Stela from the Tomb of a Noblewoman

In ancient Egypt, a tomb was not simply a place for the burial of remains, but rather the site of quite literal rebirth. Here, the individual’s soul was born again, into the afterlife. But surprisingly, the ancient Egyptians believed that to make this rebirth possible for a woman, it was necessary that she briefly turn into a man, in order to conceive the fetus of her reborn self. Guided by new research inspired in part by feminist scholarship, our collection exhibition A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt explores how this process was thought to take place.

Though rebirth in the tomb required gender transformation for women, in the next world women lived forever returned to their original state. In this very ancient and rare Early Dynastic Period stela, a noblewoman is seated at an offering table, able to eat and drink for all eternity. The demands of rebirth are long past and will not be faced again. For the Egyptians, people were reborn only once. There was no further reincarnation beyond the next world. - Stela from the Tomb of a Noblewoman, c.2675-2170 B.C.E. Limestone. Brooklyn Museum.