This dissertation will use an interdisciplinary approach to address the issue of health in Egypt's New Kingdom. Focusing mainly on osteological and textual data sets, it will address how health was both a biological and social construct.  The following is a sample of research questions: How was poor health perceived socially, and what factors (ie degree of pathology, length of pathology, disease vs. congenital pathology) were taken into account when poor health was stigmatized?  How were identities surrounding health constructed, reified, and displayed?  How were these identities maintained or altered in the afterlife? How did social or occupational role affect the perception of an individual with poor health? What kinds of diseases, nutritional deficiencies, trauma, and stress-related injuries were these individuals facing?  How was either poor or good health used socially, economically, or politically?