“I am your companion on earth, fight for me!”: Mutuality in Ancient Egyptian Letters to the Dead in the End of 3rd – the Beginning of 2nd Millennium BC

Abstract

Although the ideological foundation of mutual aid within ancient Egyptian small social groups (family, neighbors, etc.) is mostly clear, very few written sources reveal such customs and practices of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. This gap is to some extent filled by Letters to the Dead – written requests for help addressed to deceased relatives, often mentioning mutual obligations of the living “sender” and the deceased “recipient”. Most “senders” of such letters require the “addressees” to follow the principle of reciprocity, a kind of do ut des: since the living contribute to the well-being of the dead by performing cult actions, the latter must now help the living. The rule of mutual assistance was so strict and pervasive that it transcended the boundary of life and death. The Letters to the Dead imply that deceased relatives remained firmly embedded in social networks of mutual aid. However, the most valued was not  a strictly fixed “return” of the once received assistance, but the confidence that the person who received support will not fail to come to the aid of his “benefactor” if trouble happens to the latter. At the same time, the Letters to the Dead show that Egyptians considered it not too petty to refer to their former merits in desperate times: for example, to mention an offering of a bull leg and seven quails in a letter to the deceased parents.