The Practices of Death: The Archaeology of Mortuary Ritual in Ancient Egypt and Sudan

Excavations and surveys in Ancient Egypt and Sudan have provided archaeologists with a wealth of information about the practices surrounding death, unearthing not only the physical remains of the deceased and their grave goods, but also material related to mortuary ritual ranging from the written and visual to the environmental. This richness of material has fostered a long tradition in regional archaeology of focusing on conspicuous display as a direct reflection of deceased individuals. However, the social persona expressed through mortuary ritual may reflect less on the 'lived life' of the departed than it does the motivations of the survivors who organized the funerary rites and the negotiated relationship between the dead as ancestors and society as a whole. To that end, this symposium will present diverse levels of analysis, with papers drawing from primary mortuary material such as osteological evidence and material culture, and larger contexts such as texts, iconography, architecture and landscape. Questions posed will serve to elucidate the recursive relationship between society and its members as presented in the mortuary sphere. Addressing these issues in Egypt and Sudan comparatively promotes discussion of the complexity of ancient northeast Africa as a whole.