Koenraad Donker van Heel – författare

An intimate look at the true story of the funerary business of a Theban mortuary priest 2800 years ago as unearthed by an ancient papyrus Petebaste son of Peteamunip, the choachyte, or water-pourer, lived during the first half of the seventh century BCE in the reigns of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty Kushite kings Shabaka and Taharqa and was responsible for the comfortable and carefree afterlife of his deceased clients by bringing their weekly libations.But Petebaste was also responsible for a wide range of other activities—he provided a tomb to the family of the deceased, managed the costs of the personnel and commodities, and took care of all necessary paperwork, while also tending to the gruesome preparation of the mortal remains of the deceased. Drawing on an archive of eight abnormal hieratic papyri in the Louvre that deal specifically with the affairs of a single family, Donker van Heel takes a deep dive into the business dealings of this Theban mortuary priest. In intimate detail, he illuminates the final stage of the embalming and coffining process of a woman called Taperet (‘Mrs. Seedcorn’) on the night before she would be taken from the embalming workshop to her final resting place, providing fascinating insight into the practical day-to-day aspects of funerary practices in ancient Egypt.

The so-called Will of Naunakhte (1154 BCE) has become rightly famous in Egyptology. So where did she come from and what really happened to her eight surviving children, four of whom were daughters? By carefully studying the documents mentioning members of the family and including all the material mentioning the women of the New Kingdom village of Deir al-Medina and other sources, the author once again puts to the forefront the remarkable role played by ordinary women in ancient Egypt.

Tsenhor was born about 550 bce in the city of Thebes (Karnak). She died some sixty years later, having lived through the reigns of Amasis II, Psamtik III, Cambyses II, Darius I and perhaps even Psamtik IV. By carefully retracing the events of her life as they are recorded in papyri now kept in museums in London, Paris, Turin, and Vienna, the author creates the image of a proud and independent businesswoman who made her own decisions in life. If Tsenhor were alive today she would be wearing jeans, drive a pick-up, and enjoy a beer with the boys. She clearly was her own boss, and one assumes that this happened with the full support of her second husband Psenese, who fathered two of her children. She married him when she was in her mid-thirties. Like her father and husband, Tsenhor could be hired to bring offerings to the dead in the necropolis on the west bank of the Nile. For a fee of course, and that is how her family acquired high-quality farm land on more than one occasion. But Tsenhor also did other business on her own, such as buying a slave and co-financing the reconstruction of a house that she owned together with Psenese. She seems in many ways to have been a liberated woman, some 2,500 years before the concept was invented.Embedded in the history of the first Persian occupation of Egypt, and using many sources dealing with ordinary women from the Old Kingdom up to and including the Coptic era, this book aims to forever change the general view on women in ancient Egypt, which is far too often based on the lives of Nefertiti, Hatshepsut, and Cleopatra.