In this presentation, Steiner outlines findings from his PhD dissertation, Funerary purifications (2022), in which he examined a peculiar purification rite associated with funeral rituals on Middle Kingdom Coffins and New Kingdom tombs.
He relates the ritual scene to spells in mortuary literature, arguing that it represented the dehydration of the corpse during embalming, with the connotation of a return to the uterus where the old person is “washed off”.
Furthermore, patterns in associated spells indicate that this symbolic level of the purification rite implied a gestation process where the deceased violently overpowered and consumed enemies to benefit his fetal growth and transformation into a higher form of being.
About Pål Steiner
Besides his degrees from the University of Bergen, he has studied Egyptology and Archaeology in Copen-hagen and Leuven.
In 2013, Steiner published a trans-lation of Egyptian mythological texts into Norwegian, Det Gamle Egypt: myter og rituelle skrifter (2013). Steiner is one of a very few Egyptologists in Norway.