Filip Coppens

Harco Willems

Marleen De Meyer

The Temple of Shanhûr

Jan-Michael Dahms

Although Herodot's dictum that "Egypt is a gift of the Nile" is proverbial, there has been only scant attention to the way the river impacted on ancient Egyptian society. Egyptologists frequently focus on the textual and iconographic record, whereas archaeologists and earth scientists approach the issue from the perspective of natural sciences. The contributions in this volume bridge this gap by analyzing the river both as a natural and as a cultural phenomenon. Adopting an approach of cultural ecology, it addresses issues like ancient land use, administration and taxation, irrigation, and religious concepts.

The Nile: Natural and Cultural Landscape in Egypt

The coffin published in this book represents a type that had some popularity in southern Upper Egypt in the early Middle Kingdom, but which, despite its extraordinary decoration had not attracted attention so far. The most striking feature of the decoration is that the object friezes - the pictorial rendering of ritual implements usually found on coffin interiors of the period - also include complete ritual scenes, some of which are attested only here. Apart from this, the decoration includes an extensive selection of the religious texts know as the Coffin Texts. The author first studies the archaeological context and dating of the coffin and attempts a reconstruction of the construction procedures from his technical description of the monument. The detailed account of the decoration in the rest of the book interprets the ritual iconography and offers fresh translations and interpretations of the Coffin Texts. A methodological innovation is that he regards the scenes and texts not as individual decoration elements, but as components of an integral composition. The background of this composition is argued to be a view of life in the hereafter in which the deceased is involved in an unending cycle of ritual action which reflects the funerary rituals that were actually performed on earth. On the one hand, these netherworldly rituals aim at bringing the deceased to new life by mummification, on the other the newly regenerated deceased partakes in embalming rituals for gods representing his dead father (Osiris or Atum). These gods, in their turn, effectuate the deceased's regeneration. The entire process results in a cycle of resuscitation in which the afterlife of the deceased and of the 'father gods' are interdependent. The sociological bias of this interpretation, with its emphasis on kinship relations, differs significantly from earlier attempts to explain Egyptian funerary religion.

(Cairo JdE 36418) : a Case Study of Egyptian Funerary Culture of the Early Middle Kingdom

The Coffin of Heqata

Lies op de Beeck

This is the first volume of the final reports of the Mission of the K.U.Leuven in Dayr al-Barsha (Middle Egypt). It contains the publication (in colour photographs and line drawings in colour) of three small tombs probably dated immediately after the Unification of Egypt in the reign of pharaoh Mentuhotep II (XIth Dynasty). After an introduction on the long-term research strategy of the Dayr al-Barsha project it first offers an account of the setting of the tombs and of earlier research carried out there. This is followed by a detailed account of each of the three monuments, including a detailed philological commentary of the texts. These include two autobiographical inscriptions, of which one has received little attention, while the other is here published in full for the first time. The scant archaeological remains found in the tombs are also dealt with in detail. The two tombs are contemporary with that of the nomarch Ahanakht I, and offers a rare insight into the functioning of a nomarchal court in the early Middle Kingdom. The last chapter offers an analysis of this, and also advances a hypothesis on the way king Mentuhotep succeeded in integrating the Middle Egyptian provincial elites into the newly united kingdom.

Dayr Al-Barshā

Although Egyptian tombs and funerary texts have been intensively studied, attention has been focused on art historical aspects, archaeological documentation and theological content. Attention for the relationship between burial practices and society has been restricted. The symposium of which this volume presents the proceedings is an attempt to show the scientific potential of the sociology of burial. The underlying philosophy is that both archaeological and textual sources are ultimately reflections of one social reality. Therefore, the volume offers contributions by archaeologists and philologists, many of which frequently bridge the gap between the two disciplines. Bourriau studies the evolution of body position in burials dating between the late Middle Kingdom and early New Kingdom. Delrue reviews a recent interpretation of the predynastic cemetery N7000 at Naga ed-Deir. Fitzenreiter studies the sociological background of ritual scenes in Old Kingdom mastabas. Frandsen's analysis touches upon funerary texts touching on substances inside the body which are considered bwt (taboo). The point of departure for Muller's study is a group of offering deposits at Tell el-dab'a which are studied in the light of textual information on ritual practice. Seidlmayer argues that burial contexts of the First Intermediate Period at Elephantine reflect the same underlying ideas as contemporary tomb scenes. Willems' commentary of Coffin Texts spells 30-41 interprets these texts as a coherent mortuary liturgy and discusses the context in which the letters to the dead were transmitted to the deceased.

Harco Willems

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