Death

Shabti dolls (also known as `shawbti’ and `ushabti’) were funerary figures in ancient Egypt who accompanied the deceased to the after-life. Their name is derived from the Egyptian `swb’ for stick but also corresponds to the word for `answer’ (`wSb’) and so the Shabtis were known as `The Answerers’. The figures, shaped... [continue reading]

In ancient Greece the continued existence of the dead depended on their constant remembrance by the living. The after-life, for the ancient Greeks, consisted of a grey and dreary world in the time of Homer (8th century BCE) and, most famously, we have the scene from Homer's Odyssey in which Odysseus meets the spirit of the great warrior Achilles in the nether-world... [continue reading]

The Pyramid Texts are the oldest religious texts in the world (some scholars cite the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh as the oldest, though it is debatable whether the Epic of Gilgamesh is a religious text). They comprise the texts which were inscribed on the sarcophogi and walls of the pyramids at Saqqara in the 5th and 6th Dynasties of the Old Kingdom (2465-2150... [continue reading]

Material Objects & Cultures Material objects convey volumes about the people who possessed them. Cultures and societies in every generation are in part classified - either correctly or incorrectly - by the objects or symbols they select and how they are displayed. Typically, the formal study of society is the purview of anthropologists and social scientists... [continue reading]