Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom
Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom
The Archaeology of Female Burials
WOLFRAM GRAJETZKI
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2014 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grajetzki, Wolfram.
Tomb treasures of the late Middle Kingdom : the archaeology of female burials / Wolfram Grajetzki. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4567-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Tombs—Egypt. 2. Burial—Egypt. 3. Women—Egypt—History—To 500. 4. Egyptians—Funeral customs and rites. 5. Excavations (Archaeology)—Egypt. 6. Egypt—Civilization—To 332 B.C. 7. Egypt—Antiquities. I. Title.
DT62.T6G73 2014
932'.013—dc23
2013024963
For
Danielle Darrieux
Catherine Deneuve
Isabelle Huppert
Emmanuelle Béart
Fanny Ardant
Virginie Ledoyen
Ludivine Sagnier
Firmine Richard
Contents
CHAPTER 2 Other Burials of Women
CHAPTER 3 Types of Jewelry in Late Middle Kingdom Burials
CHAPTER 4 The Development of Egyptian Burial Customs
CHAPTER 5 The King and the Women Buried Around Him
APPENDIX The Royal Women of the Twelfth Dynasty
Egyptian Tombs and Excavation Report
Introduction
The late Middle Kingdom in ancient Egypt, c. 1850 to 1700 BCE, is exceptionally rich in undisturbed burials of women. These tombs are often lavishly equipped with jewelry of the highest quality. Much of this jewelry has been regularly depicted in books on ancient Egypt. The burials are not often discussed as a whole, however; the other object types found in them are frequently barely mentioned. In this book my aim is to fill this gap. In the first part I provide a description and synthesis of the latest research on several of the most important late Middle Kingdom burials belonging to women. In the second part I give an overall view of late Middle Kingdom burial customs, again with the main focus on burials of women. An advantage of studying female burials is that in them certain trends in burial customs are particularly visible, such as concentration on the social identity of the tomb owner and “Osirification” (discussed in Chapter 4) in the “court type burials.” The technology of jewelry production, already covered by several other expert studies, is not the subject of the book.1
Studies of ancient Egyptian burial customs often concentrate on inscribed objects of the funerary industry. These include coffins, canopic jars, shabti figures, funerary papyri, and amulets. Especially from the Ramesside Period onward, these are certainly the most important items placed in the burial chambers, next to or on the deceased. Looking at the whole of Egyptian history and across all social classes, however, the picture is different. A wide range of uninscribed objects was placed in the tomb, including many items that had already been used in daily life, such as pottery vessels, cosmetic items, tools, and jewelry. Taken together, these latter types of burial goods constitute by far the highest proportion of items placed in burials, while purpose-made funerary objects were restricted to certain periods and to higher social levels. Few of the objects that appear in general books on Egyptian funerary customs, such as coffins, canopic jars, and mummy masks, were found in the tombs discussed in this book.
