This work is based on my doctoral thesis titled The Realia of Egyptian Burial Practices in the Ptolemaic Period (332–330 BC) submitted to the University of Oxford in 2008. Bumps and humps along the road to completion have delayed its publication until now, although I have already published small sections of this study in journals and conference proceedings, while parts of it have been used by others in academic publications (with and without due acknowledgment). As always, when a manuscript remains unpublished for a long period of time, there is an urge to reconsider everything anew. Indeed, although the core of this study remains the same, I have rewritten it in its entirety, changed its organisation and updated it with more recent research. However, to avoid delaying its publication indefinitely, I have left the section on the archaeological analysis almost unchanged, apart from some additions and minor revisions.

While working on this manuscript many friends and colleagues have provided me with help and assistance, and it is my privilege to acknowledge my obligation and gratitude to them all. Prof. John Baines, whose help and support has never wavered during the last few years, and who kindly read through the Introduction and made a number of suggestions that I have incorporated here. Prof. John Tait and Prof. Willy Clarysse, my doctoral thesis’ examiners, made a number of helpful comments and suggestions, particularly with regards to the organisation of the original work, which I have followed in this publication. Prof. Willy Clarysse also kindly read through Table 8 and Appendix 2, and made a number of helpful comments and suggestions, as well as providing additional references. Prof. Günter Vittmann, who kindly took the time to answer a number of questions I had on some of the texts discussed here, and very generously provided me with copies of articles and book chapters to which I had no access, as well as photographs of some of the papyri discussed. Similarly, Dr. Martin Stadler for generously providing me with copies of some of his work to which I had no access while working in China, and for sharing information about a stela from Edfu. Prof. Richard Jasnow for providing me with a photograph of a burial-tax receipt recorded in a Demotic ostracon in the Smithsonian Institute, and for giving me permission to include it in this work. Dr. Dorothea Arnold for granting me permission to study and publish the fieldnotes and photographs produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s excavations in the Asasif under the direction of Herbert Winlock and Ambrose Lansing. Dr. Catharine H. Roehrig for kindly confirming permission and for helping me to obtain high resolution scans of this material. Dr. Marsha Hill for generously providing me with additional photographs from Lansing’s unpublished records. Dr. Janice Kamrin for her incredible help with the acquisition of additional photographs from these MET’s unpublished excavation reports, and for all her efforts in trying to answer my questions regarding various aspects of these excavations. Dr. Andreas Effland for kindly sharing with me information from his research and work at Edfu. Dr. Mark Depauw for allowing me access to his database of textual material from Akhmim. My thanks are also due to Dr. Katelyn Chin, Acquisitions Editor at Brill, for her incredible help during the preparation of this monograph, as well as to the Series Editors and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitute to my friends Dr. Francisco Bosch-Puche, whose help in obtaining research material, as well as his encouragement and moral support, have been very important in the completion of this publication; and equally Christina Adams for generously allowing me access to her doctoral thesis, for our many highly enjoyable and profitable conversations on funerary practices and related topics, and for her encouragement and moral support, which have also been very important to me and my work.