Coffin Commerce: How a Funerary Materiality Formed Ancient Egypt [Paperback]

Coffins are windows into ancient lives. They help us understand how people used and reused them for their own benefit.This discussion will be centered on the wooden container for the human corpse. We will focus on the entire 'lifespan' of the coffin  how they were created, who bought them, how they were used in funerary rituals, where they were placed in a given tomb, and how they might have been used again for another dead person.This discussion will be centered on the wooden container for the human corpse. We will focus on the entire 'lifespan' of the coffin  how they were created, who bought them, how they were used in funerary rituals, where they were placed in a given tomb, and how they might have been used again for another dead person.This discussion will be centered on one ubiquitous and rather simple Egyptian object type  the wooden container for the human corpse. We will focus on the entire 'lifespan' of the coffin  how they were created, who bought them, how they were used in funerary rituals, where they were placed in a given tomb, and how they might have been used again for another dead person. Using evidence from Deir el Medina, we will move through time from the initial agreement between the craftsman and the seller, to the construction of the object by a carpenter, to the plastering and painting of the coffin by a draftsman, to the sale of the object, to its ritual use in funerary activities, to its deposit in a burial chamber, and, briefly, to its possible reuse.1. Introduction; 2. The Power of the Thing; 3. The Egyptian Coffin as a Social Thing; 4. The Object as Container of Transformative Magic; 5. The Coffin as a Set of Social and Economic Choices; 6. The Coffin Craft System; 7. Coffins as Transactional Objects; 8. How Coffins Formed Egyptian Society.