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However, the items were not as lavish as those that were buried with pharaohs. Instead, they were buried with whatever material items the family could part with such as amulets, fruit, and bread (via Ancient Egypt). In some cases, the poor were buried with nothing at all.
The poor were buried in simple graves with those artifacts they had enjoyed in life or whatever objects the family could afford to part with. Sarcophagus of Kha (Detail) Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA)
Not all ancient Egyptians could afford to mummify the dead. The poor would be buried in the simplest graves, along with some special possessions or pots holding foods, that they had when they were alive. For the poorest of people, the body was buried in hot sand which would dry it out and mummify it in a natural way. Plates such as this were
Because mummification was expensive, cheaper alternatives were offered for the poor. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus described three different mummification methods based on social class that were offered by embalmers of the day.
Researchers have long thought these pot burials, which often recycled containers used for domestic purposes, were a common, make-do burial for poor children. But at least in ancient Egypt,...
The size of graves eventually increased according to status and wealth. The dry, desert conditions were a benefit in ancient Egypt for burials of the poor, who could not afford the complex burial preparations that the wealthy had. The simple graves evolved into mudbrick structures called mastabas.
Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered 33 ancient tombs built into a hillside on the west bank of the Nile, near Aswan. The graves provide a rich trove of evidence for the study of ancient...
Early Rituals & Burial. The earliest burials in ancient Egypt were simple graves in which the deceased was placed, on the left side, accompanied by some grave goods. It is clear there was already a belief in some kind of afterlife prior to c. 3500 BCE when mummification began to be practiced but no written record of what form this belief took.
Poverty in ancient Egypt remains a rarely-studied subject. For decades Egyptologists have focused their attention mainly on the so-called ‘elite’, while the poor, their housing, their possessions, their diet, or their cultural values, remain largely in the shadows.
The first appears in the preface, where the author states that Egyptologists believe that the poor had no grave goods. This might have been true some decades ago, but is certainly not true today.