Hair and Death in Ancient Egypt: The Mourning Rite in the Times of the Pharaohs

Maria Rosa Valdesogo examines the striking role of hair in ancient Egyptian mourning and funerary ritual. Reliefs and paintings repeatedly show mourners handling, shaking or pulling their hair, gestures that formed part of ceremonies surrounding death and the hoped-for regeneration of the deceased. Rather than treating these images as incidental details, Valdesogo investigates hair as a meaningful element within Egyptian ritual behaviour and beliefs about rebirth.

Developed from the author’s doctoral research, the study analyses visual and funerary evidence to reconstruct the relationship between mourning gestures, the body and the transition to the afterlife. Small details of a figure’s appearance can carry religious meaning where no written explanation survives, making the mourner’s gesture an important clue to the ritual world depicted in Egyptian tombs.