Burial and the dead in ancient Egyptian.pdf

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Burial and the dead in ancient Egyptian society: Respect, formalism, neglect John Baines and Peter Lacovara Journal of Social Archaeology 2002; 2; 5 DOI: 10.1177/1469605302002001595

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Jour Jo urna na l of So cia cia l Archaeo cha eollog y

ARTICLE

Copyright Copyright © 2002 2002 SAGE SAGE Publications (Lond on, Thousa nd Oaks, Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vo l 2(1): 2(1): 5–36 [1469-6053(200202)2:1;5–36;0 [1469-6053(200202)2:1;5–36;020595] 20595]

Burial urial and the dead dead in in anci ancient ent Egyptian society Respect,formalism,neglect JOH JOHN BAINES Facult y of Orient Orient al St udies, udies, Univers Universit it y of Ox Oxford ford

PETER LACOVARA Michael Mi chael C. C. Carlos arl os Mus Mu seum , Em ory or y Uni Unive vers rsit it y

ABSTRACT Ancient Egypt offers a paradigm contrast between ideals of respectful care for the dead, on the one hand, and realities of medium- and long-term neglect, destruction and reuse on the other. Ideals are expressed in normative mortuary monuments and in texts; the archaeo logical logical record, t ogether w ith relatively relatively f ew skeptic skeptical al t exts, exts, testifies to realities realities.. D eath wa s as sociall sociallyy riven as the realm of t he living living.. Vast amounts were invested in royal and elite monuments, while cemeteries cemeteries as a w hole canno canno t account for more tha n a fra ction of the population. Preservation of the body was essential for conventional conceptions conceptions of a n aft erlife erlife – often envisaged envisaged t o ta ke place place aw ay f rom the tomb – but embalming embalming practices practices canno canno t ha ve been required for a ll. ll. The contradictions implied by divergences from the ideal were negotiated over very long periods. periods. Such process processes es of a ccommod ccommod at ion may

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Journal Jo urnal of Social Social Archaeo Archaeo logy log y 2(1) 2(1)

be pa rticularly necessary in complex societies societies and civili civiliza zations. tions. They They emphasize emphasize that , even if if the a ctors may present the mat ter otherw ise, ise, treat ment of t he dead relat es as much much to the living living as to the deceased. KEYWORDS ancien ancientt E gypt gypt • ceme cemeter teriies • death • mausole mausoleum um • mortuary mortuary • mummummifi mifi cation cation • res respect pect for the dead dead • res restoration toration • ritual ritual • tombs, tombs, destru destrucction of



INTRODUCTION

The ancient E gyptian ideal wa s that in death people should should be b uried uried in a splendid and everlasting tomb that supplied a visible memorial to them. Such an extra vaga nt req uirement uirement can a pply pply only t o small elites; elites; the destiny destiny of mo st E gyptians in in deat h is poorly known, a nd many were disposed disposed of in ways that have not been recovered archaeologically. Even for elites, the reality was that mortuary cults were short-lived, tombs were robbed from the time of burial onw ard s and burial places places were reused. reused. Whil Whilee mortua ry practices changed greatly between around 3000 B C E and the fourth to fi fth centuries C E , the general general contin continui uity ty in E gyptian gyptian civil civiliz ization ation over that immense timespan, the onerous requirements of mortuary provision and the accumulation of the dead themselves fostered complex patterns of action toward the recent and the more remote deceased. 1 These hese pat terns and a ttitudes addressed addressed a predicament predicament tha t is common in many places, notably in complex societies with long cultural traditions, but can be ta ckled ckled in in various wa ys (contra (contra st, for example, example, early Mesopota mia: Pollock, 1999: 196–217). In this article we discuss for Egypt how far and in wha t w ays people harmonized the discrep discrepancy ancy betw een the elite elite ideal and the imperfections and compromises of reality, as well as tensions and possible differences in mortuary beliefs. Although a mass of data about mortuary practices survives from Egypt and belief in an afterlife is well estab lished, lished, rela rela tively little little textua l evidence evidence rela rela tes directly to the a ttitud es of living living society society tow ard deat h a nd the dea d themselves themselves,, as a gainst presentpresenting rather uninformative mortuary formulae containing little that is personal or reflective (Baines, 1999); the archaeological record too is not eloquent here. In contrast with the respectful ideal, the reality of destruction, disregard disregard a nd oblivion oblivion ma y fi t bett er with negative att itudes found in less less public and unoffi cial sources (e.g. G a rdiner, 193 1935; P osener, 198 1988). So me gaps in the published record are due to inadequate recording and publication; tra ditional excava excava tions were seldom seldom designed designed to ad dress these questions. The The Nile Nile D elta is poorly know n, much of it la la cking cking the a djacent low


Baines & Lacovara Burial and the d ead in an cient Eg yptian society

Table 1 Chronolog ical table for histo rical periods in Ancient Eg ypt Predynastic period Early Dynastic Period (Dynasties 1–3) Old King dom (Dynasties 4–8) First Intermediate Period (Dynasties 9–11) Middle King dom (Dynasties 11–13) Second Intermediate Period (Dynasties 14–17) New King dom (Dynasties 18–20) Third Intermediate Period (Dynasties 21–25) Late Period (Dynasties 26–31) Ptolemaic period Roman period Christian period Muslim conq uest

4800–2950 BCE 2950–2575 2575–2150 2150–1975 1975–1640 1640–1525 1525–1075 1075–656 664–332 332–30 30 BCE–395 CE 3rd–10th century 641

Note: Figures before 664 are approximat e. Overlaps a re deliberate.

desert, wh ere most know n Nile Valley burials were sited. D ifferences in terrain ma y ha ve fa vored differences in burial pra ctices. Sparse indications, nota bly in texts, suggest tha t E gyptian culture wa s not unifi ed in its perceptions of mo rtuary needs and destinies, and tha t a ttitudes to death and the dead were as contradictory as in many societies. In order to a ddress ideas and pra ctices that lie on the edge of the no rmative ancient ideology, it is necessary to combine theoretical arguments with scattered evidence from a wide ra nge of sources.  ‘MAUSOLEUM CULTURE’

Funerary display can be tra ced from prehistory onw ard . Predy nastic cemeteries show increasing polarization in the size of tombs and in the numbers and elab ora tion of grave goo ds they conta ined, with the largest constructed tombs contrasting with several levels of less wealthy burials (Bard, 1994). The ultimate development of a monumental funerary complex for the mona rch, consisting of a tomb and separa te cultic structures, later comb ined into a unifi ed who le, appea red by the beginning of the dyna stic era (K aiser and D reyer, 1982; O ’C onno r, 1989), a period w hen elite to mbs dwarfed those of other sectors of the population. Royal tombs were of a different type from non-roya l and w ere often in a separa te a rea o f the necropolis. The king had a divine destiny in the hereafter that could be apart from his people. From no later than the second millennium, others could aspire to similar sta tus, but roya l tombs remained distinct. From the New K ingdom


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on, they were in a restricted location, at first in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes and fro m the Third Intermediate P eriod in subterranea n chambers in the courtyards of major temples (Stadelmann, 1971). P rovision of offerings for the dea d w as focused on the to mb, but w as also provided in memor ial chapels or through t he temples of d eities, where ceremonies might be enacted before statues, first known from a late Old K ingdom text (Sethe, 1933: 304–6; see a lso below ). Througho ut antiq uity, king and elite wished to build mortuary structures that would ideally be visible and receive cults in perpetuity. D uring the decentra lized intermediate periods, the difference in scale between the tombs of king, elite and others diminished, while burials for ma ny kings are not known; textual evidence confirms this slight social levelling. From the Third Intermediate P eriod on, a considerab ly reduced proportion o f the elite possessed to mbs

Figure 1 Map o f Eg ypt, and Nubia as far south a s the Second Cataract, w ith the na mes of sites mentioned in the text



with a superstructure, while coffins and attendant grave goods showed a strong focus on the trappings of burial, and by implication an increased salience of the funeral ritual (Taylor, 2001). Nonetheless, the tradition of large constructed tombs survived and there was an essential continuity in mortuary aspiration until the Roman period. As exemplified in the tombs sited around the G reat P yramid at G iza, a necropolis was a community in death, where the distribution and architecture of tombs partially modeled elite organization. Such architectural statements were proba bly more public and po litical than communa l and mortuary (Helck, 1962). More locally within the same necropolis, groupings of tombs sometimes display family relations (Brovarski, 2001) or occupational affiliations (Roth, 1995). Such ordering is also evident in modest provincial cemeteries (O ’C onnor, 1974: 19–27; R eisner, 1932: 174–90). G roups of t ombs could span several generations, with lat er burials clustering aro und tha t of a significa nt person, who might be the head of a family or a leading figure. The cult of a local hero, H eqa ib, within the tow nsite at E lephantine became the nucleus for memoria l shrines of pow erful Middle K ingdom fa milies (Franke, 1994; H aba chi, 1985). The most import ant site fo r such shrines wa s Abydo s. Notables from around the country built votive memorial chapels there

Figure 2 Sector o f the West Cemetery at Giza, aerial view from the east .The reg ular pat tern of fourth d ynasty t omb s wa s later disturbed b y numerous, smaller intrusive tombs.Courtesy,Museum of Fine Arts,Boston.Reproduced w ith permission. © 2000 Museum o f Fine Arts, Boston. All rig hts reserved


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(O’Connor, 1985; Simpson, 1974) and pilgrims buried votive statues or animal mummies in the sacred gro und. C ompa rab le cults sometimes grew up around the cult places of gods of the dead, or where an elite figure was ‘deifi ed’ a nd his ‘w orshippers’ had themselves buried or ma de votive burials of animals or funera ry fi gurines near him (Taylor, 2001: 133–5). The ‘ma usoleum culture’ in the necropolis which developed aro und provision for the royal and elite deceased must have been legitimized as much in relation to the living as to the dea d. A s in many cultures, elite men wished to construct their tombs during their lifetimes, when t he tomb wa s a central vehicle of peer competition. An explicit illustration of this is in the sixthdynasty statement of a man w ho chose to b e buried in a to mb together with his fa ther ‘in order to b e with this D jau in the same place, not because I did not ha ve the means(?) to build tw o to mbs’ – making explicit the stat us normally accorded to a having one’s own large tomb (Roccati, 1982: 227–8). At times, much of society must have been drawn – directly or indirectly, enthusiastically or no t – into great mortua ry projects, especially t he roya l pyramids of the third a nd fo urth dyna sties. The institutions of the pyramids was economically central. Apart from the vast enterprise of construction, the pyramid a nd related solar temple endow ments were nodes for allocat ion of resources, although the proportion of economic activity that passed thro ugh them is uncerta in (Lehner, 2000; O ’C onno r, 1995). When centra lized political forms broke d ow n in the First Intermediat e P eriod, large-scale pyramid complexes ceased to be constructed for the following 200 years. Tomb size and t ype varied as much with the fo rtunes of th e times as with individual wealth and choice. A limited ‘democratization of the afterlife’ has been postulated for the First Intermediate Period and early Middle K ingdom, when non-roya l elites ad opted some mortua ry texts, regalia a nd beliefs that may until then have been the preserve of the king (e.g. A ssmann, 1996: 104–5; but see B ourria u, 1991; Willems, 1988). The sa me period is characterized by a much wider distribution of prestigious grave goo ds than in the O ld K ingdom (B runto n, 1927: 75–6; Seidlma yer, 1990: 440–1), suggesting some leveling of w ealth. D uring much of the second and first millennia there was interchange between royal and private traditions in tomb architecture and mortua ry symbolism. Thus, New K ingdom kings abandoned the pyramidal tomb, which elites took over in reduced form (B ada wy, 1968: 441–2; K ampp-Seyfried, 1994). P ictorial and textua l compositions inscribed in royal tombs were adopted later by the non-royal, while kings took over non-royal substitute figurines ( shabti s). These borrow ings suggest t hat there existed a commonality of beliefs and symbols as well as long-term variability in their use, despite sharp differentiation betw een ma jor social ca tegories (R ichards, 2000; Seidlma yer, 2001). A broad norm for mortuary practices and beliefs is easily outlined. Ideally, an elite man (occasionally a woman) would prepare for death by constructing a tomb as an everlasting memorial, starting after reaching a



career peak. He would set aside provisions for the tomb and create an endowment to maintain the cult and supply offerings in perpetuity. After death, the body was mummified and prepared for burial, a process that lasted, in theory, for 70 days. The deceased was then placed inside a coffin or nest of coffins and, in an elaborate ritual, transported from the place of embalming to the t omb a nd buried, in some periods with numerous grave goods, in a subterranea n chamber contiguous with t he superstructure. Like the tomb structure and decoration, the grave goods were no doubt associated with the deceased’s identity and status as well as with material provision. The chamber was sealed and not opened again unless other family members were buried there. Burials of people connected with the tomb owner could be added in separate tomb shafts. Men were typically buried in major tombs with their wives and sometimes other family members and some dependants. Family or communal tombs became common in the lat er New K ingdom (e.g. for the eighteenth dynasty, Petrie and Sayce, 1891: 21–4; for the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties, Meskell, 1999a), Third Intermediate Period, and later (cf. Lacovara, 1988: 24), but b ot h they and gro uped to mbs existed in ea rlier periods, particula rly fo r the less wea lthy (E ngelba ch, 1923: 59–63; Seidlma yer, 2001). Separa te burials of elite women reappeared at t he end of the New K ingdom, after an absence of some centuries (e.g. Quirke, 1999); child and infant burials a re discussed later in t his article. The crucial phase of the funerary ritual appears to have been the ‘O pening of the M outh’, in which the body w as rendered capab le of receiving offerings a nd functioning in the next w orld (Fischer-E lfert, 1998; O tto, 1960). A designated person, idea lly the eldest son, w as responsible for com pleting or constructing the tomb if necessary, conducting the funeral and administering the cult. The mortua ry cult, w hich wa s in principle similar to the da ily cult o f the go ds in temples, centered on the presentat ion of fo od offerings and other essentials to statues, in the Old Kingdom mostly inaccessible in a sealed chamber (the serdab ) , or to two-dimensional representat ions of the deceased in the tomb chapel and thro ugh the object addressed, t o the deceased himself (O ’C onno r, 2000; R oth, 1988: 54–5). I n one o f several fra meworks of belief, the deceased w ould continue to exist around the tomb, possessing freedom of movement through the potential of aspects of the person that were liberated after death but needed perpetually to reunite with the mummy. The preservation of the deceased’s body, of the coffin and of the tomb and grave goods was fundamental. Conservation of the corpse developed slowly from the late predynastic times to its fullest form in the Third Intermediate Period, when mummification was a very elaborate and costly procedure aimed at maintaining the deceased’s physical appearance (Ikram and D odson, 1998). Safeguards aimed to ensure that sustenance would be offered for the


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deceased if relat ives or mortua ry priests ceased t o provide off erings of foo d and drink. Inscribed of fering formulas, attested from t he fourth dyna sty to G raeco-R oma n times, wo uld magically sustain the tomb ow ner’s spirit when they w ere read out (B arta , 1968). The formula s presupposed – realistically o r ot herwise – that people w ould visit the necropolis as a who le, not just the tombs of their own kin, and w ould read a nd activat e the formulae. These existed in two basic types, of which the one that did not explicitly address visitors to the tomb or chapel may have been thought efficacious even without being read out. Visitors were enjoined to enter t ombs in a state o f purity that relat ed to the cult performed there and to the religious content of the inscriptions (J unker, 1955b: 132–3; but see Wolf, 1957: 685, n. 2 to § 70). While the la tt er was superficially sparse before the mid-second millennium, the range of permissible material was very circumscribed. Purity for visitors and that required of priests in temples are comparable (Blumenthal, 1991), but the social range of visitors to tombs was wider than that of temple priests, for example including women, servants and children. Two features of offering formulae in tombs point in different directions. The core typica lly runs: ‘A gift/propitiation tha t the king gives to [deit(ies)], tha t he/they may give [off erings] to [name].’ It is self-conta ined, involving no ritual in the tomb beyond being read out where possible, and depends for its effica cy on the mediation o f the king and the temple, where he theoretically perfor med the da ily cult. The deceased wo uld receive this reversion of o fferings in the herea fter (L app, 1986). In this wa y, the dead pa rticipated both in the affairs and customs of the living and in the regular cult of the gods. These beliefs and practices, paralleled by such activities as writing letters to the dea d, reinforced the position of the recently dea d in the human community, while the offering formula linked the deceased to the cult o f the gods on earth, rather than in the otherworldly domains of both, and may have t ended to assimilat e them to a generalized category of spiritual beings.



THE DESTINY OF THE LESS WEALTHY

The destiny in the next life of tho se who d id not have elabo rat e to mbs must be considered, a lthough little can b e said a bout them. A s fi rst discussed by Weill (1938), the number o f buria ls identifi ed fro m antiq uity cannot account for the entire estimated po pulat ion of a million a t the least (cf. B aines and E yre, 1983: 65–7; B utzer, 1976: 76–80; O ’C onnor, 1972: 81–3). Oft en, graves or other indications of sub-elite burials that have b een pointed to belonged to prosperous people such as valued artisans (e.g. Hawass, 1995; Ward, 1977). While indications of poor or mass burials are sometimes reported, the majority o f them being ‘forma l’ (Smith and J effreys, 1979: 19; 1980: 18),



many corpses must have been disposed of in ways that are now archaeologically invisible (cf. Morris, 1987, on Iro n Age G reece). At H araga, cemeteries proba bly of the Middle K ingdom tha t ha d proper burials but no tomb structures or grave goods illustrate how large numbers might be treated formally (Engelbach, 1923: 2–3). Such finds are rare, but perhaps more frequent from the Roman period, for which they are, for example, reported but not yet published from K ellis in D akhla O asis. Some of t his invisibility of the general population may derive from a focus of earlier excavations on wealthier sites, from inadequate recording and from tomb robbery; losses may also be attributed to shifts in the Nile bed and other forms of natural and artificial destruction. But even if all these factors are ta ken into a ccount, not everyone seems to ha ve had a f orma l grave. A goo d example is a generally modest Old to Middle Kingdom cemetery on E lephantine Island, 10 percent of w hich has been excava ted, cont aining 248 burials spread over ab out 500 years (Seidlma yer, 2001). E ven if multipliers are applied to these figures to account for losses of material, any total of burials tha t can b e postulat ed wo uld ha ve to relate to an implausibly small population. One cannot assume that some burials followed other rites. U nlike execution b y burning (L eahy, 1984), cremation is unknow n from pre-Roman Egypt, while the statement in a literary text, that in troubled times crocodiles became gorged o n the corpses of those who cast themselves into the river, is not meant literally (Parkinson, 1998: 172). Little is reported of sub-formal or non-formal disposal. One find, no doubt amo ng many, is from the culturally E gyptian Middle K ingdom levels at Tell el-D ab ‘a in the D elta, where a corpse discarded in a stora ge bin had been left exposed a nd pa rtly consumed b y a nimals (B ietak, 1991a: 52). Such a disposal, devoid of grave goo ds, suggests that members of the low est social strata or perhaps outcasts might no t ha ve had even a simple interment in a burial ground. Not just the level of funerary expenditure but a lso the pra ctice of fo rmal burial w as socially constrained. There may be exceptions to the pattern of selective formal burial – and thus to what is found more generally in archaeology (cf. Parker Pearson, 1999: 5). D aniel Polz (1995: 40–1) propo sed tha t fo r Second I ntermediat e P eriod Thebes the area o f D ra‘ A bu el-Naga could have accommoda ted burials of the entire populat ion, while some La te and G raeco-R oma n cemeteries may have contained larger numbers of burials than are generally known from earlier sites. Mo reover, cemeteries seldom mirror society’s demographic composition (fo r G reece, M orris, 1992: 72–91; for E gypt, R ösing, 1990). While in E gypt women may have had autonomy in some domains (Robins, 1993), tombs constructed for their use are rare – for the Old Kingdom fewer than 1 percent of named tombs (Hubertus Münch, 2001, personal communication), a nd fo r the New K ingdom fewer still. The less elab ora te the b urials, the more likely it wa s that men a nd wo men would receive a roughly equa l


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treatment (e.g. for Middle Kingdom Haraga: Engelbach, 1923: 2–3; First Int ermediat e P eriod Q au: Seidlmayer, 1987; New K ingdom D eir el-Medina East: Meskell, 1999b). Published cemetery data rarely include significant numbers of infant and child burials, yet child morta lity wa s certa inly high. A cemetery a t M irgissa tha t refl ected this demographic fa ct, with 50 percent of its skeletons under two years of age, prompted its excavator to seek a special explana tion for its composition. H ow ever, B ernard B oya val (1981) noted t hat , in demographic terms, what needs to be explained is the pat tern of age distributions in other cemeteries. Some of the discrepancy may be due to inadequate recording by earlier excavators, who may have overlooked or ignored the simpler and more fragile burials of infants in the search for valuables, and to neglect in later syntheses. An exception is a remark a bout fi nds from late New K ingdom Ab ydos (Ma riette, 1880: 442). More careful and more recent excavations have shown significant proportions of sub-adults of a ll ages in cemeteries of the D yna stic P eriod, but still not enough to represent the likely demographic reality (Meskell, 1999b: 158–68; Seidlmayer, forthcoming). Burials of foetuses, neonates and infants have been found recently in contexts such as foundations of buildings in the late third millennium town at Ab ydos Nort h (Ma tthew D . Ad ams, 2000, persona l communicat ion), suggesting that, as in many cultures, they were not necessarily interred in the same place or the same manner as adults or older juveniles (cf. e.g. Esmonde Cleary, 2000; Pollock, 1999: 197–204). Nonetheless, the majority of t he Middle Kingdom infant b urials in elite houses at Ab ydos South w ere ‘forma l’ in that they w ere neat ly arranged and covered over, and some had associated artifacts (Josef Wegner, 2000, personal communication). This wa s clearly a special practice, because it wa s abno rmal to bury a dults within settlements, although cases are reported (for the Middle and New Kingdo ms, see von P ilgrim, 1996: 81–3). Some such buria ls were either where the community ha d expanded over a burial ground (K emp, 1968; for D eir elMed ina, see Meskell, 1997), or conversely, in aba ndoned ha bita tion sectors (Laco vara, 1981: 122–4). The P alestinian Middle B ronze II levels at Tell alD ab ‘a o ffer a useful contra st: burials within the city were common and included a ll ages dow n to neo nates (B ietak, 1991b).

IDEALS, PRACTICE AND SYMBOLISM IN MORTUARY PROVISION 

According to the ideal, the style of burial ritual, the correct deposition of the corpse and, a t least in some periods, the presence of grave goo ds were central to burial and hopes of survival in the next w orld. The reality, both of procedures of burial and of maintenance of mortuary traditions, was



different. Apa rt fro m emba lmers’ and mortua ry priests’ involvement in the destruction and desecration of burials, they subverted and substituted for the prescribed literalistic forms. Such shortcuts might or might not run counter to the intentions of those who wished to be ‘properly’ buried. From an early period, symbolic approaches and interpretations could bridge the gap betw een aspirat ion and reality. It is as if the outw ard a ppearance of mortuary ritual and provision could be more important than the provision itself. Many burials and tombs contained miniature or dummy stone vessels or empty fo od cont ainers, imitat ion granite fa lse doo rs and so forth. Mummifi cation w as often similarly a ffected: only a semblance of the embalming necessary to preserve the body might be carried out, a lthough the wrapped body in the coffin looked as good as one that had been ‘properly’ prepared (Taylor, 2001: 58–63, 78–91). At least as much as they were dictated by economics, these shortcuts may have been legitimized by a belief that the correct performance of mummification rituals was more signifi cant tha n meticulous preservation of the body (G oyon and Jo sset, 1988). Since full mummifi cat ion w as very costly, beliefs allow ing for a more limited treat ment were necessary if more tha n a t iny proportion of t he elite were to aspire to its benefits and a consequent passage into the hereafter. Even when elaborate provisions were made, the results were not always what was desired. Sometimes the mummy was made up of the bones of more than one person, perhaps embalmers’ leftovers (Spencer, 1982: 124–36; Taylor, 2001: 91). It would be impossible to provide materially for anyone in perpetuity through the grave goo ds deposited in a tomb , and more susta inable symbolic or ma gical understand ings were norma l. In modest burials from predyna stic times on, the grave goods could have had only token value for physical survival in the next world, unless they were meant to materialize a meal or to pro vide for tra nsition to a d oma in where supplies would be either present or irrelevant. The only non-roya l tombs of the D ynastic P eriod tha t included massive supplies of fo od and equipment, a nd in some cases even lat rines and washing areas, were the enormous elite structures of the first to second dynasties (Emery, 1961: 128–64, esp. 159). How did more ‘symbolic’ burial assemblages – the vast majority – relate to beliefs about the a fterlife? G rave goods cannot have been indispensable, since intact elite burials of periods such as the Old Kingdom contain very few of them (Münch, 1997). It is as likely that they related to the deceased’s position among the living as that more than a few of t hem had a straightforwa rd function for the afterlife. Kings, for whom an otherworldly destiny with the sun and among the stars wa s assumed, were b uried w ith the mo st lavish grave goods, preserved to a great extent only from t he tomb of Tutankha mun (R eeves, 1990a) and the tw enty-fi rst and tw enty-second dy nasties’ ro yal t ombs of Tanis (Montet, 1947–1960). Non-royal elites, who increasingly aspired to similar destinies, constructed elabo rat e tomb s that should ha ve received a regular cult. The


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cults themselves may not have been performed at all, or for only a short period. Large quantities of rough and miniature offering vessels found in some tomb chapels suggest t hat in these cases there wa s a signifi cant volume of symbolic of ferings (C harvát, 1981: 149–51; R ichards, f ort hcoming). Since such mat erial is sparse, the evidence is tha t mort uary cults were ra rely mainta ined for long, despite supposedly perpetua l cult endo wments. The longest known periods of cult may be for some Old Kingdom kings (Kemp, 1989: 141–9; Posener-Kriéger, 1976). Neither for kings nor for others can grave goods or continuing mortuary cults have had the principal role in ensuring survival in the hereafter. Cults of some kings were maintained in later periods, but these seem to ha ve been almost antiq uarian in chara cter.



AN AFTERLIFE AWAY FROM THE TOMB

Some royal and non-royal beliefs suggest that there could be an afterlife that had little connection with an earthly context, so that the tomb was mainly a point of transition from one world to another. However monumental it might be, its permanence was then less important than if it was seen as a perpetual abode; but grave goods could still be lavish. These features were significant for the deceased’s standing among the living as much as for the next world. In principle, funeral rituals and the mortuary cult, ra ther tha n the t omb, w ere crucial t o continued existence, even though the cult might not end ure for long. As indicated, much relevant cult activity was sited in temples rather than in the necropolis. A text probably dating from the Middle Kingdom describes society as consisting of f our part s – the gods, the king, the dea d, a nd humanity – w ith the duty of the king, and, by extension, of humanity, being to make offerings to the gods and to the spirits of the deceased (B aines, 1991: 127–9). D espite this view, which requires tha t the living and the dea d be integrat ed, the social divisiveness of the knowledge that only some people would receive such cults and the awareness that the cults would not endure may have fa vored conceptions of ot her-wo rldly destinies aw ay from the to mb or less dependent on central provision. These conceptions may then have acquired moral authority through the notion of an ethical judgement after dea th, perha ps by the mid third millennium (B aines, 1991: 151). While these ideas might devalue the tomb’s significance, they do not have any simple correlat e in the development or neglect o f mo rtuary provision. The ethical and social leveling implicit in judgement after death is powerfully stat ed in a ta le of the Pt olemaic P eriod in which a poor ma n, who ha d been buried without ceremony, stands honored near Osiris, while the eyesocket of a rich man, w ho ha d been ta ken out to t he necropolis in a splendid coffi n with ceremony a nd lamenta tion, has become the entrance doo r-socket



of a hall in the netherworld. This contra st is based on the w orth o f the men’s lives as assessed in judgement after death (Lichtheim, 1973–80: vol. 3: 126, 139–141). The deceased do not depend upon the tomb: neither man is said to have a visible monument above ground, which fits the period of the text.



SKEPTICISM TOWARD MORTUARY PROVISION

Some texts proclaim skepticism about mortuary provision and the survival of monuments. How significant and widespread were such attitudes, and how did they relate to alternative conceptions that the individual should survive in social memory rather than in a monument? The most important early skeptical statement is that of the Middle K ingdom I nstruction for K ing Merikare (Parkinson, 1998: 226), which takes an existing aphorism that one should prepare a tomb (1998: 292), and stat es that what is importa nt is rath er to create a presumably intangible monument by a cting justly tow ard others in this wo rld. Since the god prefers justice, such beha vior should inspire him to a ct on beha lf of the just – presumably in the next w orld. D ecayed monuments from earlier periods were incorporated into discussions and images of the past (Baines, 1989). In the New Kingdom, individuals and groups visited derelict Old Kingdo m roya l mortuary complexes and elite tombs and left graffiti recording their impressions, but did not perform a cult. Some ha rpists’ songs from the same period evoke the decay of t ombs of the ancestors and encourage people to live for and celebrate the day because, in the universal phrase, ‘no one who has gone has come back’, implying tha t pro vision fo r life a fter dea th is pointless (Assmann, 1977); the same is stated more explicitly in a literary dialogue abo ut dea th (P arkinson, 1998: 156–7). This att itude has a positive slant in another litera ry text, w hich states that monuments decay but the fame of past sages endures (Baines, 1989: 143). The ha rpists’ songs were inscribed in tombs: mo rtuary structures could carry a critique o f their ow n functions. Some of these songs may ha ve formed pa rt o f funerals, mobilizing emotions of grief a nd loss and shifting concern back to the living (Lichtheim, 1973–80: vol. 3, 62–4). These discordant attitudes cast doubt upon the purpose of the structures, which nonetheless continued to be built; such discordance is not confi ned to E gypt.



REUSE OF MATERIALS AND TOMBS: (DIS)RESPECT

Tomb s must ha ve done mo re tha n ensure their owners’ survival into the next world. As is observed for E gypt and elsewhere, mortua ry monuments are concerned with life as much as death (Allen, 1988: 48; Metcalf and H untingto n, 1991; Spiegel, n.d . [1935]: 5–11). They aided the deceased’s life


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in the hereaf ter, but t he tomb , and especially its superstructure, also existed for the living owner before death. Whatever the deceased’s otherworldly destiny, the tomb w as present a mong the living as a memorial for its owner. This notion of the tomb as memorial is epitomized and relativized: ‘The name [reputat ion] of a brave ma n is in w hat he has do ne; it w ill not perish from the land forever’ (Lichtheim, 1973–80: vol. 2, 12). This proverbial statement introduces a biography in a tomb inscription, implying that the tomb , which embodied the deceased’s deeds, bore witness to him, but that ultimat ely the reputation w as more durab le tha n the monument. The skeptical texts, which may be part of a tradition far older than the identifia ble evidence, reveal tensions in a complex society’s relation t o its past and its dead members. Some of the dea d ma y have been signifi cant to their own social groups. Kings could be importa nt for everyo ne aft er their deaths, but because of their office’s social isolation the only group that wo uld champion them strongly might be t he line of their successors – as is stated explicitly in the I nstruction for K ing M erik are (Parkinson, 1998: 225). In principle each ruler built his own mo rtua ry complex, oft en on a new site. Many elite tombs were near those of their kings, and thus on different sites in succeeding generations. I n t erms of stat us, older cemeteries no doubt bore rather different meanings from current ones, and the discontinuities in location crea ted b y these pat terns must ha ve discouraged people from identifying with anything other than the most recent structures. D evaluing earlier mortua ry structures – of wha tever age – allowed t hem to be exploited a s sources of construction mat erials, or pa rts of t hem could be annexed for use as they stood. Recycling of older mortuary monuments was common. Apart from inscriptions in tombs enjoining visitors not to damage them, no pressure to keep them inviolate is evident. From the E a rly D yna stic P eriod on, reuse in the necropolis varied from employing materials from structures that were perhaps falling into ruin, through ta king stone from the to mbs of unrelated people, to annexing part s of one complex for the next. Non-royal individuals of many periods also appropriated complete constructed tombs. Coffins and sarcophagi too were reused. The construction o f mo rtua ry com plexes could involve destroying q uite recent monuments: the fi fth dyna sty causewa y of Wenis at Sa q q ara covered and rendered inaccessible a number of tombs (e.g. Moussa and Altenmüller, 1977). On a smaller scale, burial shafts of graves were very widely reused. Similar patterns can be observed over longer periods. The overlaying of fi rst dynasty tombs at North Saq qa ra with graves of the later E arly D ynastic P eriod a nd, a little to the south, the obliterat ion of second dyna sty royal tombs 400 years later by the fifth dynasty mortuary temple of Wenis show a casual approach to earlier monuments within the same overall period (Sta delmann, 1997: 29–40). To t ake stone f rom an a ba ndo ned t omb



hundreds of yea rs old might have b een fairly neutral in its implied a ttitudes toward the past, but it is not easy to draw a line between ‘continuous’ and ‘remote’ reuse.2 A characteristic case is the Saqqara tomb of the general, later king, Haremhab (c.1320), together with others nearby (Martin, 1978; 1991: 88–98). The stonework of these structures is largely composed of materials taken from O ld Kingdom to mbs – probably ruined – of a bout a millennium earlier. Ha remhab’s tomb wa s not fully completed and its ow ner wa s buried in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. A generation later, a highranking woman was buried in the Saqqara tomb, as were several other people in the Third Intermediate Period, and it was reused again in early C hristian times. In repeated reuse of this sort, locality is significant. Particular burial grounds, places or single tombs became hallowed; people competed to be buried in or nea r them, increasing the crowd ing of sites and the stimulus to reuse earlier structures. The Theban necropolis, which was the country’s main elite burial ground for half a millennium from 1500 B C E , shows the most complex developments and pat terns of reuse (G uksch, 1995; KamppSeyfried, 1996: 123–9; M ontserra t and Meskell, 1997; P olz, 1990; Strud wick and Strudwick, 1996: 188–93). In the late New Kingdom, people were assigned tombs of their forbears a few generations back for reuse (McD ow ell, 1999: 68–9); this no d oubt involved prob ing to fi nd t he gra ves, followed by disturbing any unpillaged burial that remained. From the fi rst millennium and later, the rich evidence includes institutionalized management of existing rock to mbs as communa l burial places, in which the cult of a mummy was maintained for as long as a subscription supported it (P estman, 1993; Thompson, 1988: 155–89). At Tuna el-G ebel during the G raeco-R oma n period, the burial chamber and superstructure of the large elite tomb of Petosiris (c.300 B C E ) were filled with dozens of corpses (Lefebvre, 1924: 13–29). The visual impact and wealth of mausoleums like that of Haremhab make them nat ural targets for exploitation by those who either are indifferent to the status and values of their builders or value the site for its associations. If a tomb was to survive, strong sanctions were needed to protect it. These might ha ve ranged from generalized respect or t he prestige of the owners, through cemetery guards, to taboos surrounding the places of t he dead or the mummy itself. Of t hese sanctions, the wea kest is prestige, because it functions only if there is a perceived connection w ith the past, and that would not last indefinitely. Nonetheless, evidence for respect at some sites is impressive. At A bydo s, the area of the E arly D yna stic royal mortuary enclosures was not reoccupied for burials until a millennium later. Even though cemeteries were created nearby, the Old Kingdom cemetery was respected for more than 1500 years (Richards, forthcoming). One enclosure, the Shunet el-Zebib, was not encroached


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upon befo re the mid-fi rst millennium. A set of late M iddle Kingdom stelae protected another area against tomb building and trespassing (Leahy, 1989). The complexity of this web of connections among mo numents and t heir later fortunes diffuses respect for the dead and people of the past. There was no single royal or non-royal pattern or practice. Moreover, people do not necessarily behave ‘respectfully’ toward what they formally ‘respect’. Only a very few tomb owners who were deified and moved out of the human doma in received veneration in the long term. The sages of a ncient times mentioned earlier in this article in relation to skepticism were cultura lly salient, and while their monuments were respected ea rly in their a scent to f a me (H elck, 1972: 16–19), once th eir litera ry reno wn and cultura l a ssociations ha d immorta lized them, their to mbs could be sta ted explicitly to be irrelevant (Lichtheim, 1973–80: vol. 2, 175–8). The cults of a few of these people were revived out of antiquarian interest in the first millennium B C E , because of their cultural signifi cance rat her tha n their sta tus and destiny as d eceased people (O tto , 1957). There wa s no cont inuity betw een their original mortuary cults and the recreated ones. Even the widespread cult of the deified culture hero Imhotep (Wildung, 1977) related to his reputat ion as an a ncient sage with healing pow ers, not t o a ssociations with his burial place, which had probably been lost in the millennia since his death. Some mortuary monuments were restored much later. The Early D ynastic roya l tombs at Ab ydos were partly rebuilt in the twelfth dynasty (D reyer et a l., 1998: 141–2), proba bly in relat ion to the cult of the go d Osiris, the mythical first king of Egypt and lord of the underworld. The same period saw a strong revival of O ld K ingdom culture (Franke, 1995). A couple of centuries later, a statue of the resurrecting Osiris on his funerary bier was placed in the A bydos burial chamber of the fi rst dyna sty king D jer, by then co nsidered t o be t he god ’s tomb (e.g. K emp, 1975: 36–7; for the date, see Leahy, 1977). The best known restorations are from the late New K ingdom, when the H igh Priest of P tah K haemwese, a son of R amesses II , restored ma ny structures in the Memphite necropolis, including pyramids. In t he fi rst millennium, O ld Kingdo m pyramids at G iza and Saq q ara were aga in ‘restored’. These activities probably related to the revived cults of early kings, as well as to ant iqua rian interests. H ow fa r the modifications affected the original burials – no doubt long plundered – is uncertain, but a burial was placed or restored in the sarcophagus of the fourth dynasty king Menkaure in the Third P yramid at G iza (I kram and D odson, 1998: 238, 246–8). The t omb chamber of the third dyna sty king D joser under his Step Pyra mid at Saq q ara wa s exposed to view by the who lesale remo val o f ma sonry w ithin the structure (Sta delmann, 1997: 65). The focus of this ‘tourist entrance’ was the presumably empty burial chamber.





THE DEAD IN RELATION TO THE LIVING

The dea d req uired off erings, and in tha t sense they o rganized the living. The vast o utlay o n mortua ry provision in some periods makes this partly true in mat erial t erms, but most of the expenditure w as incurred befo re people died or immediately aft erwa rd. Texts setting up mortuary endow ments show tha t the living had a continuing obligation to maintain the cults of their forebears, but t hese were seldom in fact ma intained. A M iddle Kingdom text gives a mo ral dimension to this point by ha ving the creator god a ssert tha t he made people’s hearts ‘refrain from fo rgetting the West [the domain of the dead], in order that offerings be made to the god s of the districts’ (P a rkinson, 1991: 32–4). This can be rea d in tw o w ays. E ither people turned to religion in the face of d eat h, which is a mora lizing and sociological commonplace (e.g. Berger, 1973: 87), or they offered to the gods as a medium through w hich their offerings wo uld reach the dead . D uring their lifetimes, people offered o n behalf of t heir dead, part ly in anticipation of dying themselves and needing the same provision – either from t heir descendant s or through the go ds. The second o f these readings fits better within Egyptian beliefs and is to be preferred, but the two are not incompa tible. In either case, dea th a nd the dea d kept the living in line and encouraged them to respect the gods. The dead in question were primarily elites, because only they had memorials that might stimulate the living to invoke the reversion of o fferings from t emples of the god s to the deceased. Id eally, the deceased and t he living interacted aro und the tomb . Mort uary endow ments provided for regular offerings in the tomb a nd these were supplemented by visits of fa mily during festivals (e.g. G ra efe, 1986). The mortuary contracts which the local governor Hapidjefai made with the priesthood of Asyut in the early twelfth dynasty, however, focused on specific festivals and on cults to be performed for statues of him in the temple; only one of the main group of contracts refers to the tomb and a statue tha t ma y ha ve been there (R eisner, 1918). Although H apidjefa i wa s a local leader, the texts emphasize that the cult performed fo r him wa s the same as the priests performed for t heir own dea d. I f this is to be credited, it means that mo rtuary cults in temples of the gods were importa nt for mo re than just the elite. In later periods, temple statues of individuals were increasingly a mortuary focus, so that the dead participated more directly in the cult of the gods. B oth in the formulae a nd through this practice, there wa s overlap betw een the cult of the living gods and the mortua ry cult of the dead . In the G raeco-R oma n period, this commonality had a reverse dimension a nd there w ere stated to be burials of dea d god s in the cemeteries (e.g. Reymond, 1963: 55 with n. 3). The dead continued to be involved with the living. They could be


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benevolently or malevolently present to relatives and associates, perhaps especially to those who visited the necropolis (e.g. Po sener, 1958, 1981). O ld K ingdom tomb inscriptions assert tha t t he deceased wo uld intercede in the divine wo rld on behalf of those who t reated their tombs respectfully or pronounced offering formulae for them (Roccati, 1982). This intercession is para lleled b y intermediary stat ues of prominent people in temples, of a type perhaps first a ttested for t he tw elfth dynasty vizier Mentuhotep (Simpson, 1991), that could b e a pproached to tra nsmit req uests or pra yers to t he gods (Pinch, 1993: 345–6). Thus, the dead could claim to act on behalf of the living in the next world. In a manner akin to the king, they mediated between the gods and humanity. Fear of malevolence from the dead and hope for their benevolence are expressed in ma gical pra ctices and in letters written to the dea d, a practice at tested from the late O ld Kingdom to the mid first millennium B C E (Jasnow and Vitt ma nn, 1992/93; Went e, 1990: 210–20). P eople w rote to their deceased relat ives for help if they w ere threatened w ith loss or were una ble to a chieve what they wa nted through regular channels. O ne letter conta ins the complaints of a husband who believed his deceased wife wa s tormenting him from the to mb (Wente, 1990: 216–17). The lett ers, few of which were found in situ, seem to have been addressed to people recently deceased, some of whom ma y have a cted as conduits to more remote people who were being sought. In a largely non-literate society, the written form of these appea ls wa s probably exceptional: they wo uld normally have been spoken. The matters presented in the letters were urgent, and the depositors proba bly left them in the necropolis straightaw ay, rat her than w aiting for a festival w hen the tomb wo uld be visited. The most cogent evidence for a tomb-focused connection between the dead and the living has the negative meaning form of inscribed curses a gainst tho se who wo uld defi le or va nda lize to mbs (e.g. Posener, 1988). The texts are formulae describing what the deceased, as ‘effective and well eq uipped spirits’, wo uld do aga inst tho se who entered a t omb in an impure sta te or who dama ged its reliefs and inscriptions (Mor schauser, 1991). The texts present them as attacking their assailants directly but probably meta phorically – for exa mple ‘wringing [someone’s] neck like a b ird’ – or indirectly by litigat ing with them in a n ot herwo rldly court. The judgement the deceased obt a ined in that court could be effective in the next w orld or could strike the victim in the form o f a n unto wa rd destiny during life. Thus, a late Old Kingdom text promises ‘the crocodile against him in the water, the snake against him on land, who will do anything against this [tomb]’ (Sethe, 1933: 23). C rocod iles and snakes, w hich w ere prob ab ly meto nyms for unexpected adverse fate, were agents of divine retribution, and would strike the vand al – apparent ly in this wo rld – as a conseq uence of the god’s judgement. It is difficult to say how much conviction was carried by assertions that



the deceased could harm the living. In addition to the letters to the dead, magical rituals performed in the necropolis against generalized categories of enemies attest to fear of the dead in this broader context (Osing, 1976; Seidlmayer, forthcoming). The ‘dead’ who are mentioned as agents of disease in medical texts could have been a focus of such rituals, but spells intended to w ard off illness and dea th caused by them are diffi cult to interpret because the word ‘dead’ may also mean those damned in judgement after dea th (e.g. B orgho uts, 1978: 4–6). B e tha t a s it may, the preva lence of tomb robbery suggests that these dangers were little heeded, or perhaps averted thr ough suita ble magic or destruction, such as the dismembering or burning of mummies observed in many robbed tombs and mentioned in tomb robbery texts. Such beliefs can relate to how far the living and the dead formed a community: they would cease to offer protection to burials when t he sense of community lessened or w hen the deceased a nd tho se who exploited the necropolis had different interests. Spells in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts that are closely related to letters to the dead treat competition among the roles of the living, the recently decea sed and the preced ing genera tion (G rieshammer, 1975/76). The recently deceased person is afra id of f ailing to obta in an a bode in the hereafter, while members of earlier generations fear that they will be displaced from the tomb. This material implies that offerings should be made to the dead and communication maintained with them in order that they remain w here they ‘belong’ – in the necropolis or more bro ad ly in the next wo rld – and should no t interfere a dversely in the aff airs of t he living. Such a dilemma, which is well attested in other cultures (e.g. Fortes, 1983 [1959]), suggests that the living viewed the dead as threatening for only a generation or two. The texts are realistic in thematizing the crowding of necropoleis and the possibility that one burial would destroy another. A correlat e a mong excavated cemeteries is the modest O ld–Middle K ingdom cemetery at Elephantine, where tombs were not encroached upon until a few generat ions after they w ere constructed (Seidlmayer, fort hcoming). A different possibility is thematized in a tale where a high priest is contacted by a long-deceased offi cial and inspired to rebuild his tomb (Wente, 1973). The ta le seems to explore the limits of intera ction of dea d a nd living, envisaging that amo ng those of high status who survived in memory the unquiet dea d might no t just keep the living in line in the shorter t erm, but might b e a more or less perpetual moral burden. This possibility is the opposite of the focus of the skeptical texts on posthumous reputa tion ra ther tha n monuments; the two opinions could have coexisted. One of the earliest surviving tomb inscriptions, from the beginning of the fourth dynasty, refers to the ow ner’s having made his ‘ “ gods” [probably the figures and captions] in writing that cannot be erased’ (Spiegelberg, 1930), describing the special paste inlay used for this tomb. The use of this technique and the description may suggest that the problem of


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vandalism, as distinct from tomb robbery, was present by then, which is reasonable in view o f the a lread y long history of t omb ro bbery a nd destruction. Texts assuring the reader of the tomb owner’s good character and virtuous payment of his debts (Roth, 1994: 232–8) imply that people with a grudge might va nda lize a t omb (e.g. B aines, 1991: 139–42). A gra ffi to next to a mutilated fi gure in a late O ld Kingdom tomb ha s been interpreted a s an example of such a vendetta being acted o ut from one generation to the next: the son does to the image of his father’s oppressor what the oppressor ha d do ne to his fat her (B aines, 1991: 141, n. 50). The import ance of a n unta inted reputation is illustra ted in a uniq ue passage w here a tomb o wner states that he was never arrested or imprisoned, and that if he was, the a ccusations aga inst him redo unded a gainst the a ccusers (Sethe, 1933: 221). This makes sense only if some such event ha d o ccurred. I t must have been necessary a t a ll costs to protect t he ow ner’s reputa tion, despite the evident implications of what was said. Vand alism could ha ve had several a ims. The relief decora tion o f t ombs has been assumed to have supplied in surrogate form the offerings that might cease with the ending of mortuary service. This interpretation is problematic, however, and other motives of display and commemoration were a lso signifi cant (e.g. B aines, 1999; Wolf, 1957: 258–62). Vanda lism a nd desecration might make a tomb unusable for mortuary service, while it would become an unfit abode and memorial for the deceased, as well as showing visitors that he was powerless. Patterns of vandalism do not establish w hether the principal harm intended w as to his reputation, to his otherworldly destiny, or both. The erasure of names might suppress the deceased’s identity, which could have repercussions for the next world. Some to mbs were q uite tho roughly vanda lized, such as rich ones of the fi rst dynasty at A bydos and Saq q ara , or the fourth dynasty tomb of P rince H ardjedef a t G iza (Junker, 1955a: 135–40). These tombs belonged to royalty or to people of the highest status and some were probably soon destroyed by political enemies. Numerous New Kingdom tombs in the Theban necropolis were vandalized. The motives for these actions are not easy to interpret (D orma n, 1988; Schulman, 1969–70). C haracteristic cases are o f people close to roya lty, such as ‘Chief Stewa rds’, who ma y have been vulnerable to later kings’ repudiat ion of their predecessors’ offi cials (H elck, 1957: 537–47). In the o nly preserved mora lizing comment on va nda lism, the fi ctional royal author of the I nstruction for K ing M erik are regrets his complicity in the destruction of tombs in the Abydos area (Parkinson, 1998: 225). The statement comes shortly before an injunction, unrealistic in the light of archaeological finds, to quarry fresh stone for monuments and not brea k up earlier structures. The text d istinguishes vandalism and reuse, but in relation to b oth it seems to focus on the idea of a monument more than on the preservation of the dead or their destinies in the hereafter. The prospects for the inta ct survival of b urials may have b een thought ho peless.



Vanda lism should be distinguished fro m to mb ro bbery, which wa s alwa ys the commonest form of desecration. Robbery was so prevalent that few ancient tombs which might have contained numerous and reusable grave goo ds are preserved inta ct. The only realistic insurance aga inst robbery w as to ha ve a grave too poor a nd insignifi cant to w arra nt plundering – and o ften too poor to ha ve attra cted the notice of archaeo logists. Tomb rob bery wa s treated as a crime, but this rule cannot have been enforced with any great rigour. The only surviving extensive records date to the later twentieth dynasty, when factional disputes among the administrative elite in Thebes led to the uncovering of many robberies in the Theban necropolis (C apa rt ˇ ý, 1929). The most et al., 1936; Peet, 1930; accusations recorded in Cern revealing single passage in these texts may be in the report on an investigation in which some minor royal tombs of the seventeenth dynasty were inspected a nd found, w ith one exception, to be inta ct: the non-roya l tombs were said a ll to ha ve been vio lat ed (P eet, 1930: 37–42). This distinction ma y have been overdrawn, but is probably not entirely misleading. If so, the stat e’s policing of ro ya l tombs wa s quite successful for considera ble periods, in principle perhaps as long as there was not a political collapse. Others could not expect their burials to survive. There is little evidence for w hen roya l tombs w ere robb ed – the case of Tutankhamun is disputed – but this is generally assumed to have been during troubled times, and o n occasion perhaps directed by the a uthorities (G ra efe, 1999; Ja nsen-Winkeln, 1995). In the Valley o f the K ings, twen tyfirst and twenty-second dynasty rulers seem to have stripped their predecessors’ burials of their valuables, reusing gold and funerary objects, including a set of roya l coffi ns, in their o wn tomb s at Tanis (R eeves, 1990b: 273–8, 18). The bodies of the dispossessed kings, however, were treated with some respect and cached in communal tombs (e.g. Jansen-Winkeln, 1995). On a lower social level, a human skull, which was found beside a plundered tomb of the Third Intermediate Period at Abydos, had been carefully covered over with a pot, perhaps in a robber’s rueful gesture of reverence. Many non-royal tombs seem to have been robbed by those who made the b urials (e.g. E ngelbach, 1915: 21–2). O n occasion empty sarcopha gi or coffi ns seem to ha ve been placed in the tomb, perhaps aft er the burial ha d been stripped of its jewels and t ra ppings with the collusion of funerary personnel (I kram and D odson, 1998: 93, 245–6). P revious burials in a chamb er were oft en ra nsacked (D ’Auria et al., 1988: 109–10) or appropriated (Montserrat and Meskell, 1997; Riggs, 2000). The blocking stones to some tombs w ere delibera tely no t pla ced in position (Spencer, 1982: 81). Surviving unplundered burials either conta ined little of ma terial value or ha d b een rendered invisible by la ter use of the ground a bove them, a s with the to mb of Tutankhamun.


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Journal of Social Archaeo logy 2(1) 

CONCLUSION

The routine character of tomb robbery and the continual destruction of bot h older a nd recent funerary mo numents might seem para doxical in view of the Egyptians’ vast expenditure on mortuary provision and their devotion to creating and endowing elaborate sepulchres as their mortal resting places. As we ha ve discussed, this expenditure coexisted o n several levels with skepticism about the provision’s worth. Such actions and attitudes if anything reinforce the fact that, for much of Egyptian history, an essential idiom in w hich roya lty a nd the elite displayed w ealth, status a nd cultural values was mortuary. The imperative to provide monuments coexisted with a symbolic understanding of the purpose and meaning of burial that allowed those who could not aspire to a mortuary monument also to hope for a destiny in the next life. One may postulate that simply going through the motions of constructing a tomb, preparing a burial and setting up a mortuary cult were the essential points, even for members of the elite. Whether or not the burial was executed ‘correctly’ and the cult maintained was almost immaterial. In this way, the elite mausoleum culture was able to accommodate the short-term cultural mandate to construct and maintain tombs to the longterm inevitability of a ba ndonment a nd decay. From early times, E gyptians looked to the past w ith its decayed mo numents and conceived of the present world as imperfect in relation to an absolute antiquity (Baines, 1989). This awareness tempered their understanding of mortuary provision. In this sense, a monument like the G reat P yramid, which for the modern world symbolizes ancient E gypt, must count as a n a berrat ion. The pyramid proclaimed bot h its indestructibility and , in the distribution of non-royal tombs aro und it, the survival of human social hierarchies into the next w orld. At the same time, its construction absorbed much of the country’s resources. Such expenditures and allocations were not sustainable, and by the first millennium B C E they had declined considerably. The significance of a mortua ry monument might be tra nsformed or perpetuated in its ruined condition. For a few individuals, tha t condition led to new dimensions of social memory (Assmann, 1988), while it may not have been seen as militating against others’ survival among the blessed (or da mned) dead in the afterw orld. We suggest that E gyptian at titudes tow ard the dead could ultimately dispense with or transcend particular mortuary structures or physical remains. Their ability, which is shared by modern societies, simultaneously to entertain conflicting conceptions enabled them to maintain both idealizing and rationalizing views of death and the dead. The long-term trend away from expending resources on monumental tombs ma y ha ve had a more general signifi cance. The ultimat e ideological focus of E gyptian society lay with t he gods, although in the third millennium



tha t conception may have b een physically belied by mortua ry expenditure, especially o n the king’s monument. I n lat er periods, a nd a s the centrality of kingship lessened slightly, the focus of ideology on the gods was more in tune with the reality of a reduced expenditure on mortuary provision that focused more on the coffin and the burial process itself, while temples, which had a larger communal role, increased in importa nce. In all periods, the dead had no overriding ideological significance: the king and the gods, rather t han a ncestors, were crucial. Some features of the record, such as the letters to the dea d (later pa ralleled by letters to gods), suggest tha t a t the level of the fa mily people may ha ve focused on t he dead , but this does not seem to ha ve been so true of lat er times. E gyptian societal organizat ion wa s ‘political’ rather t han kin-centred, and la ter periods were increasingly urba nized and ethnically mixed. In such a complex setting, the dead and their abod es were culturally vita l because of the a ncient tra ditions of expenditure on them and perhaps for differentiating particular communities, but they were not crucial to the coherence or articulation of society and only partly sustained its basic values. From the beginning, the preservation of the dead and their monuments was threatened by the passage of time and by competing concerns; monumental tomb building ultimat ely gave wa y to other fo cuses and mo des of expression. Large, inegalitarian state societies, especially those with dense populations, may perhaps not value the dead unduly, because the dead as a whole, as opposed to particular figures whose reputations transcend their mortal remains and monuments, may not be a cohesive focus for societal integration and centripetal values. Egypt did not have extended lineage structures; where cults of lineage ancestors are a n essential mora l focus tha t coexists with centra l values, as in China , there is an intricate nesting of social groups and ideologies. But whatever the kinship context, the Egyptian dilemma of succeeding generations vying for position in the next world – paralleled, for example, in cemetery management in Catholic Europe – is symptomatic of how almost all the more remote deceased must fade from awareness, and from the responsibility of the living, if the burden of the dead is not t o become intolerable. Ways in which these problems are confronted vary greatly. As examples we have cited show, neglect of the dead is in no way incompatible with a strong mobilization of the pa st and o f some of its decayed mort uary monuments. While discorda nces can be fo und in ma ny societies, E gypt seems, in part because of fa vorab le preservation in the low desert o f the Nile Valley, to stand at an extreme of contrast between the ideal of respect and the reality of disregard and desecration. For the Egyptians, the availability of alternative, partly complementary modes of transcending death – through mummifi cation a nd burial, otherworldly destinies, and reputation do wn t he generations – may ha ve gone some wa y tow ard ra tionalizing this dichoto my. The primary focus of Egyptian mortuary provision was ultimately on the


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living, for the elabo rat e precautions and prepara tions were as much a w ay of denying the finality of death as of ensuring a continuation of existence through conventional ritual.

Acknowledgements We should like to thank Sue D’Auria, Yvonne Markowitz and Ann Roth for advice. We a re grateful to the P ennsylvania–Yale–Institute of Fine A rts E xpedition to Abydos for allowing us to refer to their data, to Stephan Seidlmayer and Josef Wegner for access to unpublished mat erial, and to M ark L ehner and D aniel Polz. We owe pa rticular debts to D avid O’C onnor and Ja net R ichards for detailed criticisms of drafts, to Hubertus Münch for critique and much help, and to Lynn Meskell for great patience over the final version.

Notes 1 Much of t his article concerns beliefs and practices that are comm onplaces of E gyptology and cannot be documented fully here. For additional information and excellent survey of primarily archaeological materials, see Taylor (2001); for t he cultura l meaning of dea th, ma inly from an elite perspective, A ssmann (2001) gives extensive coverage ba sed on E gyptian texts; his book arrived t oo late t o be cited in detail here. 2 G oedicke (1971: 1–7) proposes tha t t he old stones were reused f or t heir almost numinous q uality, as aga inst their value as building material. So long a s a part icular temple complex remained in use, the stone o f o lder buildings seems generally to have been buried in founda tions or reused rat her than being taken aw ay or discarded.

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