After death: rituality used to legitimise the appropriation of abandoned goods in ancient Egypt

This paper aims to analyse the rituals used in ancient Egypt to legitimise the taking possession of abandoned or ownerless goods after a person's death. It examines two case studies: 1. goods left behind with unclear succession or disputed inheritance; and 2. goods "brought" with the deceased into the afterlife. In the first case, the burial of the deceased was often used to gain legitimate access to disputed inheritance, as evidenced in two letters to the dead, Papyrus Boulaq 10 and Ostracon Petrie 16. In the second case, Ostracon Vienna O. Wien Aeg. 1, several sources from the Valley of the Kings, and the activities of the priest Butehamun in the Theban necropolis, demonstrate how the rituals of mapping, listing contents, and restoring ancient tombs create the semantic for abandoned goods and their successive appropriation. As one of the prerequisites of a ritual is to obscure the relationship between action and outcome with the performance of the ritual itself, this paper aims to uncover the codification of rituals for the appropriation of abandoned or ownerless goods after death in ancient Egypt.