Living with the Dead
Nicola Harrington
Oxbow, £38.00
ISBN 978-1842174937
A highlight of this nifty little book is its guide to identifying the deceased in a scene on an Ancient Egyptian tomb wall (pointers include their being shown as larger than other people, and the epithet maa-kheru, ‘true of voice’.). Harrington’s neat dissection of Egyptian words for aspects of the soul, and funerary magic, is also handy. Attitudes towards the dead were not always so reverent, however, as a chapter on ancient tomb desecration reveals. Likewise, the dead themselves were not always benign – those who died violently or abroad, and thus lacked proper funerary rites, became mwt: malevolent dead, blamed for miscarriages, disease, and crop failure. Crammed with interesting details, this is a great read.