Online Activities: Ancient Egypt
Burial Customs
We know nothing about the funerals of ordinary people, but the decoration in Old Kingdom tomb chapels tells us a little about the funerals of nobles. The Pyramid Texts and the layouts of royal mortuary temples give us some idea about rituals surrounding the death of the king. Although there were changes to this ritual over the next two thousand years, the changes were surprisingly minor. Evidence from the New Kingdom and Late Period suggest that the rituals that had once accompanied only kings and nobles later were performed for small landowners and craftsmen. How were the masses, the farmers, taken to their eternal rest? We do not know, but the Middle Kingdom text, The Dispute of a Man with his Ba, offers a sad image of the resting place of the very poor.
Those who built in granite, who erected halls in excellent tombs…their offering stones are desolate, as if they were the dead who died on the riverbank for lack of a survivor.
In the Late Period, the story of Setne Khaemwase and Sa-Osiris offers another thought about the burial of the poor. Prince Khaemwase looks out of his window and saw the rich funeral of one man, and the pathetic lack of ceremonies of another. Saddened at this sight, he is reassured by his son, Sa-Osiris who takes him on a tour of the Underworld:
My Father Setne, did you not see that rich man, clothed in a garment of royal linen, standing near the spot where Osiris is? He is the poor man whom you saw being carried out from Memphis with no one walking behind him and wrapped in a mat. They brought him to the netherworld. They weighed his misdeeds against the good deeds he had done on earth. They found his good deeds more numerous than his misdeeds in relation to his lifespan, which Thoth has assigned him in writing, and in relation to his luck on earth. It was ordered by Osiris to give the burial equipment of that rich man, whom you saw being carried out from Memphis with great honours, to this poor man, and to place him among the noble spirits, as a man of god who serves Sokar-Osiris, and stands near the spot where Osiris is.
Soon after death, the body was taken to the wabet, the 'pure place,' where the embalming actually was carried on. This appears to have been a tent, away from residential areas, on the edge of the desert. The dry heat of the desert air and the sun pounding down on the linen roof would have speeded the drying process. Drying and wrapping took about seventy days. The formal mourning period may have coincided with the embalming. During the New Kingdom, the process of mummification began in the Per-Nefer - the House of Beauty.
The tomb of Ankhmahor shows the body of the tomb-owner being taken from his own home, amid much weeping. Two women play the roles of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys; they are called the djeret mourners. The women who performed these parts may have been professional ritual practitioners, or members of the family. Tombs of the Nobles, and even of the Craftsmen of the New Kingdom, show the same ritual djeret mourners, who may have been family members or professionals, hired for the event.
The body was ferried across the Nile from the East Bank, where the living dwell, to the West, the land of the Dead. The coffin would then be dragged on a sledge from the water's edge to the tomb itself. In the case of kings, the mummification may have been carried out in the Valley Temple, and the body then dragged up the Causeway to the Mortuary Temple at the base of the pyramid. Craftsmen performed the funeral ceremonies for their friends, and seem to have carried the mummified body to its tomb, much as pallbearers carry a coffin.
In front of the tomb, lector priests read out prayers, and burned incense before the coffin and the ka statues. For kings, there would be dancing and singing by priestesses, and sacrifices of animals. Richer nobles probably had similar ceremonies, on a smaller scale. Singers and dancers could be hired for such occasions.
A procession carried the wordily possessions of the dead person to the tomb. Considerable amounts of cloth, cosmetics and furniture, as well as the traditional food offerings were placed in the tomb.
Finally, when the coffin was in its place, a ritual practitioner would perform the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, probably on the ka statue, to enable the dead person to see, hear, breathe, eat and speak again.
One of the last acts of the ritual practitioners would be to sweep footprints from the floor of the burial chamber.
The final part of a funeral was a funerary banquet, (perhaps somewhat like an Irish Wake) at which the relatives and friends of the deceased, sure that everything possible had been done for the safety of their loved one, could relax a little, and remember the good times.
Predynastic burial
Egyptian Desert
