely carved tomb figure (W434)

Fig. 5: Crudely carved tomb figure (W436)

Some of the Middle Kingdom tomb models are very elaborate indeed. Perhaps the best known are those from the tomb of Meketre discovered by Herbert Winlock at Thebes in 1920. Although the tomb had been robbed, these models survived as they had been placed in a separate room that the robbers had missed. The models were split between the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo where they can be seen. Figure 6 is the model granary, but others can be seen by visiting https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/545281. I really would urge you to take the time to have a look, the workmanship and detail is outstanding and would have enabled Meketre to enjoy all the comforts of his earthly life in the next, even including his garden.

Fig. 6. Model granary MMA 20.3.11, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The next part of the lecture focused on shabtis, ushabtis, and shawabtis. This was particularly eye-opening to me as I was familiar with the different terms, but like, I suspect, many of my fellow students, did not realise that the terms were not quite so interchangeable and meant, if albeit slightly, different things. They were first introduced around 2100 BCE in the First Intermediate Period and continued to be popular until the end of Pharaonic Egypt, only ceasing to be used in Roman times (Janes 2002; Schneider 1977; Stewart 1995). Shabti is used to name those from the late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. Shawabti is also from the New Kingdom but more specifically occasionally in the Seventeenth Dynasty and in particular the Nineteenth Dynasty at Deir el-Medina (fig. 7). Ushabti refers to those from the Twenty-first Dynasty to the end of Ptolemaic times. The etymologies for the words are an interesting subject in themselves. šbty or šwbty are used for all three. The word for food or meals is šꜣbw, to command or appoint is šꜣ, and wšb to answer, so it is not hard to find a connection. Another alternative is šwꜣb, meaning Persea tree, but as no figures have been found made from this wood it is harder to see this link (Taylor 2001, 115–117).

They could represent both the tomb owner, acting, as we have already seen with the wooden figures, as a reserve home for the kꜣ, and servants. They were not meant to be true likenesses of the tomb owner but represented him in an idealised divine form and, as such, these figures were sometimes placed into miniature coffins. They started as figures made from wax or mud, which were probably wrapped in linen to make them sacred. Production declined at the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty but was revived at Thebes towards the end of the Seventeenth when we start to see the stick-like wooden shabtis known as ‘peg shabtis’ (fig. 7).

Fig. 7: Seventeenth Dynasty double shabtis of Tetyankh and Tetiky, Musee de Louvre E32373. Photo courtesy of Musee de Louvre

The so called ‘Shabti Spell’ (Coffin Text 472; Book of the Dead 6) was often carved on the front of the figures: “O, this/these ushabti(s), if one counts, if one reckons the Osiris (Title and Name) to do all the works which are to be done in the God’s land-Now indeed obstacles are implanted therewith-as a man of his duties, ‘here I am,’ you shall say when you are counted off at any time to serve there, to cultivate the fields, to irrigate the riparian lands, to transport by boat the sand of the east to the west and vice-versa; ‘here I am,’ you shall say.” (Faulkner 1985). I would really like a nice shabti figure that I could call on to do the gardening or the housework! Apparently so did Walt Disney as this was his inspiration for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice featured as part of the 1940 film Fantasia (Ogden 2004, 115).

Ahmose II is the first Pharaoh attested to have his own shabti, and from the reign of Amenhotep II onwards the numbers in each tomb began to increase. The material used also became more varied with faience, pottery, and wood all being known. From the mid Eighteenth Dynasty, closed hands are routinely portrayed and the number of tools being carried increases to include, hoes, picks, and seed baskets. Use of a mould enabled them to be quick and cheaply produced, but they did vary in quality from the excellent ones found with Tutankhamun (fig. 8) to really awful ones barely recognisable.

Fig. 8: One of the shabtis found in the tomb of Tutankhamun recently exhibited at The Saatchi Gallery London.
Photo by the author.

As the New Kingdom progressed, they became more depersonalised and viewed increasingly as slaves (Poole 1998). Royal shabtis of the Twentieth Dynasty were often poor and this may be a reflection of the troubled economic times that affected the whole of the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. The numbers increased and a full compliment would now be 365 workers, one for each day, together with an overseer for each 10, and sometimes a further 12, one for each month of the year. The quality continues to decline through the Third Intermediate Period. Figure 9 is a mummiform shabti of the Divine Adoratrice Qedmerut (W1315), dating to the Twenty-second Dynasty, which is made of blue faience with painted black hieroglyphs (Griffin 2017).

Fig. 9: Shabti of Qedmerut (W1315)

Our journey through the evolution of the shabti continued through the small crude examples of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty to the return to using stone in the late Twenty-fifth/early Twenty-sixth Dynasty. In the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, they began to have a back pillar and a base enabling them to stand. The form from the reign of Psamtek I through to the end of the Ptolemaic period remained fairly static. They were mostly made of moulded faience with inscriptions added whilst the material was still soft prior to firing. The colour was predominately green and they retained the back pillar and pedestal (fig. 10).

Fig. 10: Shabti of the general Ankhwahibresaneith ((W1312)

This comes to the end of our rapid gallop through funerary figurines. Next week the topic will be mummification and coffins. I am thoroughly looking forward to our continued exploration of The Funerary Culture of the Ancient Egyptians!

Bibliography:

Arnold, Dorothea ed. (1999) Egyptian art in the age of the pyramids. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Faulkner, Raymond O. and Carol Andrews (1985) The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. London: Guild Publishing.

Griffin, Kenneth (2017) ‘The Ushabtis of the Divine Adoratrice Qedmerut’. In De la mère du roi à l’épouse du dieu. Première synthèse des résultats de la fouille du temple de Touy et de la tombe de Karomama – Von der Königsmutter zur Gottesgemahlin. Erste Synthese der Ausgrabungsergebnisse des Tempels von Tuja und des Grabes von Karomama, ed. B. Lurson. Connaissance de l’Egypte Ancienne 18. Brussels: Safran. 145–155.

Janes, Glenn (2002) Shabtis: a private view: ancient Egyptian funerary statuettes in European private collections. Paris: Cybele.

Morris, Ellen F. (2007) ‘Sacrifice for the state: First Dynasty royal funerals and the rites at Macramallah’s rectangle’. In Performing death: social analyses of funerary traditions in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, ed. Nicola Laneri. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 15–37.

Ogden, Daniel (2004) ‘The Apprentice’s Sorcerer: Pancrates and his powers in context (Lucian, “Philopseudes” 33–36’. Acta Classica 47: 101–126.

Poole, Federico (1998) ‘Slave or double?: a reconsideration of the conception of the shabti in the New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate period’. In Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, ed. C. J. Eyre. Leuven: Peeters. 893–901.

Schneider, Hans D. (1977) Shabtis: an introduction to the history of ancient Egyptian funerary statuettes, with a catalogue of the collection of shabtis in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden. 3 vols. Leiden: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden.

Stewart, Harry M. (1995) Egyptian shabtis. Shire Egyptology 23. Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications.

Taylor, John H. (2001) Death and the afterlife in ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press.

Tooley, Angela M. J. (1995) Egyptian models and scenes. Shire Egyptology 22. Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications.

From One Priest to Another: Funerary Artefacts from the Egypt Centre and Beyond

Last week I started my five-week short course on the funerary artefacts of the ancient Egyptians. For the next five weeks, the blog posts will be written by some of the students of this course, who will present the weekly theme from their own perspective. The entry for this week is written by the Reverend Jim Collins, a retired Anglican priest from Ottawa, Canada. Jim is very grateful for all he has been learning from the Egypt Centre and the Egypt Exploration Society lectures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People are dying to meet us!” So quipped the funeral home director to my pastoral care placement supervisor when I was a theological student attending my first ever funeral in preparation for the priesthood almost forty years ago. I was shocked that he and my boss began cracking jokes. The whole atmosphere had changed as soon as the door was closed to the funeral home director’s car. From giving pastoral care to the bereaved family, we were starting on our way to the cemetery with the casket and funeral procession behind us. Perhaps my boss and the undertaker sensed my own nervousness about being in such unfamiliar territory or they were making light for themselves in an effort to relieve the stress of their own jobs. Yet this experience began more than thirty years of my work as a priest helping people deal with grief and the passage of their loved ones.

Dr. Ken Griffin’s course, Funerary Artefacts of Ancient Egypt, is giving me an excellent opportunity during these Covid-19 times to become more hands on with a very different perspective on the afterlife, and grief, an evidence-based approach to ancient Egyptian funerary beliefs and practices.

Ken describes how during the dynastic Period the Egyptian belief in the afterlife developed. He said that each major new concept, for the most part, was first acquired by the king but as time went on these concepts became available to all. He stated that the idea developed that everybody could be reborn as Osiris—stating that this is related to a controversial idea in Egyptology known as the ‘democratisation of the afterlife’ (Hays 2011; Smith 2009). Could it be that different Egyptians had different perspectives on such matters during different time periods? Certainly as a priest, I find myself imagining that Egyptian priests involved in performing the various rituals over the centuries and millennia would have had different ideas. It is also likely that many of them became deeply attached to the beliefs and liturgies in which they played a role. To me it seems quite likely that many of the funerary artefacts were a celebration of such beliefs and attachments.

In my theological studies, we learned about Anton Baumstark’s Laws of Liturgy, which dealt with both adherence to ancient tradition as well as liturgical innovation.[1] In Christianity, there are many different approaches to death and the afterlife and for me it is interesting to see how some of these phenomena might have played out in ancient Egypt as well. According to Coptic tradition, the Holy Family travelled as far south as Asyut and it does not seem hard to me to imagine that doctrines in Jesus’ teaching, as recorded in the New Testament, may have been influenced by what he and his family were exposed to when he was young. For example, the idea of being born again and even the idea of baptism at the age of thirty might have had a connection to Heb-sed practices in places like Bubastis, especially if Jesus’ family was there for the thirtieth anniversary of Augustus’ conquest, which may have been challenging for Egyptian traditions to address since he had a more distant relationship than the Ptolemies had had.

In his first course lecture, Ken talked about Osiris as the main god of the dead and the importance of the Osiris myth around death, mummification, and the resurrection of Osiris. He said that Egyptians wanted to be associated with the resurrection of Osiris and that there was a common phrase of “the Osiris of N”. While this was clearly associated with the pharaoh in the times of the Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom), perhaps like Jesus as king in Christian theology, all Christians are invited to become a part of His kingship and resurrection. As with Christianity, to become an Osiris many tests had to be passed. For Osiris, all the parts of the individual had to be reunited with one another. Perhaps this might even have developed into the Pauline doctrine of the Body of Christ, although for Christianity there may well have also been an association with the estranged body of the first chapter of Isaiah which could not be healed with wine or anointing—being healed instead by association and incorporation into the Body of Christ.

Fig. 1: Weighing of the heart scene on the coffin of Iwesemhesetmut (W1982)

Dr. Griffin used a scene from the Twenty-first Dynasty coffin of a musician from Thebes, Iwesemhesetmut (W1982 from Exeter Royal Albert Museum) and a section of papyrus (W867) from the Book of the Dead to illustrate the Egyptian concept of the Judgement of the Dead (fig. 1). As Ken explained, that having declared his innocence of 42 sins, the deceased had their heart weighed against the feather of truth. If righteous, they were declared mꜣꜥ-ḫrw (true of voice). If they led a wicked life, Ammut devoured their heart and denied them access to the afterlife. This concept of divine judgement exists in Judaeo-Christian tradition as well.

Ken spoke of how the Egypt Centre collection displays are divided between the House of Life and the House of Death but that, in fact, almost all the artefacts are taken from funerary contexts. As a priest working in ministry, we were told that we were seen by society as mainly being there for the ‘hatch, match, and dispatch’ milestones of life. To focus only on the buried artefacts is obviously to miss out of many aspects of daily life that are very important to human existence. However, people still want to place things that were important in the lives of those they loved to be with them in death so perhaps we can bridge into that reality as having been true also for the ancient Egyptians.

Fig. 2: Coffin of Herishefhotep I (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tomb_of_Herishefhotep#/
media/File:%C3%84gyptisches_Museum_Leipzig_Herischefhotep_01.jpg)

For me, the concept of Egyptian priests embracing their own participation in the celebration of Egyptian beliefs in resurrection from the dead, whether being strictly pharaonic or more universal, may also be illustrated by the offerings as depicted on the Ninth to Tenth Dynasty(?) inner coffin of the priest Herishefhotep I. This coffin has interested me for some time now. It was found undisturbed behind a wall at Abusir and was published by Heinrich Schäfer in 1908. It is now in the George Steindorff Egypt Museum at Leipzig University (Schäfer 1908, 42–81, 143–145). The illustrations on this coffin seem to celebrate many areas of priestly life, which largely revolved around preparing and presenting many offerings of various kinds.

Fig. 3: Stela of Pasherienimhotep (W1041)

Having worked as a priest doing many funerals and preaching about the afterlife for decades, I have been finding it interesting to make comparisons. The imagery on the inner coffin of Herishefhotep I seems to demonstrate a lot of the aspects of what would have been important in his ministry as a priest as well as of the theology that would have been central to his faith. A particular highlight for me from Dr. Griffin’s lecture was the second century BCE stela of the priest Pasherienimhotep (fig. 3) from Edfu for which Ken provided the following translation:

An offering which the king gives to Horus of Edfu, the Great God, Lord of the Sky, Dappled of Plumage, who appears from the horizon, Horakhty, Foremost of the Great Place, Osiris, Foremost of the West, Lord of Ta-wer, Lord of Djedet, the Great God, Horus (who) disperses the slaughter of the Two Lands, Osiris, the Great God in Edfu, the Great Pillar in Edfu, Isis the Great, the Mistress in Edfu, the widow who dwells within Ta-wer. Hathor, Mistress of the West, Mistress of the Two Truths in the Hall of Maat. Anubis, he who is in the wrappings, Lord of the Sacred Land, Anubis, Foremost of the Divine Booth, (in order that) they may give a voice offering of bread, beer, cattle, fowl, incense upon the fire, everything good, pure, and sweet from which a god lives, a good burial in the [western cemetery], his heirs enduring upon his seat, for the ka of the Servant of Horus, the sḥtp-ḥm.f-priest, Fighting Arm, Lord of Triumph, Servant of the Kings of Upper and Lower Egypt, Elder of the Portal of Horus of Edfu, Lord of the Sky, one who makes offerings to the gods of Edfu, Scribe of the Troops, Second Scribe of the Temple, God’s Servant of Harpakhered, God’s Servant of Amun of the Storehouse, Overseer of the Wab-priests of Sekhmet, Overseer of Magicians of Serqet, Chief Lector Priest, Scribe of the Divine Book,???, Overseer of the Priests of Horus of Edfu, the Great God, Lord of the Sky, Pasherienimhotep, the justified before Osiris, son of the Third Priest of Horus of Edfu, Harsiese, the justified, made by the Mistress of the House, she who is upon her throne, the Female Musician, Tantise, the justified. Be firm, be firm, endure, endure, (may you) not perish for eternity.

Ken discussed the Osirian imagery of the stela, providing a good overview of the back of the stela also, which is not usually seen when displayed in the museum case. Ken explained that the priest’s name Pasherienimhotep means literally “The child of the god Imhotep”. For me, it is interesting to compare this stela to the Djoser statue base (fig. 4) that includes the name of Imhotep (Cairo JE 49889, which was discovered at Saqqara in January 1926.

Fig. 4: Djoser statue base with the name of Imhotep

There is a similar prominence of Djed-columns and Tyet-signs between these two artefacts. Additionally, although the priestly titles are not exactly the same for Imhotep and Pasherienimhotep, it is interesting to see significant points of continuity over some two millennia between the Old Kingdom and the Ptolemaic periods (Romer 2007, 244–245).[2]

For a long time, I have been interested in the accounts in Josephus and the Talmud of the Judean high priest Onias’ construction of a Jewish Temple in Egypt. According to the first century Judean historian Flavius Josephus as well as Rabbinic sources, the Judean high priest Onias, founded a Zadokite temple in the Nile Delta in the second century BCE. His temple, known as Beth (H)onias or the Temple of Onias in Rabbinic sources, is skeptically described as a fulfilment of Isaiah 19:18–19. The Old Kingdom figure of Imhotep, the famed architect of Djoser, may have provided a possible Egyptian inspiration, if not role model, for Onias. The Oniad temple building can also be compared to other Egyptian Temple reconstructions on many sites throughout Ptolemaic Egypt. For example, the great temple of Horus at Edfu, begun in 237 BCE, was still under construction at the time of Onias since the Edfu temple was only dedicated by Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II in 142 BCE, with additions there continuing until 71 BCE (Arnold 2003, 78). It is thus interesting to compare the only surviving inscription from the time of Imhotep with the second century stela of the priest Pasherienimhotep from Edfu. The Old Kingdom statue base containing Imhotep`s inscription has been translated by Nigel C. Strudwick (2005, 129) as follows:

The twin (?) of the king of Lower Egypt.

The seal-bearer of the king of Lower Egypt, first under the king, administrator of the great estate/mansion, iry-pat, great seer, Imhotep, controller of sculptors, maker of stone vessels (?).

The title mꜣꜣ wr, “Great Seer”, was a priest at Heliopolis (Wilson 1997).[3] This title could thus have had a particular importance for Onias. The second century Ptolemaic Edfu Stela of Pasherienimhotep might be seen as a much later Upper Egypt parallel.

Dr. Griffin also points out that the Egyptians appear to have been as reluctant to use the word ‘death’ as we are, preferring a variety of euphemisms (fig. 5).

Fig. 5: Words refering to death in ancient Egypt

As an undergraduate before I was ordained, I took an Ancient Near East course for which I wrote a paper on Maat in the Story of Sinuhe. Over the years, I have read books and articles and attended lectures on ancient Egypt, but since I retired from active ministry I have become quite passionate about Egyptology. I think it is helping me to understand all my years of helping people from fresh perspectives as well as giving me fresh insights into the earliest origins of Christianity.

My first contact with Dr. Griffin was his great lecture on The Life Cycle of an Object - The Lintel of the Overseer of Craftsmen, Tjenti as part of the current ongoing and excellent Egypt Centre online lecture series. Ken also discussed this artefact as part of his course lecture but he presented so many more artifacts from the Egypt Centre about which he also spoke so knowledgeably that I could not help but be drawn further and further into deeper levels of understanding of the funerary beliefs of ancient Egypt. Ken’s love for Egyptology and for the objects in the Egypt Centre collection really shines through, and his careful scholarly enthusiasm is infectious. I am finding Dr. Griffin’s course very stimulating and it is helping me to better understand this important area of cultural history.

Bibliography:

Arnold, Dieter 2003. The encyclopaedia of ancient Egyptian architecture. Translated by Sabine H. Gardiner and Helen Strudwick. London: I. B. Tauris.

Hays, Harold M. 2011. The death of the democratisation of the afterlife. In Strudwick, Nigel and Helen Strudwick (eds), Old Kingdom, new perspectives: Egyptian art and archaeology 2750–2150 BC, 115–130. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Schäfer, Heinrich 1908. Priestergräber und andere Grabfunde vom Ende des Alten Reiches bis zur griechischen Zeit vom Totentempel des Ne-user-rê. Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft in Abusir 1902–1908 2; Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 8. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs.

Smith, Mark 2009. Democratization of the afterlife. Edited by Jacco Dieleman and Willeke Wendrich. UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/70g428wj.

Strudwick, Nigel C. 2005. Texts from the pyramid age. Edited by Ronald J. Leprohon. Writings from the Ancient World 16. Atlanta; Leiden; Boston: Society of Biblical Literature; Brill.

Wilson, Penelope 1997. A Ptolemaic lexikon: a lexicographical study of the texts in the temple of Edfu. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 78. Leuven: Peeters.

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[1] See, for example, the helpful summary: http://psallitesapienter.blogspot.com/2009/07/baumstarks-laws-of-liturgy.html. [2] Romer describes the discovery of this statue base in 1926 at the south east corner of Djoser’s Pyramid by Jean-Philippe Lauer. He further states that “there is something rather different about this man Imhotep. Whatever tasks he may or may not have undertaken in his lifetime, he certainly enjoyed a long-lived fame. A thousand years after he had died, he was still considered to have been a founder patron of the scribes and a ‘Son of Ptah’, the fair-faced god of craftsmen and of manufactory. Later too in Greco-Roman times, his continuing celebrity earned him an apotheosis so that he became a little god of wisdom, a doctor and a scribe so popular that today most museums of Egyptian art have small bronze figures of Imhotep in this later manifestation. as a slight young man with a tight-fitting cap sitting on a plain Egyptian throne with a papyrus scroll upon his lap.” I am grateful to Campbell Price for alerting me to this artefact and reference.

[3] Personal communication with Penelope Wilson (May 19, 2020). Her Ptolemaic Lexicon has been a source of immense inspiration and powerful insights with references to offerings occurring more than twice per each of its more than 1300 pages based on the inscriptions at the Horus Temple at Edfu!