Places in the heart:

Temple Reuse as burial place for elite Theban women in the Third Intermediate
and Late Periods
Ahmad Abo el Magd
Minia University

Abstract:
This paper discusses the burial practice of elite Theban women in the Third
and Late Periods, i.e. in the 22nd- 26th Dynasties and the reuse of earlier temples like:
Ramesseum, Medinet Habu and Deir el Bahari as burial place.
The paper investigates the new burial practice of interment in temple
precincts, the value of these earlier temples in the memory of the elite Theban
women and the independence nature of elite Theban women to be buried away from
their husbands.
This paper argues that the Third Intermediate and late periods were not a time
of decline, as it is traditionally characterized in Egyptology, but instead a dynamic
era in which its cultural products, especially mortuary practices, exhibited a creative
tension between tradition and innovation.
Keywords:

Burial practice Temple Reuse - Elite Theban Women Third Intermediate Period
Late Period Ramesseum Medinet Habu Deir el Bahari

Introduction:

Use of the Theban necropolis dates back to the Old Kingdom, but its heyday
was doubtless the New Kingdom, when kings populated the west bank with
grandiose funerary temples and palaces as visible markers of their power and wealth.

In their desire to be close to the kings in the afterlife and to emulate royal
burial practices, Egyptian elites too, constructed their tombs in the low desert of the
West Bank sandwiched between the royal funerary temples and the royal tombs.
For the Egyptians, reoccupation and reuse was an implicit part of their
worldview. Kings regularly usurped monuments of their most famous predecessors
to reinforce the legitimacy of their own reigns and define their identities as powerful,
pious or prosperous rulers. For non-royals, acts of re-appropriation usually took the
form of reuse of older tombs and associated funerary objects. The reuse and reappropriation of older mortuary monuments climaxed in the Third Intermediate
Period when citizens of Thebes used the tombs and temples of the Theban necropolis
as their burial locations. One can understand these reuses as acts of memory or
memory performances by groups and individuals for the purposes of identity
definition.
Crawford suggests that individual and collective memories are vital for the
process of assimilation and legitimation. Such processes are vital in individual
identity formation and are achieved through memory performances (Crawford 2007,
10-42). The physicality of the objects in the landscape gives people reference points
from which to manipulate the relationships between objects and subjects. These
material objects help people remember and these objects can also help people forget.
Connerton reminds us that memory involves more than just remembrance, but also
forgetting. Forgetting can be conscious or unconscious and is one of the ways we
assimilate the information we use to construct our identities. One example is the
Egyptian practice of erasing names of people from monuments (Connerton 2006, 319
ff).

Discussion:

One of the most interesting and characteristic burial practices found almost
exclusively in the Third Intermediate and early Late Period is that of burials within
temple precincts. The best-known and earliest example is seen at Tanis in the Delta

where kings of Dynasties 21 and 22 and some of their important officials were
interred in the precinct of the temple of Amun (Reeves 2000, 189-193). Other
examples of temple burials are found throughout northern Egypt: the high priests of
Ptah at Memphis constructed their tombs on the edge of the temple precinct of Ptah
and a high official was buried in an area adjacent to the enclosure wall of the temple
at Tell Balamun. Taylor suggests that this may have been a northern burial tradition
that spread south. At Thebes, temple burials of the eighth-sixth centuries BCE are
found at Deir el-Bahri, Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum (Taylor 2000, 362).
Taylor, also, has suggested that temples were chosen not only because of increased
security from robbery but also a means of establishing closer proximity to the gods
(Taylor 2000, 263).
Now the researcher will discuss in details the three locations which were
re-used during the Third Intermediate and late Periods as burial places for the
elite Theban women: The Ramesseum, Medinet Habu and Deir el Bahari.

1- Ramesseum:
Ramesseum necropolis, constructed in the storerooms of the Ramesses II's
mortuary temple, has been described as comprising the greatest concentration of
Third intermediate period tombs at Thebes (Nelson 2003, 88).
The apparent mortuary associations of this location were already established
long before Ramesses II constructed his temple at the height of Dynasty 19 (Nelson
2003, 88). The uselife of the cemetery has been dated between Dynasties 21 and 23
due to the associated materials inscribed with the names Osorkon, Sheshonq and
Takeloth.
The documented materials relate primarily to funerary priests who bore the
titles of setem priests of the temple of King Usermaatre Setepenre in the estate of
Amun.

The later burials consisted mostly of tomb shafts excavated in the magazines
that surrounded the temple proper (Quibell 1896).
It appears that women were much better represented at the Ramesseum than
men (Aston 2003, 139). One of the identifiable persons associated with these
structures was a great-granddaughter of Osorkon I of the 22nd Dynasty. Furthermore,
in many cases, the titles of the women interred at the Ramesseum, who were related
to the priests of Amun, reveal that they were of equal or higher rank than the men.
The female relatives of these priests of Amun bore titles such as the Lady of the
House and also titles related to music and singing. Among the musicians, the most
common title was that of iHyt n Imn-Ra "Sistrum player of Amun-Rea". The women
interred in the Ramesseum cemetery were often related to important personnel
connected with the palace, such as royal trustees, treasurers and a king (Elias 1993,
101).
From the inscriptional evidence belonging to women, Elias suggested that the
Ramesseum was the original necropolis for the Singers in the Residence of Amun in
use from early Dynasty 22, and served them until the end of the eighth century/early
seventh century B.C. when they shifted to Medinet Habu.
Some Singers still preferred the old location. This observation seems
contradictory to Elias statement that this cemetery was used to inter the lower elites
of the Theban priesthood. Perhaps some of the women at the Ramesseum were
related, either by blood or marriage, to lower ranking members of the clergy but
possessed higher-ranking titles related to specifically to music. If this was case, one
must amend the statement that this cemetery was reserved for lower elites (Elias
1993, 103). The Ramesseum necropolis may have begun as a cemetery used by lower
elites, but during the course of its use-life, it became seen as a burial place for the
high-ranking female elites of the Theban priesthood. That high-status elite women
were not buried or commemorated with their relatives suggests that elite women
began to exhibit increased independence and status consciousness in their burial
practices.

The monumentality of the entire temple, together with the already

conveniently delineated vaulted corridors of the magazines, undoubtedly influenced
the sites transformation into a necropolis in the third Intermediate and Late Periods
(Li 2010, 73). Ramesses IIs mortuary monument was a material embodiment of the
past and fulfilled its function as a House of a Million Years through its state of
preservation. The Ramesseum materialized in its very stones and bricks the
continuity of time and memories from the past glories of the New Kingdom (and one
of its most self-aggrandizing kings) to the Third Intermediate Period present.

2- Medinet Habu:
Medinet Habu is the site of one of the best-preserved temples of the Theban
necropolis. The site includes a divine state temple of the 18th Dynasty (Murnane
1980, 2), a mortuary temple of Ramesses III (Hlscher 1941; Hlscher 1951), a
fortress, an administrative centre and a settlement (Teeter 2003). During the Third
Intermediate and Late Periods, the Medinet Habu was utilized as a necropolis.
Throughout all these manifestations and because of these uses, Medinet Habu
remained a consistently sacred area. It becomes clear then, that Medinet Habu had
especially strong memory associations for Egyptians, and that these memories were
continuously renewed and transformed with each (re)use of the site especially for
women.
Most significantly, the Gods Wives of Amun chose Medinet Habu as the
location for their own chapel tombs. Beyond its use by the Gods Wives of Amun,
the Third Intermediate and Late Periods necropolis at Medinet Habu is unlike any
other cemetery of the same period in the Theban necropolis. The necropolis of
Medinet Habu was exclusively dedicated to women. Furthermore, these tombs
belonging to

women appeared independently constructed without

explicit

associations to men resulting in the designation of Medinet Habu as the burial ground
for the high-ranking feminine clergy of Amun (Teeter 2003, 55).

Third Intermediate and Late Periods tombs were constructed north and south
of the Eastern High Gate. They were found under the Ptolemaic period pavement.
The tombs south of the High Gate were constructed very close and attached to the
Gods Wives of Amun tombs, while the tombs on the north seemed to be arranged in
proximity to the Small Temple at Medinet Habu (Hlscher 1954, 31) (Fig.3). The
most intriguing area of tomb construction is in the Great Temple of Ramesses III
itself and consisted of a number of tombs dug under the flooring of the innermost,
indisputably sacred area.
These graves were all simply constructed tombs of one or more (generally no
more than two) chambers lined with either mud-brick or stone (Murnane 1980, 8).
Some scholars suggest that all the tombs at Medinet Habu were deliberately
grouped to express associations in life, and that these associations likely consisted of
actual or fictive mother-daughter pairings and servant and mistress clusters (Elias
1993, 145).
The choice of Medinet Habu as a necropolis provided many advantages. The
explicitly feminine associations of the site made it the ideal choice for burials of
women who were integral in the perpetuation of Amuns creative energy located in
the Small Temple of the 18th Dynasty or the choice of the burial beside the Chapels
of the God's Wives of Amun by the Singers in the Residence of Amun as the
concentration of their burials reflected the continuous identities in life and death as
women whose status were only second to the God's Wives of Amun.
The burial practice of the Singers in the Residence of Amun in the Great
temple demonstrates the simultaneous utilization of the two sides of memory
strategies: remembrance and forgetting (discard of memory). It is evident that
security was a concern for the elite women buried in the Great Temple, as this period
was not far from the era of the tomb robbing activities in Thebes thus the placement
of the tombs in the inner areas, inaccessible by the lay person and under the floor,
meant there was a slight increase of much desired security; a faint hope that perhaps
the hidden tombs would be forgotten and thereby not robbed.

3- Deir el Bahari:

The site of Deir el-Bahri was of monumental importance to the Egyptians

from at least the Middle Kingdom, when Nebhepetrea Mentuhotep II constructed his
mortuary complex in its bay of cliffs. Inspired by this temple, Hatshepsut constructed
her mortuary temple next to the Middle Kingdom structure, and Thutmose III later
inserted his own smaller temple in between. Additionally, a bark station was erected
at Deir el- Bahri for the Beautiful Festival of the Valley (Arnold 1974, 1008) during
which an image of Amun of Karnak travelled to the west bank and the Deir el-Bahri
played an important role (Strudwick, N. & H. Strudwick, 79). But the Valley Festival
was not an exclusively royal celebration, for during the festival private families
would join the procession and visit the tombs of their ancestors.
The sacredness of Deir el-Bahri continued in the Third Intermediate Period,
as demonstrated not only by the continuity of the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, but
also by the use of the surrounding cliffs as burial places for the families of the High
Priests of Amun and other priestly families and as vaults for the safekeeping of the
re-dedicated bodies of the great kings of the New Kingdom. Theban priests and their
families also used the embayment as a cemetery (Elias 1993, 229). Elias (1993, 233)
suggested that Deir el-Bahri was abandoned as a priestly cemetery in favour of the
Ramesseum in Dynasty 22. By Dynasty 25, there seemed to have been a revival of
mortuary activities at Deir el-Bahri, as the citizens of Thebes dug graves in the debris
of the temple of Hatshepsut itself and great Theban dignitaries built their
monumental tombs in the plain of the Asasif.(1)
Of the forty-one individuals whose coffins were discovered in the interior of
the Hathor Chapel, Elias identified eighteen women. Of these eighteen women, seven
had titles. There were four Singers in the Residence of Amun, two Sistrum Players
and one Lady of the House. Since it has been suggested that Medinet Habu was a
cemetery that demonstrated the group identity of women who were Singers in the
1

For more detailed survey about Theban necropolis during the Late Period: Eigner, D., Die
monumentalen Grabbauten der Spatzeit in der thebanischen Nekropole, VOAW 8, 1984.

Residence of Amun, the interments of Singers in the Residence of Amun at Deir elBahri is interesting. Perhaps for the Singers in the Residence of Amun buried at Deir
el-Bahari, a desire to be buried with family members overrode any strictly rank or
religious imperative (Elias 1993, 285-6).
A family tomb was discovered at the southern annex of the Upper platform
revealed the burials of a vizier named Padiamunet, who may have been a vizier of
Takeloth III. His son Nespakashuty married Diesenesyt who was a daughter of a king
Takeloth (presumably Takeloth III) who was buried with the group (Elias 1993, 262
fig.27). Aside from her royal connection, she was also a Sistrum Player in the temple
of Amun. A second woman in the family tomb, Heribsens, appeared to have been
married to the brother of the second Padiamunet, and her mother, Tashakeper, was
the third woman. A fourth woman, Tashaiu, may have been the grandmother of the
early Dynasty 26 vizier, Nespakashuty (buried in TT 312), whose mother, Iretrau,
had a monumental tomb constructed at the South Asasif (Li 2010, 265).
Clearly, from the limited information available, the burials in this vestibule
area of the offering hall in the southern annex of the upper platform contained
members of the highest elite of Dynasties 23/25 Theban society.
Since the burials of the kings of Dynasty 23 have not yet been discovered,
and members of their families are buried in a variety of locations scattered
throughout the Theban necropolis and there does not seem to be one specific location
in which the burials of royal members of Dynasty 23 were concentrated, the PolishEgyptian mission have recently proposed the idea that the upper colonnade of
Hatshepsuts temple served as the necropolis for the royal families of Dynasties 23
and 25 (Szafranski 2007, 98-99).

 Conclusion:
In the Theban necropolis, the very monumentality of existing structures
and the associated memories and histories that their physical presence
evoked, resulted in a very necessary engagement of elite women and
objects and the existed temples. Each individual monument, whether a
mortuary temple or decorated tomb, the memories and purpose of the
original owner within its own original cultural and historical context and
ritual and mortuary actions conducted in the Theban temples by
generations of people, together with the physical references, created and
sustained memory communities that in turn acted in and altered the
existing temples.
Thanks to the presence of the elements that must be in place to constitute a
mortuary landscape include space and monuments and markers, such as
tombs and graves, one can create a true image for that memorial
components of the Theban mortuary temples that were used by elite
Theban women in the Third intermediate and Late periods.
The temple cemeteries consisted of the largest concentrations of Theban
elites of the Third Intermediate and Late Periods and specifically elite
women. While the Ramesseum cemetery was the most populous of the
temple cemeteries, the highest concentration of elite women was at
Medinet Habu, situated alongside the burials of the Gods Wives of Amun.
Overall, the women buried in temples were of high elite status, usually
possessing titles closely linked to the court of the Gods Wives of Amun,
such as the Singer in the Residence of Amun, and/or they could be
demonstrated as having ties to the most powerful families of Thebes.

 The quantity of burials and their situations within mortuary temples of past
kings bestowed upon these burials a public and communal aspect, perhaps
not surprising given that the demographics of those buried in the temples
as comprised of high-ranking elites.
These high-ranking elites, in their identities as members of the royal
families or their associations with royalty of this period, seemed to gravitate
toward a setting that may have elicited memories of their ancestors or
perceived ties with kingship in the past.
The monumentality of the temples also likely fulfilled the need for status
display.
Analyses of the development of female burials in temples suggest that
these burials reflected increasing independence and assertions of power by
women as indicated by status displays in their identities throughout the
course of the Third Intermediate Period. For example, at Medinet Habu,
God's Wives of Amun and the Singers in the Residence of the Temple of
Amun possessed their own tombs and there was no evidence of
contemporary male presence within the tomb groupings. The women chose
an area that was symbolically linked to feminine power as well as one that
was linked to royal mortuary commemorations. Thus, temple burials seem
to

fulfil

the

needs

of

people

who

desired

continual

public

acknowledgements and communal groupings in their afterlife.

At the Ramesseum and Deir el-Bahri, the elite women shared with their
male relatives an apparently greater concern with kinship expressions
while at Medinet Habu, individuality appeared the focus of the women
buried there. The independent tombs without familial associations suggest
that the Singers in the Residence of the Temple of Amun were more

10

focused on the status aspects of their identities as Singers who were the
highest-ranking feminine clergy after the Gods Wives of Amun.
The burials of women in temples seem not only demonstrate group and
familial affiliations but also served to fulfil individual desires and needs.
Furthermore, the spatial patterning of the tombs; that is, in the Great
Temple, annexed to the Gods Wife of Amun tombs, and near the Small
Temple, distinguished for some of the Singers in the Residence of the
Temple of Amun their individual identity within a group setting.

11

Figures and Plates

Fig. 1: Theban necropolis

Aston, D., The Theban West Bank from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty to the Ptolemaic Period, In The
Theban necropolis, past, present and future, ed. N. Strudwick and J. Taylor, 138-166. London:
The British Museum Press, 2003.

12

Fig. 2 The Ramesseum Necropolis of the Third Intermediate and late Periods
showing areas of reuse, mostly in the back of the temple. Areas in which Quibell worked are
shaded in purple. And the mortuary chapels of high-ranking priests of Amun and their families
are shaded in blue.
After Nelson, M., The Ramesseum necropolis. In The Theban necropolis, past, present and
future, ed. N. Strudwick and J. Taylor, pp. 88-94. The British Museum Press, 2003.

13

Fig. 3. Third Intermediate Period/Late Period tombs at Medinet Habu.

Elias, J Coffin inscription in Egypt after the New Kingdom: a study of text production and use
in elite mortuary preparation. Ph. D dissertation , University of Chicago, 1993, Fig. 4.

14

Third Intermediate Period burials at Deir el-Bahri

Elias, J Coffin inscription in Egypt after the New Kingdom: a study of text production and use
in elite mortuary preparation. Ph. D dissertation , University of Chicago, 1993, Fig. 4.
p. 244, fig. 26.

15

Bibliography

Arnold, D., Deir el-Bahari I, in L I (6): 1006-1011, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,

1974.
Aston, D., The Theban West Bank from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty to the Ptolemaic
Period, In The Theban necropolis, past, present and future, ed. N. Strudwick and J.
Taylor, 138-166. London: The British Museum Press, 2003.
Connerton, P., Cultural memory, In Handbook of material culture, ed. C. Tilley, et
al., London: Sage. 2006, pp. 315-324.
Crawford, C.L., Collecting, defacing, reinscribing (and otherwise performing)
memory in the ancient world. In Negotiating the past in the past: identity, memory
and landscape in archaeological research, ed. N. Yoffee, Tuscon: University of
Arizona Press, 2007, pp. 10-42.
Eigner, D., Die monumentalen Grabbauten der Spatzeit in der thebanischen
Nekropole, VOAW 8, 1984.
Elias, J., Coffin inscription in Egypt after the New Kingdom: a study of text
production and use in elite mortuary preparation, Ph. D dissertation , University of
Chicago, 1993.
Hlscher, U., Post-Ramesside Remains, The Excavations of Medinet Habu V, 1954.
________, The Mortuary temple of Ramesses III, part II,
Medinet Habu IV, 1951.

The Excavations of

________, The Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, part I, The Excavations of

Medinet Habu III, 1941.
Li, J., Elite Theban Women of the Eighth-Sixth Centuries BCE in Egypt: Identity,
Status and Mortuary Practice, Ph. D. dissertation, University of California,
Berkeley, 2010.
Murnane, W., United with Eternity: A Concise Guide to the Monuments of Medinet
Habu. OI, University of Chicago & AUC Press, 1980.
Nelson, M., The Ramesseum necropolis. In The Theban necropolis, past, present
and future, ed. N. Strudwick and J. Taylor, pp. 88-94. The British Museum Press,
2003.

16

Quibell, J.E., The Ramesseum/the tomb of Ptah-Hetep, Egyptian research account 2,

London, 1896.
Reeves, N., Ancient Egypt. The Great Discoveries (A Year-by-Year Chronicle),
Thmes & Hudson, Ltd, 2000.
Szafranski, Z., Deir el-Bahri, temple of Hatshepsut, 2007.
http://www.siwaiwa.pl/cas/book/book70_08.pdf.
Taylor, J. H., The Third Intermediate Period, in The Oxford history of ancient
Egypt, ed. I. Shaw, 330-368, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Teeter, E. and T. Wilfong, Scarabs, scaraboids, seals, and seal impressions from
Medinet Habu, OIP 118, Chicago: the Oriental Institute, 2003.

17