Through the Eras

Dancedancers form the hewet hieroglyph, used to write thename of the tomb and indicating the resting place forthe mummy. Finally, dancers offered their arms, impersonatingthe Goddess of the West who “extends her armstoward the deceased in peace” according to the funerarywishes found in many tombs. The dancers have nowreenacted the entire funeral in movement.COSTUME. Both men and women wore very similarcostumes while performing this dance: a short kilt cutat an angle with a long belt hanging down in front. Bothmen and women wore a band of cloth wrapped acrossthe chest without any other shirt or blouse. Men woretheir hair close-cropped, but women wore a long ponytailwith a red disk attached at the end. The color of thedisk, sometimes called a ball, associated it with the diskof the sun. The dance thus has some association withcult of Re.IMPORTANCE. The tjeref-dance thus recapitulatedthe entire funeral. Scholars believe that the dancers performedit at the entrance to the tomb at the conclusionof the funeral. Such a performance would reflect theEgyptians’ use of magical redundancy. The Egyptiansperformed the ritual, performed it again through thedance, and performed it a third time by representing iton the walls of the tomb. Thus they could guarantee thatthe proper rituals were celebrated and the deceasedwould continue to live in the next life.SOURCESElse Baumgartel, The Cultures of Prehistoric Egypt (London:Oxford University Press, 1955): 65–66.Jonathan Van Lepp, “The Dance Scene of Watetkhethor:An Art Historical Approach to the Role of Dance inthe Old Kingdom Funerary Ritual.” Unpublished master’sthesis (Los Angeles: University of California, LosAngeles, 1987).SEE ALSO Religion: Funerary Beliefs and PracticesMUU-DANCERSFUNERAL PROCESSION. The muu-dancers performedin people’s private funerals in the Old, Middle,and New Kingdoms, a period lasting about 1,500 years.The muu-dancers performed throughout the funeral.Representing the muu-dancers in tomb drawings was apopular choice for tomb owners, more popular than representingthe whole funeral ritual as Princess Watetkhethorchose to do. Scholars do not know why thisscene was represented so often. Artists represented intombs the muu-dancers’ performance at four differentstages of the funeral procession. The muu-dancersgreeted the funeral procession at the “Hall of the Muu”where the dancers lived at the edge of the necropolis.They danced while priests loaded the sarcophagus ontothe funerary barge at the ritual site called “Sais,” associatedwith the town of Sais in the delta. They danced agreeting to the sledge carrying the sarcophagus at the ritualsite in the necropolis called the “Gates of Buto,” andassociated with the town of Buto, also in the delta. Finally,at an unknown place in the necropolis, the dancerswere the reception committee for the sledge bearing thecanopic jars and tekenu—the containers for the visceraof the deceased and the still unidentified portion of thecorpse, or perhaps the placenta, of the deceased that theEgyptians also placed in the tomb. The sites where themuu-dancers performed illustrate the itinerary that thefuneral procession followed, allowing Egyptologists to reconstructparts of the typical funeral.DISTINCTIVE COSTUME. Muu-dancers usuallywore a distinctive costume that made them easily identifiable.They wore a headdress made from a plant, probablypapyrus stems. The headdress resembled a wreathwrapped around their heads. Rising from this wreath wasa woven, cone-shaped structure that came to a point,then flared at the end. The headdress resembled but wasnot exactly the same as the king’s White Crown. Duringthe New Kingdom, scribes sometimes identified theimages of muu-dancers only with captions rather thanshowing them wearing the distinctive headgear. In thesecases the muu-dancers appear only as male dancers.IDENTITY CRISIS. The most vexing question aboutthe muu-dancers remains an explanation of their identityand thus their symbolic meaning. Earlier Egyptologistshave explained the symbolism of the muu-dancersby equating them with other, known semi-divine beings.These beings include the gods of the necropolis whotransported the deceased; the Souls of Buto who receivedthe deceased; the Sons of Horus who rode in the barque(sun-boat) with deceased kings and the sun-god, Re; andthe most recently proposed and most convincing suggestion,ferrymen who guided the deceased from the beginningof the funeral procession to the entrance of thetomb. In the earlier twentieth century, the EgyptologistE. Brunner-Traut thought the muu-dancers representedgods of the necropolis who transported the newly deadinto their world. This interpretation built on earlier ideasadvanced by the Egyptologist H. Junker. Junker tried toidentify the muu-dancers with the “Souls of Buto,” whowere described in the Pyramid Texts as the beings thatreceived the dead into the next world. He also believed76 Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.)