Life cannot be man, and death cannot be the soul. The one who accompanied the living, Shang, accompanied the dead, walked the path of a slave, accompanied by a bereaved slave. Ten years ago, the bizarre death of the woman opposite me caused my adoptive father to mistreat me for a whole ten years. The cold wind blew, the door of the ghost was opened, evil had its consequences, and life and death were at a dilemma. A lonely soul in the middle of the night ... Why did he stay ... Why did he sigh? A story about repentance and redemption, here. What kind of secret was hidden within ... In the end, who was the real mastermind ...

The ancient city of Palmyra, which today lies in the desert of modern Syria, was once a flourishing city of trade. During the Roman era, when Palmyra was at the height of its powers, several hundred funerary monuments were constructed in the city, and within these, portraits of Palmyra's inhabitants were once displayed. These representations of men, women, and children from the Roman Imperial period form the largest body of portraiture known outside of Rome itself, and their study is essential to our understanding of how funerary portraiture in the Roman provinces was used as a mechanism to shape and express identity. This volume offers a study and catalogue of the funerary portraits of Palmyrene women from the first century BC to the third century AD. It explores both the visual qualities of the portraits themselves, and the complexities of the space in which they were originally situated. By analysing the civic and religious activities of women within Palmyra, this book also situates these portraits in a broader context. Through this approach, the work thus addresses key questions concerning the characteristics of Palmyrene female portraits and what this indicates about the nature of female identity in Roman Palmyra, how the portrayals of women changed over time, and what might have caused such changes.

Cripina and Her Sisters explores visual imagery found on burial artifacts of prominent early Christian women. It carefully situates the tomb art within the cultural context of customary Roman commemorations of the dead and provides an in-depth review of women‘s history in the first four centuries of Christianity. From this, a fascinating picture emerges of women‘s authority in the early church--a picture either not readily available or recognized, or even sadly distorted in the written history.

Ancient Egyptian artists produced masterpieces and works of funerary art on a scale never seen before or since. This book is the first to discuss the artistic development of funerary scenes over the four hundred years of the New Kingdom, covering the different reigns of the period. It shows the sequence of events in the funeral processions and how they developed over the course of time. Moreover, it covers many different sites in the Theban necropolis, including scenes from many closed and unpublished tombs. This first-ever survey describes the pictorial drama that was the funeral procession, explores rare and unique scenes, and shows the echoes that remain from these ancient funerals in modern Egypt today.

When her sister died, Pam Vetter got a wake up call that the funeral doesn't always belong to the family. She became a Certified Funeral Celebrant to help families plan funerals for loved ones. Through this book, she widens her reach to help families, so when the time comes, the healing can begin. “I lived it, breathed it, and grieved it. I'm not alone. People need to be involved in the process of funeral planning and yet they don't know where to turn. I wrote this book to reach out and help families,” Vetter said. Saying farewell is one of the most important days in someone's life, but families need help in planning a funeral. This book reminds families to know their consumer rights in organizing a funeral. Event funerals aren't about spending more money, instead they're focused on the life lived, storytelling and playing favorite music. Families are at their most vulnerable when someone dies, but by being heard in the process, families come through the experience with hands-on involvement, dignity and understanding. Most importantly, family members who are heard, start on a path toward healing. Families are entitled to use stories or music that fits the lifestyle and personality of a loved one, while reflecting their spiritual or non-spiritual beliefs. Every family should have freedom in the funeral service to hold a farewell gathering that truly reflects the life of their loved one. The final funeral service should always belong to the family. As Vetter shares her path toward becoming a funeral celebrant, you'll learn about funeral planning and how to get hands-on healing when a loved one dies. She focuses on empowering the family who knew their loved one the best by choosing poignant music and powerful stories to share at the service. You'll also be inspired to make choices about your own farewell one day. It's a process of living, learning, sharing, and healing. The bottom line is that knowledge is empowering especially when it comes to funeral service.

Most research has accepted stereotypical images of Muslim women, treating their outward manifestations, such as veiling, as passive and oppressive. Muslim women have been depicted as different, and by exoticizing (orientalizing) them—or Islamic society in general—“they” have been dealt with outside of general women’s history and regarded as having little to contribute to the writing of world history or to the life of their sisters worldwide. By approaching widely used sources with different questions and methodologies, and by using new or little-used material (with much primary research), this book redresses these deficiencies. Scholars revisit and reevaluate scripture and scriptural interpretation; church records involving non-Muslim women of the Arab world; archival court records dating from the present back to the Ottoman period; and the oral and material culture and its written record, including oral history, textbooks, sufi practices, and the politics of dress. By deconstructing the past, these scholars offer fresh perspectives on women’s roles and aspirations in Middle East societies.

Gender and Material Culture is the first complete study in the archaeology of gender, exploring the differences between the religious life of men and women. Gender in medieval monasticism influenced landscape contexts and strategies of economic management, the form and development of buildings and their symbolic and iconographic content. Women's religious experience was often poorly documented, but their archaeology indicates a shared tradition which was closely linked with, and valued by local communities. The distinctive patterns observed suggest that gender is essential to archaeological analysis.

Women, Gender and Identity in Third Intermediate Period Egypt clarifies the role of women in Egyptian society during the first millennium BCE, allowing for more nuanced discussions of women in the Third Intermediate Period. It is an intensive study of a corpus that is both geographically and temporally localized around the city of Thebes, which was the cultural and religious centre of Egypt during this period and home to a major national necropolis. Unlike past studies which have relied heavily on literary evidence, Li presents a refreshing material culture-based analysis of identity construction in elite female burial practices. This close examination of the archaeology of women’s burial presents an opportunity to investigate the social, professional and individual identities of women beyond the normative portrayals of the subordinate wife, mother and daughter. Taking a methodological and material culture-based approach which adds new dimensions to scholarly and popular understandings of ancient Egyptian women, this fascinating and important study will aid scholars of Egyptian history and archaeology, and anyone with an interest in women and gender in the ancient world.