What Makes a Master Copy? Analyzing Identifying Features of Proposed Vorlagen for Egyptian Funerary Texts

In the realm of Egyptian funerary studies, the existence of Vorlagen, or "master copies," has often been put forward as a vehicle for the transmission and re-production of texts across different media. Much of the work done towards identifying these theorized manuscripts has been conducted on the back end, comparing witnesses in order to determine if they may have been produced from a common Vorlage. Although the unusual features of a handful of individual manuscripts and objects have led many to theorize their original use as master copies, there has been little comparative work done to analyze the range of expressions that these features may take. The goal of this dissertation is to centrally locate, identify, and analyze the elements of manuscripts and objects that scholars have used to theoretically identify them as master copies, and then to discuss those elements within a framework related to the transmission and usage of funerary Vorlagen in antiquity. Instead of acting as a "checklist" for identification, this dissertation hopes to illustrate the diversity of forms that features (and manuscripts) can assume, as well as pushing back against the idea that master copies can be securely identified by the presence of a singular element. In the broader sense, this work is aimed at prompting further discussion around the conflation of appearance and absolute use of manuscripts in modern scholarship, and instead argues for nuanced and thorough consideration of individual manuscripts and their potential use cases and placements in the chain of transmission of funerary texts.