In John H. Taylor’s writing “Changes in the Afterlife,” one of the most interesting sections, in my opinion, was one of the later ones: “Cult and Grave Goods.”  One paragraph in particular was on the differences between the men and women when it comes to grave goods.  When it comes to the elite burials, there is not a lot of noticeable qualitative differences between males and females when it comes to grave goods.  Quibell does note, however, that it seems like in Theban pair burials, women seemed to get the short end of the stick.  Wives seemed to get poorer quality shabtis, while the husbands seemed to get the higher quality ones.  However, during the Middle Kingdom, there seemed to be uniformly made coffins for both men and women.  Taylor also notes that during the Third Intermediate Period, it seems to have relative equality between both sexes when it comes to the mortuary provisions.  I thought that it was interesting how it took so long for the high-status wives to get their own stelae and funerary papyri and that they essentially had to “share” those with their husbands; though, to be fair, in tombs like the pyramids and in the Valley of the Kings, which were for the Pharaohs, their wives often had chambers in those tombs and had images carved within those walls.  It was also noted that there were no fewer coffins for women than those for men, especially when they are of similar shapes, sizing, and iconography.  I think that it was very interesting to see this comparison between the sexes when it comes to grave goods.

I think it was also really interesting how the coffins had changed over the years as well.  Tut’s coffin is, naturally, incredibly famous, and it has a human person face on it along with a feathered body.  However, one hundred years later, these coffins look drastically different.  Instead of a human person’s face for Sheshonq II, there is the face of a falcon.  I think that this is interesting because instead of having an iconographic representation of the departed person, there is a representation of the god Osiris (who is the Lord of the Underworld and Judge of the Dead).  The feathered body, instead of being large like on King Tut’s coffin, is simply reduced to borders that frame scenes of the sun god and numerous other Egyptian deities.  It was fascinating to me how so much can change on a king’s coffin in one hundred years!