32nd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists
Athens, 26–29 August 2026
This essay examines how amulets used in ancient Egyptian funerary contexts were distributed and reinterpreted across the Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. Ancient Egyptian funerary texts and ideology revolve around death, judgement, rebirth and eternal life. This paper focuses on amulets depicting deities and symbols (e.g. Ptah-Pataikos, Osiris, Horus, Isis, Taweret, the scarab and the wedjat eye), associated with these beliefs and important funerary compositions, such as the Book of the Dead. These artefacts were originally intended to provide protection in the Egyptian afterlife, and so they were commonly found in Egyptian tombs. However, their archaeological context varies across different Mediterranean regions (e.g. the Aegean, Cyprus, Italy and Sardinia), as they were used as both votive offerings and grave goods. The funerary and apotropaic ideas associated with these objects may persist or gradually transform into new religious concepts when entering different cultural settings. This study aims to compare and interpret distribution patterns and investigate reinterpretation prompted by changes in cultural and archaeological contexts, based on statistical data and references to specific objects or groups.