Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom: The Archaeology of Female Burials

265 Pages·2014·7.54 MB·English

by  Wolfram Grajetzki

Tomb Treasures of the
Late Middle Kingdom
This page intentionally left blank
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
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
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
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Introduction 1
ChApTer 1
Court Type Burials 17
ChApTer 2
other Burials of Women 94
ChApTer 3
Types of jewelry in Late Middle Kingdom Burials 114
ChApTer 4
The Development of egyptian Burial Customs 135
ChApTer 5
The King and the Women Buried Around him 180
AppenDix
The royal Women of the Twelfth Dynasty 189
Chronology 195
Notes 199
Egyptian Tombs and Excavation Report 225
Bibliography 229
Index 249
Acknowledgments 255
This page intentionally left blank
introduction
The late Middle Kingdom in ancient Egypt, c. 1850 to 1700 BCE, is
exceptionally rich in undisturbed burials of women. These tombs are of-
ten lavishly equipped with jewelry of the highest quality. Much of this
jewelry has been regularly depicted in books on ancient Egypt. The buri-
als 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 produc-
tion, already covered by several other expert studies, is not the subject of
the book.1
Studies of ancient Egyptian burial customs often concentrate on in-
scribed objects of the funerary industry. These include coffins, canopic jars,
shabti figures, funerary papyri, and amulets. Especially from the Rames-
side 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, in-
cluding many items that had already been used in daily life, such as pottery
vessels, cosmetic items, tools, and jewelry. Taken together, these latter