Art as Ritual Engagement in the Funerary Programme of Watetkhethor at Saqqara, c. 2345 BC

Barbara O’Neill focuses on Watetkhethor, an elite woman buried within the vast mastaba complex of her husband Mereruka at Saqqara in the early Sixth Dynasty. Her study asks how the specifically female imagery associated with Watetkhethor functioned within a ritual funerary programme and what those scenes may reveal about an elite woman’s expectations of death and the afterlife.

Some images place Watetkhethor alongside Mereruka; others belong to spaces associated with her own funerary cult. O’Neill follows the arrangement through the tomb’s chambers, including the pillared hall and burial chapel, asking whether these pictures helped enact ritual rather than simply decorate its setting. Such an extensive programme for an elite woman is unusual, making the relationship between images, gender and the afterlife unusually visible.