The Long Journey to the Underworld
Interchangeability and Interaction between Languages, Scripts, and Materials as a Reflex of the Interplay Between Functional and Ritual Practices in the Production of Funerary Artefacts in Roman and Late Antique Egypt
2022–2025
RFB14
This project offers a thorough study of the production of inscribed funerary artefacts in Egypt between the Roman and the Late Antique periods ( 30 BCE to the fifth century CE). The main goal of this research is to reconstruct the contemporary funerary practices in a selected number of Egyptian sites (i.e. Hawara, Antinoupolis, Oxyrhynchus, Thebes) in order to understand the phenomena of continuity and change distinctive to this historical moment. While in the scholarly tradition, this phase is generally considered as characterised by the decline of native funerary customs, recent archaeological discoveries demonstrate instead the endurance of a complex organisation modelled on the Pharaonic tradition.
The project combines archaeological investigations conducted in the field with the study of written artefacts in museum collections and archival material from research institutions (i.e. excavation diaries, notes, and photographic documentation). The cross-disciplinary approach allows us to reconstruct the interplay of written artefacts that were produced on different kinds of writing supports and languages and used in funerary practices distinctive to Egyptian society.
Under examination are two types of texts, namely informal writings functional for the identification and transportation of mummies, and formal writings with a ritual function. Based on the study of these two categories of inscriptions preserved on distinct funerary artefacts (i.e. portraits, seals, coffins, shrouds, mummy masks, labels, cases, and bandages), this project illuminates the different stages of the funerary praxis, from the transportation of the deceased to the embalming workshops and the painstaking labours of mummy-making, to the last funerary rituals performed in the necropolises. Furthermore, through a comparative analysis of these written artefacts, we shall be able to reconstruct the agency behind their production (i.e. funerary priests and necropolis workers); who were the recipients of the texts (i.e. gods and other supernatural entities, the Roman administration, and funerary specialists); when these texts were inscribed (i.e. in domestic contexts, embalming workshops, necropolises); and their actual function (i.e. dedicatory, ritual, or administrative).
In addition, this study explores the multigraphic and multilingual nature of these funerary artefacts, more specifically the coexistence of different typologies of texts, languages, writing systems, and graphic forms in their manufacturing. Furthermore, it seeks to clarify which factors determined the choice of the material support and the location of the texts, thus offering an in-depth evaluation of the phenomena of interchangeability and interaction peculiar to the production of these artefacts. Finally, this research explores the use of the so-called pseudo-hieroglyphic script in the production of the funerary artefacts specific to this historical phase.
This project combines the study of the materiality, visual organisation, and spatial dimension of written artefacts, which is currently developed in Research Field B, with the cross-disciplinary examination of the multifaceted phenomenon of multilingualism and its implications for the production of inscribed objects, which is at the core of Research Field H.
People
Project lead: Leah Mascia