Concept of mwt m wHm: Posthumous Punishment and Death

This thesis is a study of the concept of mwt m wHm, a phrase that is encountered on rather limited occasions in the Coffin Texts and in the Book of the Dead. mwt m wHm is a phrase that is often referred to as ‘second death’ by the Egyptologists. However, the concept of mwt m wHm has received comparatively little attention. This thesis analyses the occurrences of all the attestations collected for this study, covering the time period of the Middle Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom. It is this timeframe during which mwt m wHm first appears and develops. Comparative material has been used from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts to present potential development of the concept, as well as from the time period after New Kingdom to demonstrate continuity, while strongly been influenced by foreign cultures. Due to the limitation of the available references to the phrase mwt m wHm and the limited context of these attestations, a further research into posthumous punishment was required to determine the underlying concept of mwt m wHm. The aim of this thesis is to provide an in-depth insight into the phrase mwt m wHm and to further understand the idea of posthumous punishment and potential death. This is achieved through the study of explicit usages of mwt mw wHm in the primary sources, and through the underworld images and themes; such as the places of punishment, the agents of punishment and the manner of punishment, all which are presented outside the core texts that explicitly mention the phrase mwt m wHm