Daughters of Isis(86)

His beloved wife who shares his estate, the Sole Royal Ornament, Priestess of Hathor, Demyosnai, good of speech. She who makes the offering of white bread, who pleases in every respect and who serves the heart in all that one could wish. The sister-of-the-estate, praised of Hathor, Lady of Dendera, Demyosnai.

From the Middle Kingdom funeral stela of the butler Merer



Only the more privileged members of society could afford to build elaborate stone-cut tombs, and it is not surprising that very few women occupied prestigious tombs in their own right. Tomb ownership accurately reflected the social climate, and most women would have found it impossible to accumulate the wealth needed to pay for such a monument. Royal wives, mothers and daughters were often accorded a separate tomb close to that of the king but these burials, invariably far less imposing than the major tomb, should properly be seen as an extension of the king’s funeral-complex. Even where the two tombs are completely separate, and again separate from the royal mortuary temple, as in the New Kingdom Valleys of the Kings and Queens, it is difficult to decide whether the burial of the queen should be interpreted as an extension of the king’s burial-complex, as a separate monument reflecting the importance of the queen, or even as a separate monument reflecting the decreasing importance of the queen who was no longer worthy of burial with her husband.

Most women were included in stone-cut tombs in their role as wives and daughters, and in these cases the relevant male burial naturally took precedence, with the female taking a subsidiary role just as she would have done in her husband’s or father’s home. It is particularly noticeable that the decoration of these shared tombs relates almost exclusively to the male deceased and his survival in the Afterlife, while the text on the wall details the life and achievements of the man with only a passing reference to the activities of his wife. It would appear that the woman was expected to enter the Afterlife not so much as a person in her own right but as a part of her husband’s entourage. As has already been noted, women are allocated a passive role in almost all tomb scenes so that often the only time a wife can be seen acting independently of her husband is when she is depicted mourning at his funeral. There is no standard scene showing a widower grieving for his lost wife.

Do not delay building your tomb in the mountains; you do not know how long you will live.

Late Period scribal advice



The majority of women were buried in individual graves dug into the desert sand of the village cemetery. These local cemeteries remained in use for remarkably long periods, slowly spreading and shifting as the number of interments increased so that the Late Period graves might be sited some distance away from the original Old Kingdom burial ground. Within the cemetery the graves of the less important people were either arranged around the more impressive tombs of the major local dignitaries or simply dug into the next available and unoccupied patch of desert. The location of each middle-class grave was then marked either by a simple wooden or stone stela or by a more impressive tomb superstructure; the graves of the illiterate peasants appear to have been left unmarked.

Local burial customs gradually evolved as the Dynastic period progressed, but the majority of interments always included a wooden coffin and an assortment of grave goods. Some of these goods were sex-specific so that while pottery and stone vessels or wooden headrests could be included in both male or female inhumations, some objects such as mirrors and certain items of jewellery were only found in women’s graves. Ayrton and Loat, who directed the excavation of part of the Old Kingdom Abydos necropolis, have left us a detailed description of the recovery of a virtually intact female burial. It is worth quoting their description at some length, as it provides us with a vivid insight into the practicalities of an ordinary Egyptian woman’s funeral:

The skeleton (a woman) lay on the left side, with the head to the north-west, arms to the sides and knees slightly drawn up. Under the left temple were the remains of a wooden pillow. Before the face stood a large alabaster vase, behind the head was a flat red pottery vase with handles, and at the back of the neck a small red polished pottery vase.

Before the breast lay a large copper mirror with a lotiform wooden handle, behind the knees was a large polished red pottery vase and a copper needle. Round the neck were two strings of glazed steatite beads, one with a large carnelian bead in the centre, and the other supporting a steatite button seal with the figure of a hornet cut on the face.

On the lid of the coffin, over the knees, was placed a small red pottery vase, and against the outside of the coffin at the feet leant a large globular vase of rough pottery, over the mouth of which was placed an inverted red polished pottery bowl with a spout.6