This lecture is based on the speaker’s doctoral dissertation and explores women’s roles in the cult of the New Kingdom through textual, visual, and archaeological evidence. It focuses on cultic titles and visual representations attested on objects such as statues, canopic equipment, stelae, and tomb decoration, and examines how these sources can be used to reconstruct women’s participation in religious life.
Methodologically, the lecture combines epigraphic, iconographic, prosopographical, and archaeological approaches and addresses the challenges posed by uneven and context-dependent source material. Two case studies form the core of the presentation: the first examines a woman known solely through isolated attestations, without preserved information about her family background; the second explores how women’s cultic roles can be contextualised within elite family networks and institutional frameworks.