“Raise Yourself from off Your Left Side”: The Evolution of Inhumation in Egypt in the 3rd Millennium BC.

The ancient Egyptian burial rites were not the same throughout the long history of civilization, their formation and evolution went through several stages and reflected the religious ideas of traditional society, as well as being directly dependent on the social rank of the deceased. Early burials in Upper and Lower Egypt not only demonstrated the likeness of the deceased to a sleeping person or a baby in the womb, but also emphasized the West as the location of the afterlife, which was reflected in the foetal pose of the deceased, laid mainly on the left side, head to the south and facing the west. Subsequently, at the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, this orientation was changed to the north, facing the east, i.e. at sunrise, which apparently meant not only the strengthening of the Heliopolis solar doctrine, but also the prevalence of ideas about the posthumous resurrection, similar to the daily appearance of the Sun after a night stay in netherworld. The essence of the burial rites was aimed at the resurrection and subsequent prosperous existence of the deceased in afterlife, which was achieved by physical and magical actions. In the Old Kingdom, there were three types of inhumation – foetal, semi-contracted and extended, on the left side, headed north and faced east. The extended pose became more popular, but was initially reserved to the elite burials, obviously generated by the desire to preserve the remains in a form close to the lifetime image of the deceased.