Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

[vi] At all levels of society, the dead were supplied with funerary goods for the Afterlife. For the wealthy, these included anthropoid and rectangular coffins, face-masks, canopic jars (containing viscera), funerary jewellery, amulets, furniture, clothing, toilet equipment, and food and drink [5]. Also, there were model brewers, butchers and bakers to prepare a continuing source of victuals. Hundreds of ushabtis (mummiform figurines representing agricultural labourers) provided the deceased with a Magic work-force.A specialized literature, read at funerals and during mortuary rites (see Mansion of the ka), relied on magical efficacy to overcome evil and to ensure the deceased's survival. First devised to obtain the king's immortality (the Pyramid texts, Old Kingdom, c.2500 bce [10]), democratization of religious customs made them available to wealthy commoners (Coffin texts, Middle Kingdom, c. 1900 bce). Later, New Kingdom texts (c. 1500–1100 bce) include the Book of the Dead [1], and the cosmographic texts in the Valley of the Kings: the Books of Gates, Caverns, the Day and the Night, and Am-Duat. (see also Mummification, Pyramids.) ... log in or subscribe to read full text