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.

This paper aims to discuss the function of pottery vessels dating to the late Eighteenth Dynasty from Tomb 30 at New Kingdom cemetery in Dahshur North. As a result of the author’s examination, the pottery vessels from Tomb 30 have been classified into the following four groups according to their function: ‘pottery vessels used for votive offerings,’ ‘pottery vessels related to the ritual of “breaking the red pots”,’ ‘pottery vessels associated with the activity of “pouring black resin”’ and ‘pottery vessels used as container for commodities.’ The present study has demonstrated some aspect of functions of pottery vessels from the tomb during the late Eighteenth Dynasty. In addition to the previous studies on burial customs in the New Kingdom which had mainly focused on texts and iconographic evidences, the study has revealed what was actually done in the tomb from physical evidences. Notably, the study has shown some differences in burial customs between tombs with superstructures at Saqqara and tombs with no obvious superstructures at Dahshur North. Furthermore, the study has indicated the evidence of the activity of ‘pouring black resin’ which is not known from texts or iconographic sources thus far, and the production of stone imitation pottery vessels at Dahshur North area which had thus far been assumed to be limited to the Theban area. Further research on pottery from Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasty tombs at Dahshur North will demonstrate diachronic changes in the function of pottery vessels used in funerals in New Kingdom Egypt.