Burial Assemblages of Dynasty 21–25 is an impressive, comprehensive work dealing with the development of funerary customs in the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1100–650 BCE), one of the most misunderstood time periods in ancient Egyptian history. The work precedes the founding of “TiMe, Transformation in the Mediterranean: 1200–500 BC,” an international study group, and is incorporated into the Austrian Academy of Sciences’s series Contributions to the Chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The major focus of this book, a reworking of David A. Aston’s doctoral dissertation awarded in 1987 from the University of Birmingham, is the analysis of the specific tomb objects from Dynasties Twenty-one to Twenty-five in order to attain more accurate dates for the tomb group as a whole. The goals of the study are threefold: to provide a corpus of all published Third Intermediate Period tomb groups; to produce typologies for individual grave goods; and to determine the changes and developments in Third Intermediate Period tomb groups through time.

In order to realize the first of these objectives, Aston has compiled an impressive catalog of over one thousand published tomb groups, which to this reviewer is the major accomplishment and strength of the book. The first three chapters are dedicated to a listing of all known tomb groups throughout the borders of Egypt. These have been organized geographically from north to south, with Thebes documented in a separate chapter. Each tomb group is described using a detailed, balanced inventory of the funerary ensembles, indicating, where possible, the position, location, and date of the tomb goods. Genealogical charts are interspersed within the inventories to demonstrate the relationships of people in the tomb groups. Additional family trees are also included in the appendix.

The first chapter details fifteen sites from Lower Egypt: Tanis, Tell Zuwelein, Tell Nebesheh, Qantir, Bubastis, Leontopolis, Tell el-Yahudieh, Saft el-Henneh, Mendes, Tell el-Balamun, Buto, Tell el-Retabeh, Giza, Memphis, and Saqqara. Commencing with a short history of the excavation in Lower Egypt, Aston notes that, with the exception of Tanis, very few sites, and even fewer Third Intermediate Period cemeteries, have been excavated. Most of the knowledge of northern burial customs during the Third Intermediate Period stems from the eastern Delta. Consequently, the tomb groups at Tanis are described first, and are ordered chronologically, beginning with the earliest, Psusennes I (Tomb III). These are illustrated with a map of the royal burials.

The following chapter describes sites in Upper Egypt, which have seen more archaeological activity than those of Lower Egypt, and about which far more material has been published. However, of the twenty-six sites under discussion, twenty-three of these sites were published separately more than sixty years ago when the Third Intermediate Period was very much neglected and misunderstood. The sites include Mazghuneh, Kafr Ammar, Gerzeh, Riqqeh, Meidum, Hawara, Abusir el-Meleq, Harageh, Lahun, Gurob, Sedment, Heracleopolis, Tehneh, Beni Hasan, El-Ashmunein, El-Amarna, Assuit, Matmar, Mostagedda, Qau, Abydos, Denderah, El-Moaalla, Esna, Kom Ombo, and the Dakhleh Oasis. Many of these areas are necropoleis for the poorer classes of the population, and as such, this section provides a valuable contribution to the study of non-elite burials during the Third Intermediate Period. Aston’s unique, comparative study is rich in hypothesis; for example, he not only lists the grave inventories of 276 of the published graves in Matmar, but analyzes the differences between burial contents of women, men, and children. The analysis demonstrates that specific coffin types were frequently dependent upon the age of the deceased. Children were most often buried in rectangular coffins or none at all, while adults were buried in anthropoid or oval coffins. Further study of the grave goods reveals that amulets were included predominantly in the burials of children, followed by women. Moreover, specific amulets were found to be more characteristic of a child’s grave or an adult grave.

Chapter 3 focuses specifically on the Theban area, which trumps all other sites in Egypt in terms of Third Intermediate Period excavations, hence more published works. All published tomb groups attributed to the Third Intermediate Period—such as the Valley of the Kings, Dra aAbu el-Naga, Assasif, Deir el-Bahri, Valleys south of Deir el-Bahri, the Ramesseum Area, Deir el-Medineh, the Valley of the Queens, Wadi Hagi Hamed, and Medinet Habu—are documented and arranged in the order adopted by Bertha Porter and Rosalind Moss (Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings, vols. I–VII, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960–79).

As a major contributor to current scholarship on the dating of the kings’ reigns of the Third Intermediate Period, Aston immediately engages the reader in the book’s introduction with an in-depth discussion into the thorny issue of Third Intermediate Period chronology. Here, he offers the reader an overview of the current state of the controversies that lies within the realm of the chronology while reiterating his own version. In general, Karl Jansen-Winkeln’s chronological sequence for the dating of the Twenty-first Dynasty kings is utilized with changes, and Kenneth Kitchen’s system for dating of the contemporary high priests of Amun is employed simultaneously (Karl Jansen-Winkeln, “The Chronology of the Third Intermediate Period: The 22nd–24th Dynasty,” in Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss, and David Warburton, eds., Handbook of Ancient Egyptian Chronology, Leiden: Brill, 2006, 234–64; and Kenneth Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt [1100–650 BC] , Warminster: Aris & Philips, 1972/86/95). Aston states that the listing of Twenty-first Dynasty kings and the high priests of Amun essentially differs little from Kitchen’s chronology. However, scholarly opinions on the chronology for Dynasties Twenty-two and Twenty-three diverge markedly, leading to the development of several opposing chronologies. Aston omits Takeloth II from the Twenty-second Dynasty line of kings and places him in opposition, in the Theban Twenty-third Dynasty. The subsequent discussion on the Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties is a shortened account of Aston’s “Takeloth II, A King of the Herakleopolitan/Theban Twenty-Third Dynasty Revisited: The Chronology of Dynasties 22 and 23” (in Gerard Broekman, Robert J. Demarée, and Olaf Kaper, eds., The Libyan Period in Egypt: Historical and Cultural Studies into the 21st and 24th Dynasties, Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2009, 1–28).

Parts of this discussion may be difficult to follow for readers not acquainted with the topic. Aston acknowledges that as the political history of the late Libyan Period is uncertain (for example, at least nine lines of kings were ruling contemporaneously during the eighth-century BCE), the chronology of the rulers remains predisposed to several different interpretations. As such, Aston uses absolute dates to date the tomb groups. This is followed by a short discussion on the means of dating burial assemblages through the inscription of the kings’ names on the leather mummy tabs (stola) and pendants. Additionally, the use of genealogies during the Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties, orthography of the writing of Osiris, and stylistic developments for each of the major objects buried with the deceased are all useful dating criteria utilized in the book.

Aston’s second objective is successfully brought to fruition in the fourth chapter, consolidating his own years of research with that of leading scholars, bringing further clarity and meaning to the contents of these previously reported tombs. He presents a comprehensive synopsis of the typologies of the major grave goods (coffins, bead nets, canopic jars and related objects, Osiris and Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figures, papyri, pottery, Theban stelae, ushabtis, shabti jars and boxes, and miscellaneous items) with a view to determining their value as dating criteria. Throughout the chapter, he stresses that the use of a given grave object as a means of dating the tomb group is paramount. In this section, all categories of grave goods are classified into their specific typology from which Aston proceeds to draw conclusions as to the dating of the objects. Figures and plates with black-and-white photographs generally illustrate the various categories, while the chronological sequences of the funerary goods are tabulated following the discussion on dates. Here, he adds relevance and makes further connections not developed previously. The chapter begins with a typological study of coffins as they occur consistently among the classes of objects in the tomb groups and afford the best body of material for the typological study. In this section, Aston provides a summary of the latest research on Third Intermediate Period coffins by drawing on the work of leading contributors to this area such as Andrzej Niwinski (21st Dynasty Coffins from Thebes: Chronological and Typological Studies, Mainz am Rhein: P. von Zabern, 1988), John Taylor (“Theban Coffins from the Twenty-second to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, Dating and Synthesis of Development,” in Nigel Strudwick and John H. Taylor, eds., The Theban Necropolis. Past, Present and Future, London: British Museum, 2003, 95–119), Rene Van Walsem (“The Study of 21st Dynasty Coffins from Thebes,” Bibliotheca Orientalis 50, nos.1/2 (1993): 9–91); and The Coffin of Djedmontuiuefankh in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden, Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1997), and J. P. Elias (Coffin Inscription in Egypt after the New Kingdom: A Study of Text Production and Use in Elite Mortuary Preparation, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1993), and uses the typology created by Taylor in discussing the development of coffins.

In the concluding segment, chapter 5, the goal of elucidating the changes in the tomb groups through time is accomplished by connecting existing studies mentioned previously with Aston’s own interpretations. The changes in the tomb groups, and, therefore, burial customs, are discussed following the regional divisions of the first three chapters beginning with the Eastern Delta. The chronological development of tomb groups from Middle Egypt is more difficult to assess before the late eighth- and seventh-century BCE due to the lack of published material. It is only at Abydos that one finds burials spanning the entire Third Intermediate Period. As is evidenced by chapter 3, the Theban tomb groups have provided more material than all sites combined, and the stylistic changes in tomb groups can be more accurately charted than elsewhere. These can be divided into six phases of development, as shown in table format. This is followed by an examination of the demographic, social, and regional differences in the grave goods. Aston succinctly summarizes his conclusions in the General Remarks section, in which he notes the lack of tomb construction that characterizes the Third Intermediate Period, the usurpation of sarcophagi, the burial of royalty with reused pieces and heirlooms, and the influence of old temples on the location of tombs, to mention just a few observations.

Although the primary focus of Aston’s study concerns the objects found in the tombs, the main body of the text is followed by an appendix giving a brief overview of tomb architecture. Here, a short survey is provided of what is known of Third Intermediate Period royal tombs, elite and non-elite tombs. He also provides genealogical charts, an index of proper names, museum and place numbers.

The usefulness of Burial Assemblages of Dynasty 21–25 is enhanced by the twenty-one black-and-white photographs and twenty-seven illustrations included in the text. The copious footnotes are a mine of information for the researcher. Overall, the text is an excellent addition to the library of the serious student and researcher. As Manfred Bietak states in the preface, this book will become a key reference work for the study of the material culture of the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period. I am in agreement that it will indeed serve as a springboard for subsequent in-depth research into this fascinating period in Egyptian history.