This annotation was created by Emilia Porubcin.
DEATH & MEMORY
Most items here—like most archaeological finds from Egypt—are from funerary contexts. Remembering the dead and sustaining them through well-chosen goods and proper actions was crucial to ancient Egyptian religious beliefs for thousands of years. As the inscription on the collection’s most elaborate burial container (the Senchalanthos cartonnage) entreats, “let her name be rejuvenated every day.” Museums are a different form of memory than burial; the numbers we write on things a different kind of inscription. Our treatment of other people’s memories is not without controversy. But, we hope, our exploration of these artifacts provides some fulfillment of that familiar wish to be remembered.