February 2025 Q&A – 1000 Bread, 1000 Beer – Tombs, Death, and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt

This episode is a recording from our quarterly live event series where supporters are invited to chat with us live over Zoom and ask all their burning questions—if you would like to support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber:

Show Notes

Thutmose II (?) Tomb Discovered?!

• Live Science: Thutmose II tomb discovery raises new mysteries: Where is his mummy, and why wasn't he buried in the Valley of the Kings?

• Thutmose II Biography

• MET Catalogue, “Hatshepsut: from Queen to Pharaoh”

• Theban Mapping Project

• And his body ends up in the Royal Cache…

Location of the new tomb in comparison to Deir el-Medina and the Queens Valley

What are your thoughts on the new “discovery?

Child Burials

Example of an infant pot burial (source)

• Arbuckle MacLeod, Caroline 2023. The value of children in ancient Egypt. In Candelora, Danielle, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, and Kathlyn M. Cooney (eds), Ancient Egyptian society: challenging assumptions, exploring approaches, 140-151. London; New York: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003003403-16.

• Barba, Pablo 2024. Studying age identities through funerary dimensions: a discussion of child and adult burials from Lower Egypt (4th mil. BCE). Cildhood in the Past: an International Journal 17 (2), 68-92. DOI: 10.1080/17585716.2024.2380134.

• Kaiser, Jessica 2023. When death comes, he steals the infant: child burials at the Wall of the Crow cemetery, Giza. In Kiser-Go, Deanna and Carol A. Redmount (eds), Weseretkau "mighty of kas": papers in memory of Cathleen A. Keller, 347-369. Columbus, GA: Lockwood Press. DOI: 10.5913/2023853.22.

The Beginnings of Boat Burials & Significance of Boat in Egyptian Religion

Abydos Boats

• Vanhulle, Dorian 2024. Boat burials and boat-shaped pits from their origins to the Old Kingdom: tradition, continuity and change in early Egypt. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 53 (1), 1-19. DOI: 10.1080/10572414.2023.2264551.

• Wegner, Josef 2017. A royal boat burial and watercraft tableau of Egypt's 12th Dynasty (c.1850 BCE) at South Abydos. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 46 (1), 5-30. DOI: 10.1111/1095-9270.12203.

• Ward, Cheryl 2006. Boat-building and its social context in early Egypt: interpretations from the First Dynasty boat-grave cemetery at Abydos. Antiquity 80 (307), 118-129. DOI: 10.1017/S0003598X00093303

• O'Connor, David 1995. The earliest royal boat graves. Egyptian Archaeology 6, 3-7.

• Cooney, Kathlyn M. 2023. People of Nile and sun, wheat and barley: ancient Egyptian society and the agency of place. In Candelora, Danielle, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, and Kathlyn M. Cooney (eds), Ancient Egyptian society: challenging assumptions, exploring approaches, 225-234. London; New York: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003003403-23.

Mummified Remains Smell Nice?!

• BBC Report: Ancient Egyptian mummies still smell nice, study finds

The “popular” “mummy” unwrapping parties in the Victorian and Edwardian eras

Celebration and Commemoration of the Ancestors

• Draycott, Catherine M. and Maria Stamatopoulou (eds) 2016. Dining and death: interdisciplinary perspectives on the 'funerary banquet' in ancient art, burial and belief. Colloquia antiqua 16. Leuven: Peeters.

• Beautiful Festival of the Valley or the Wag Festival

• Festivals of the Dead around the World

• Deified Ancestors: Heqaib

• Letters to the Dead

Mourning scenes from Tomb of Ramose

Human Sacrifice in Ancient Egypt

• Listen to Part I and II of our Human Sacrifice in Early Dynastic Egypt with Dr. Rose Campbell!

• Campbell, Roselyn A. 2024. The social context of human sacrifice in ancient Egypt. In Walsh, Matthew J., Sean O'Neill, Marianne Moen, and Svein H. Gullbekk (eds), Human sacrifice and value: revisiting the limits of sacred violence from an archaeological and anthropological perspective

• Morris, Ellen F. 2014. (Un)dying loyalty: meditations on retainer sacrifice in ancient Egypt and elsewhere. In Campbell, Roderick (ed.), Violence and civilization: studies of social violence in history and prehistory, 61-93. Oxford; Oakville, CT: Oxbow.

• Morris, Ellen F. 2007. Sacrifice for the state: First Dynasty royal funerals and the rites at Macramallah's rectangle. In Laneri, Nicola (ed.), Performing death: social analyses of funerary traditions in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, 15-37. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. DOI: 10.7916/D8H14JF0.

Disability in Ancient Egypt

• Morris, A. F. & Vogel, H. (2024) Disability in Ancient Egypt and Egyptology : All Our Yesterdays. 1st ed. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group.

• BM Exhibit- Eight histories of disabled people in ancient Egypt

• Siptah

• Morris, Alexandra F. 2020. Let that be your last battlefield: Tutankhamun and disability. Athens Journal of History 6 (1), 53-72. DOI: 10.30958/ajhis.6-1-3.

  

  Stela depicting Tutankhamun utilizing a cane for support; Neues Museum Berlin