Many of our sources for ancient Egyptian astronomical activity come from funerary locations: tombs, coffins, sarcophagi, and mortuary temples. Textual sources often occur in parallel with, or as part of, funerary literature describing the afterlife. These sources include prose or dramatic compositions, diagrams of the night sky, and tables of astronomical data recording or describing star movements. These materials represent the sky in the model universe of the temple or burial, usually decorating the ceiling or underside of a coffin or sarcophagus lid.

This talk examines the role of astronomy in the culture of the afterlife, the function of astronomical texts in tombs, and possible relationships between astronomy among the living and the occurrence of astronomical materials for the use of the dead.