2022 Volume 65 Issue 1 Pages 1-17
This paper examines the possibility of transforming the ritual of offering objects according to the social needs such as reproducing social status and maintaining centralization. The object friezes on early Middle Kingdom coffins depict objects offered during the ritual. Those objects have been retrieved especially from late Middle Kingdom tombs as actual burial goods. However, the reason why this funerary ritual passed from the object friezes to actual burials remains unclear.
The first part of this paper observes the similarities and differences among the private object ritual, the royal object ritual, and the royal insignia offering painted in the object friezes. Although objects associated with the private and royal object rituals, were frequently depicted on Type 2 coffins, objects for the royal insignia offering never became common. Subsequently, the study compares the distribution of real objects for the ritual of offering objects with the object friezes, which reconfirms the rare actual usage of frequently painted objects in the object friezes. They were usually buried with royalties and people of high social status. The early Middle Kingdom saw relatively common appearances of objects on the coffin decoration, while only people at the highest rungs of society had access to the objects during the late Middle Kingdom. This suggests that the ritual was transformed from paintings to actual objects for showing differences in social status. The ritual of offering objects could successfully highlight the social status and maintain the centralization because people all over Egypt already shared the norm and the value of the ritual of offering objects during the early Middle Kingdom.
Finally, this paper points out that the royal insignia offering, with its rare objects in object friezes and tombs, was not used like the other rituals. Instead, rishi coffins and wall paintings depict the importance of this ritual in the Second Intermediate Period and the New Kingdom.
