III. The Good Burial

The funerary objects published in this volume testify amply to the cultural importance of burials in ancient Egypt. In a fundamental sense, what was at stake was the transformation of the deceased person into an ancestor, and powerful texts, images, and objects all supported this process.

In older scholarship, the overwhelming surviving evidence of ancient Egyptian funerary culture led scholars to think of something like a morbid obsession with death, and it was imagined that the goal was a kind of eternal salvation along the lines of well-known Christian beliefs. But, by situating Egyptian burial practices within the social setting of the interactions between living descendants and deceased ancestors, it may become easier to appreciate the central importance of the ancestor cult in ancient Egyptian society.¹

Ancestors were powerful protectors of their surviving family. In many cases, they would likely have been a more feasible place to seek help with one’s personal concerns than the state gods worshiped in large but secluded temples in the main population centers. Ancestors were seen as responsible for the general well-being of the descendants. Especially in matters concerning the continuance of the lineage, such as fertility or inheritance, one could even appeal to the ancestors’ self-interest.² Rather like gods, the chief setting for ancestors to come into the world of humans was in the cult, so the ancestors depended on the continuance of regular worship.

Here as well, older scholarship may have slightly skewed ancient rationales in thinking that the dead required a steady stream of food in order to live eternally. Given that very similar food offerings were regularly presented to the gods as well (where modern intuitions would not expect it to be a matter of their eternal survival), it is probably preferable to understand the ancient rationale as being similar in both cases: offerings, and the wider rites and recitations that accompanied them, were first and foremost meant to make gods and ancestors present in their shrines and thus available for interaction.

The burial, then, aimed at establishing the point of departure for this continued interaction. The twin connected purposes were, on the one hand, that of transforming the dead human being into an ancestor able to look out for their living descendants and, on the other, to establish a space (which looked somewhat different in different periods) where the continued cultic interaction between the new ancestor and the living family and household members could take place. When looking at individual funerary objects, we can often identify the emphasis as being on one or the other side of this coin. Still, it is important to remember that the two functions of the burial were closely intertwined and mutually dependent.

Becoming an Ancestor

The former of these aspects immediately raises the question of what the transformation into an ancestor entailed and how it was effected. From early on and throughout ancient Egyptian history, the answer to this question was directly bound up with the mythology of the god Osiris, who came to be regarded as the prototype of every human ancestor.³ The basic storyline is transmitted in fragmentary, mostly ritual, allusions throughout Egyptian history. Osiris was killed by his brother Seth because of their dispute over the throne of Egypt. Osiris was dismembered, but his wife and sister, Isis, gathered and reassembled his body. Their son Horus, in turn, defeated Seth and became the rightful king inheriting his father’s throne. As such, the myth outlines the basic problem of the change of generations, in the existential sense of the continuity of human life, but also in the social (and even legal) sense of passing on one’s inheritance in the widest sense.⁴ To Egyptian thinking these ideas often became inextricably intertwined. To emphasize the mystery of passing on life, some versions of the myth specify that the engendering of the son Horus takes place after the death of Osiris, but otherwise, Osiris as the dead ancestor is generally cast in an entirely passive role as the source of the manifest life in his son.

Against this conceptual background, Osiris becomes the model and prototype of every ancestor. The idea became prevalent that the transformation to an ancestor was tantamount to becoming (an) Osiris.⁵ This could be effected by a variety of means, whether textual by preceding the name of the deceased with that of Osiris, almost like a title, or material by mummifying the body on the model of the god or equipping the dead with the god’s regalia. Many, if not most, categories of grave goods can be understood as different ways of supporting this transformation modeled on the understanding of Osiris of the era in question.

The pivotal object in this process, for those who had access to one, was the coffin and related objects such as masks and cartonnage trappings.⁶ Enveloping the entire body of the deceased, such objects offered the possibility of a global transformation through material and pictorial means. Accordingly, most such objects depict ancestors in their new, deified state, as shown by details such as the golden flesh (cat. no. 72) curved, braided beards (cat. no. 70), or tripartite wigs (cat. no. 69) associated with divinity in Egyptian thought. At the same time, coffins also offered the opportunity to forge additional mythological and ritual connections through imagery, notably by embodying the ancestor in scenes of interaction with deities such as Isis and Nephthys reinvigorating the mummified Osiris (cat. No. 72, back, Figure 3.1) and the jackal-headed Anubis performing the embalming (cat. no. 75, leg trapping, Figure 3.2).

A particularly prevalent role in the transformation is played by four minor gods known as the Sons of Horus. These deities are sometimes pictured as surrounding the body of Osiris, often alongside other gods—a mythological situation replicated ritually during the nightly wake before the funeral.⁷ They also frequently take on a more specific role in the corporeal transformation of the ancestor as they are embodied in the four canopic jars containing the viscera removed during mummification.⁸ Both of these relationships can be evoked by more subtle means, as, for instance, having the four sons of Horus depicted on coffins, making them present through amuletic depictions (cat. no. 97), or through wax figurines (cat. no. 98). Whatever the means by which they are embodied, they help effect the Osiris-nature of the deceased by their presence.

Especially in the later periods of Egyptian history corresponding roughly to the 1st millennium BCE, relationships between the ancestor and the gods gained central importance in the imagery of the tomb chamber. As with the Osiris iconography, the purpose was once again that of the new status of the ancestors being shaped and defined through their relations to gods and other powers of the cosmos. Thus, “corn Osiris” figures (cat. no. 93) of a kind also used in agricultural festivals for Osiris served to make present the generative forces of the god in the tomb chamber in a concept drawing on the analogy between the life contained in the seed sowed in the ground and that transmitted by the buried ancestor. A similar, if somewhat more abstracted, idea lies behind the Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figurines, frequently protecting powerful texts (or other objects) deposited in the tomb (cat. no. 100).

Here, the traditional power and pertinence of the god Osiris is combined with those of deities local to the area around Memphis (near modern-day Cairo), the creator god Ptah and the god of the Memphite necropolis, Sokar.

The Ancestor Cult

As noted above, the second main purpose of the burial was to form a matrix for the interactions with the ancestor buried within. This was the main focus of the decoration in the tomb’s chapel, which, unlike the burial chamber, remained open and accessible for visitors and worshipers. This purpose was underlined by frequent motifs on tomb walls depicting the different stages of the ancestor cult, from the production of the goods to be presented as offerings to the rituals carried out by surviving relatives and household members. Often such rituals, and the encounter with the ancestor they made possible, are shown as a cause for celebration with participants depicted in their finery, enjoying music and dancing, and sharing a festive meal not only with the ancestor but also with each other (cat. nos. 66–67). More formalized tomb depictions condense the many acts of the ancestor cult to just the central motif of the tomb owner seated before a well-stocked offering table dedicated by the most prominent descendant leading the cult—usually the eldest son and/or the dedicant of the monument (cat. no. 24).

Such scenes give us a sense that the rituals of the ancestor cult were, at the same time, a social occasion and a social obligation. Often the interaction between the living and the dead was couched explicitly in terms of a quid pro quo where both sides were expected to live up to their respective responsibilities. Because of the rules and expectations (sometimes labeled decorum)⁹ underlying tomb decoration, it tends to present a rather idealized and one-sided sense of this relationship, where tomb owners display the lavish preparations and busy lives of the people responsible for the cult, while dedicators of smaller objects such as stelae demonstrate their devotion to their ritual duties. However, from other sources, notably the so-called letters or appeals to the dead, we get a sense of what is at stake in more practical terms, where the living senders of such appeals often stress how they are continuously living up to the ritual and more general social obligations and as such expect to be healed, protected, or otherwise helped by the ancestor.¹⁰

If the distinction between the transformative aspects of the tomb and those relating to the ancestor cult generally corresponds respectively to the sealed-off burial chamber and the accessible chapel, this is not always the case. Since a significant purpose of the tomb was precisely to join these two aspects, it is not surprising that certain practices deliberately straddled the two domains. This appears to be the case, for example, with the wooden figurines and tableaus deposited in tombs from the late 3rd to the early 2nd millennium BCE (cat. nos. 76–80). Although such figurines were usually placed in the burial chamber and thus associated in the first instance with the transformation of the deceased, the vast majority of their motifs deal with the production and presentation of offerings and the celebration of rituals—in other words, topics relating to the ancestor cult, and, for this reason, usually found in the decoration of the chapel. Such figurines, then, seemingly served the purpose of connecting the ancestor in a very direct way with the people and processes in the chapel, but also significantly beyond when, for instance, depicting scenes of cattle-rearing and agriculture that formed the economic basis of the ancestor cult.¹¹

This last example emphasizes once again that we need to understand the two main aspects of the ancient Egyptian tomb as strongly intertwined and mutually dependent. This also means that we need to consider the wider social context in which the tomb and its grave goods would have been situated, even if it tends only to be somewhat indirectly evoked in most of the funerary objects one may find in a museum exhibition. Ultimately, this may also help us appreciate the crucial and dynamic role of the ancestor cult in everyday life as a significant nuancing of older ideas of the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with death and quest for eternal life.

1. E.g., Nyord 2018, Weiss 2022 ↩︎

2. Hsieh 2022. ↩︎

3. Smith 2017. ↩︎

4. Assmann 2005, esp. 39–63. ↩︎

5. Smith 2017. ↩︎

6. Sousa 2019. ↩︎

7. E.g., Assmann 2005, esp. 260–270. ↩︎

8. Dodson 1994. ↩︎

9. E.g., Bussmann and Baines 2022. ↩︎

10. Hsieh 2022. ↩︎

11. Nyord forthcoming. ↩︎