Grave goods
Also called: Funerary equipment · Topic: Bronze Age Civilisations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Grave goods are objects buried with a dead person. They can be pots, food, jewellery, tools, weapons, model boats, chariots or small statues. People placed them in graves because they believed the dead would need these things in the next life. Archaeologists study grave goods to learn what a society believed about the afterlife and how rich or poor different people were. In Egypt, people believed the ka (a person's spiritual double) lived on after death, so royal tombs were filled with grave goods. In Mesopotamia, the royal graves at Ur held great riches, which shows that a small ruling elite held a large share of the wealth. Harappan graves usually held only modest things, such as pots and ornaments.
Example
The tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun (c. 14th century BCE) is in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor in Egypt. Howard Carter's team found it in 1922, and it was still largely intact. It held about 5,000 objects. Among them were model boats meant to carry the king's body "to heaven", statuettes with the king's head on bird or animal bodies, and hunting chariots.
Don't confuse with
- Hoard: a hoard is a store of valuables hidden for safekeeping, usually by living people who meant to come back for it. Grave goods are buried with a dead person and are meant for the afterlife.
- Mummification: this is the process of preserving the body itself. Grave goods are the objects placed around the body.