thatlittleegyptologist:

ancientegyptdaily:

paleomancy:

Does anyone have any good book recommendations regarding Ancient Egyptian burial practices thru the history of the empire and mythology?  Specifically concerning the underworld.

None of the libraries on my overdrive app have any ebooks on the subject RIP.

_Mythology:

• _{The Egyptian Myths by Garry J. Shaw}
• _{The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard H. Wilkinson}

_{Burial Practices:}

• _{The Complete Valley of the Kings by Nicholas Reeves & Richard H. Wilkinson (this only concerns the New Kingdom)}
• _{*Ancient Egyptian Tombs: The Culture of Life and Death by Steven Snape}
  
• _{*Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt by Salima Ikram}
  

*I haven’t read these but I know the authors are reputable.

I can provide a list of sorts, but you’ll struggle with finding different burial practices, simply because we don’t really have them for a whole crosset of people, only really the nobles. You’ll want books ok:

• Predynastic burials (Ground or Pot burials). Petrie Museum and the British Museum might be good for these as the Petrie contains a Pot burial, and the British Museum has information on the Gebelein Man.
• Old Kingdom Tomb chapel and false door with burial shaft. Look for publications on the Giza Necropolis. 
• Middle Kingdom tombs, such as the ones at Beni Hasan. Middle Kingdom coffins are square edged and wooden with eyes that face in a certain direction. Very distinct. 
• New Kingdom. Anthropoid coffins, with variations based on gender and status. Look to the Theban Tombs (any numbered TT…) and the Deir el Medina tombs. 
• Late Period. Anthropoid again, but different. There are the same variations that existed in New Kingdom coffins but….it no longer matters who you are. It’s archaising, but without understanding what they’re doing with the art. They also mess up the ‘art grid’ that was used throughout other periods, it gets elongated slightly so now all figures are slightly off. 
• Ptolemaic/Roman period. Focus on mummy portraits, and mummification looks different. 

So, you’ll need:

Life:

• The Topographical Bibliography by Porter and Moss, which you can find here as free links courtesy of the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford. 
• All the excavation material from the tomb of Tutankhamun, again from the Griffith Institute. 
• Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson (eds), in which you’ll find various material practices and a large section on mummification. Also various paints and what not. This is a heavy science based one, but very useful. 
• Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Kasia Szpakowska - this one details life at the Pyramid village of Lahun (Middle Kingdom), and so will also detail how things were done in death. Extensive bibliography. 
• Village Life in Ancient Egypt - Laundry Lists and Love Songs - by Andrea McDowell. This one is Deir el Medina (New Kingdom), but again heavily sourced and an extensive bibliography. 
• The Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt by Baines and Malek should also be a good ground work setting book. It has the histories of each and every site in Egypt as well as discussing art and temples.

Religion:

• The Search For God in Ancient Egypt - Jan Assmann This one is very good, but also by Assmann, which means it’s very very dry. It can be a slog to read through it all, but well worth it for the insights it gives. 
• Egyptian Religion - Siegfried Morenz Also very good, also very dry. As I mentioned previously, these are the higher end books, and don’t pretty up or romanticise the mythology like a lot of the amateur books do. These are straight facts, and you’re actually likely to learn a lot more about how the Egyptians felt about their own religion.
• Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt - Erik Hornung. A book about understanding the Egyptian value and viewpoint of their own religious experience. I can’t fully remember what’s in it, as it’s been a long time since I studied the religion in any particular depth, but I do know it’s a very good book.
• Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice - Byron Shafer (ed). This book has three distinct sections, one of which is Myths and mythology, written by 3 different Egyptologists. The sections vary on difficulty in reading (i.e. One is a delight to read, one is more taxing, but well worth it, and one will require you to read it 2 or more times before you have an epiphany) but the book is a good one, and one I remember using frequently during my UG.
• Book of the Dead, but the translation by R.O.Faulkner not Budge. Never Budge. You’ll definitely need the the books above to try to make sense of the mythology presented. 
• Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts by R.O.Faulkner. Tricky book to get hold of, and again requires a decent background in Egyptian religion and mythology. However, these exist on a load of Coffins, so if you’re looking for burial practices, you’re going to need to know what’s written on the coffins and why. 

Art (which you’ll need to understand why certain religious motifs show up in burials): 

• Heinrich Schäfer’s ‘Principles of Egyptian Art’
• Gay Robins’ ‘The Art of Ancient Egypt’

This is about the limit of what I can think of right now, but there are other Egyptologists hanging about round here so I’m sure they’ll add more if they want to.