The Walking Dead at Saqqara: strategies of social and religious interaction in practice

Funerary rituals and the cult of the dead are classics of research in religious studies, especially for ancient Egypt. Still, we know relatively little about how people interacted in daily life at the city of Memphis and its Saqqara necropolis in the late second millennium BCE. By focussing on lived...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten
Main Author: Weiss, Lara 1980- (Author)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Berlin Boston De Gruyter [2022]
In: Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten (Volume 78)
Series/Journal:Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten Volume 78
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Saqqara / Funeral rite
Further subjects:B Practices
B memory
B ancient Egypt
B Religion
B RELIGION / Antiquities & Archaeology
B Thesis
Online Access: Cover (lizenzpflichtig)
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Rights Information:CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:Funerary rituals and the cult of the dead are classics of research in religious studies, especially for ancient Egypt. Still, we know relatively little about how people interacted in daily life at the city of Memphis and its Saqqara necropolis in the late second millennium BCE. By focussing on lived ancient religion, we can see that the social and religious strategies employed by the individuals at Saqqara are not just means on the way to religious, post-mortem salvation, nor is their self-representation simply intended to manifest social status. On the contrary, the religious practices at Saqqara show in their complex spatiality a wide spectrum of options to configure sociality before and after one's own death. The analytical distinction between religion and other forms of human practices and sociality illuminates the range of cultural practices and how people selected, modified, or even avoided certain religious practices. As a result, pre-funerary, funerary and practices of the subsequent mortuary cults, in close connection with religious practices directed towards other ancestors and deities, allow the formation of imagined and functioning reminiscence clusters as central social groups at Saqqara, creating a heuristic model applicable also to other contexts
Item Description:Gesehen am 12.07.2022
ISBN:3110706830
Access:Open Access
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1515/9783110706833