Research master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (research) (MA)
under embargo until 2025-01-01
2025-01-01T00:00:00Z
The ancestors and conceptions of the afterlife have always been one of the most prevalent topics of research within Egyptology. From the ‘scenes of daily life’ in the tombs of the Old Kingdom to...Show moreThe ancestors and conceptions of the afterlife have always been one of the most prevalent topics of research within Egyptology. From the ‘scenes of daily life’ in the tombs of the Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom books of the afterlife, a variety in interpretation is not lacking. It is perhaps due to this wealth of later evidence that the Early Dynastic period (c. 3000 – 2613 BCE) remains somewhat of a ‘Dark Age’ in the history of ancient Egypt. This dissertation explores the Early Dynastic attitude towards the tomb, the ancestors, and the afterlife by a holistic examination of the parts of the Early Dynastic tombs that were accessible after the interment of the tomb owner: the tomb superstructure and enclosure space. The corpus of the thesis consists of published superstructures from the Memphite area, that being the capital of Egypt at the time and most densely populated. The spaces are examined in a heuristic manner in Chapter One, with little initial reliance of previous identification and theory. Chapter Two features an examination of the material through the lenses of modern theories and methodologies. Included here are landscape biographies, the structure of the authority of things, human-thing entanglement, ancestor identity, and the ontological turn. The final chapter sees the reintegration of the material into a wider Egyptological framework. The resulting thesis has suggested that little to no uniformity can be seen in regards to post-mortem existence other than the social importance of the individual, and a subsequent wish for acknowledgement and offerings.Show less
