Some of the changes in material culture are indicative of developments in religious beliefs and ritual practices, as in the case of the introduction of mummy masks. However, the most important body of evidence for belief systems in provincial society during the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom is the vast corpus of Coffin Texts, which were magical and liturgical spells inscribed principally onto the sides of wooden coffins. While it is obvious that the bulk of the evidence for these texts dates to the Middle Kingdom, there are a few instances that show that they had already emerged during the First Intermediate Period. The textual origins of the Coffin Texts are still a matter of much debate, in terms of both date and geographical origin. Clearly, the corpus of royal Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, which were sometimes inscribed onto the coffins along with the Coffin Texts, provided important models, but the Coffin Texts themselves included crucial new material and fresh concepts.
There are only a few surviving examples of Coffin Texts from the First Intermediate Period, and ownership of inscribed coffins always remained restricted to the uppermost level of provincial society. Sometimes, however, it seems possible to connect ideas explicitly featured in the Coffin Texts with aspects of the archaeological record. Only then does the great antiquity and popularity of some of these concepts become apparent. This observation lends support to the notion that it was the provincial setting of the First Intermediate Period that played a significant role in the origins of the Coffin Texts and contributed to its conceptual content.
One series of Coffin Text spells was designed to ‘assemble a man’s family in the realm of the dead’. The range of persons envisaged is extensive; the texts mention not only close relatives but also servants, followers, and friends. The same desire makes itself felt in the development of tomb types as early as the 6th Dynasty. Egyptian tombs were originally built to house only one burial, but by the late Old Kingdom extensive multi-chambered mastaba-tomhs were sometimes constructed, providing space for a whole family or even an extended family in the sense defined above. The architecture of the tombs provides evidence for ranking within these groups, in that some shafts are deeper and some chambers larger than others, thus providing for more sumptuous burials. In fact, wherever the burials themselves are preserved, both aspects of this new situation—the size of the family groups involved and the inequality between persons within these groups—are particularly prominent, since chambers were often used for successive multiple burials on a regular basis.
The burial customs of the First Intermediate Period therefore emphasize the crucial importance of interpersonal relations on a primary level of social organization. This strain of religious thought closely reflects the role that extended families played as the basic units of social organization. The funerary spells in question emphasize the authority wielded by the head of the family over its members, but also stress the fact that he was able to shelter them from outside demands. Thus the family, as a unit of solidarity and collective responsibility, was acting as an interface between the higher levels of social and political organization. to this role, the extended family also appears as a recognized institution in juridical texts of the 6th to 8th Dynasties.
World History
