Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt

Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt uniquely considers how power was constructed, maintained, and challenged in ancient Egypt through mortuary culture and apotheosis, or how certain dead in ancient Egypt became gods. Rather than focus on the imagined afterlife and its preparation, Julia Troche provides a novel treatment of mortuary culture exploring how the dead were mobilized to negotiate social, religious, and political capital in ancient Egypt before the New Kingdom.

Troche explores the perceived agency of esteemed dead in ancient Egyptian social, political, and religious life during the Old and Middle Kingdoms (c. 2700–1650 BCE) by utilizing a wide range of evidence, from epigraphic and literary sources to visual and material artifacts. As a result, Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt is an important contribution to current scholarship in its collection and presentation of data, the framework it establishes for identifying distinguished and deified dead, and its novel argumentation, which adds to the larger academic conversation about power negotiation and the perceived agency of the dead in ancient Egypt.

Julia Troche is an Egyptologist and Assistant Professor of History at Missouri State University.

Julia Troche provides a crucial and an excellent synthesis of the development of religious beliefs in ancient Egypt—the selective use of some practices to create identities involving the participation of the dead and to the sociology of ancient Pharaonic religion.

Jiří Janák, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Charles University:

Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt is a well-approached study that brings fresh perspectives on ancient Egyptian religion and the concept of afterlife in the pre-New Kingdom. Troche integrates current research with individual case studies and provides an essential stepping-stone for anyone interested in ancient Egyptian concepts of the afterlife.