• Best of luck to the class of 2024 for their HSC exams. You got this!
    Let us know your thoughts on the HSC exams here
  • YOU can help the next generation of students in the community!
    Share your trial papers and notes on our Notes & Resources page
MedVision ad

Literature + Funerary Texts in Ramesside Society (1 Viewer)

HNCS

Fanatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
74
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
I'm doing a powerpoint point prseentation on these two syllubus poitns:

funerary texts: The Book of the Dead and the Am Duat (Book of What is in the
Netherworld), The Book of Gates

writing and literature: love poetry, The Tale of the Two Brothers, Horus and Seth, TheReport of Wenamun

was wondering if anyone knew any good sources or good notes?

big big big thanks in advance.
 
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
Hmm, I think a good place to start would be Lichtheim's notes - so look in Vol II of Ancient Egyptian Literature.

I'd usually recommend reading the primary sources (Lichtheim - they're all there), but they're hard to understand, and, unless you're really motivated, you won't stick through all of them.

Maybe also have a look in something like The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt - that would also have good introductions to all of those texts, I think.

Your teacher's a bit odd in chosing older texts (The Book of Coming Forth by Day [Book of the Dead]) was really a New Kingdom rendition of the Coffin Texts, which were in turn a Middle Kingdom rendition of the Pyramid Texts... Then again, that's usually the case with any NK religious text.

At least all the literature that you've listed was from the NK - with the exception of The Contendings of Horus and Seth, which is a NK version of a very old (predynastic) myth. They should have put in The Doomed Prince, as well! <3 Prince.

So anyway... Check out Lichtheim and the OEAE. Definitely report back if you have any specific problems - with the exception of the love poetry, and some of the funerary texts, I know all the texts quite well. :)
 

HNCS

Fanatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
74
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
Thank you so much for the suggestion. I'll go around and look for Lichtheim. Sounds really good.

oh and by the way, the texts i listed come straight from the syllubus, i'm just covering it...

anyway, THANKS!!
 

HNCS

Fanatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
74
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
Thanks for the suggestion, i got the book. It's amazing!!

Now i've got a new question, since the syllubus really only just says this:
funerary texts: The Book of the Dead and the Am Duat (Book of What is in the
Netherworld), The Book of Gates

I"m actually quite confused as to what i need to know... Do i need to know what changes took in R society, or what spells there were, or who used it. Just generally confused in direction. Anyone know what the board of studies will expect from us?

Thanks.
 
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
HNCS said:
Thanks for the suggestion, i got the book. It's amazing!!

Now i've got a new question, since the syllubus really only just says this:
funerary texts: The Book of the Dead and the Am Duat (Book of What is in the
Netherworld), The Book of Gates

I"m actually quite confused as to what i need to know... Do i need to know what changes took in R society, or what spells there were, or who used it. Just generally confused in direction. Anyone know what the board of studies will expect from us?

Thanks.
Hmm, you'll need to know the content of the texts reasonably well and, like you said, how they were important. Who used them and to what end.

The main religious change in Ramesside society was the shift towards personal piety. Essentially:

Old Kingdom: King is god. Gods worshipped as gods up in the sky - not very well understood. No person could really commune with the gods except for the king (Pyramid Texts) and, to an extent, the priests.

Middle Kingdom: King is an image of god. Gods worshipped as gods slightly closer to earth - still not very well understood. People could pray directly to the gods via shrines and religious texts (Coffin Texts).

New Kingdom: King is a representative of god. Gods worshipped as agents within the divine drama - new religious dramas eg Contendings of Horus and Seth, etc. People could ask, generally, for protection in the afterlife (Book of the Dead etc).

Amarna: Akhenaten messes the whole thing around and essentially reverts it back to the Old Kingdom practical theology: Noone could talk to the gods. If you wanted to worship the gods, you had to through the king.

Ramesside: Personal piety; reaction to Amarna age. People talk directly to the gods, and the gods actually respond by helping them. If you shat a god off, they'd send evil your way. If you were nice, they'd help you. Ramses II's divine rescue by Amun at Kadesh is a royal example of this, the numerous Dier el-Medina personal piety stelae are also good.

This is a common trap: Talking about Horus and Seth as the whole myth - Osiris being chopped up and stuck back together, etc. Osiris' killing is not mentioned in the Contendings, it is mentioned in a much later text on the walls of the Ptolemaic temple at Edfu.

Make sure you know the Contendings, ie the general plot. It has a social (not really religious) significance. As for the Book of the Dead etc, remember what place they had in religion and how they were recorded (papyrii (pAni the best example from the Ramesside period) and on tomb walls).

Hope that helps.
 

HNCS

Fanatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
74
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
Woah..

Yeah that really helps. thank you so so much.

Best of luck for your studies at maquarie.
 
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
Okay, I'll post some articles up about this, if it helps you. (All <10% of volumes, in complaince with copyright).

'Funerary Literature.' - Leonard Lesko

The funerary literature of the ancient Egyptians includes various collections of texts associated with elite burials from almost all of Egypt's historic periods. These texts were copied in many ways on the walls of tombs, and occasionally on temple walls, as well as on various objects placed inside tombs—principally coffins and papyri. The term does not cover the biographical texts, formulaic offering texts, and texts that are essentially hymns to various deities, which may also be found in tombs. Some ritual texts are included, but others—such as the Opening of the Mouth ritual, often found in tombs—are not generally included. Some mythological and cosmogonic texts found in tombs, such as the Book of the Heavenly Cow or the Birth of the Solar Disk, are included, but the Jumilhac Papyrus and Bremner-Rhind Papyrus, which are largely mythological, are not. The emphasis of funerary literature is on eschatological works, principally those that deal with life after death in the company of the gods—that is, guidebooks to the beyond. Despite the narrowness of the topic, such works were popular in all periods of Egyptian history and represent the largest genre of texts that survive, and also the group that is represented by the largest number of copies.

The Old Kingdom's Pyramid Texts, the Middle Kingdom's Coffin Texts, and the New Kingdom's Book of Going Forth by Day (Book of the Dead), as well as certain guidebooks to the beyond, such as the Book of That Which Is in the Underworld (Amduat), the Book of Gates, and the Book of Caverns, are the principal works of this genre, and there is a certain amount of overlap among them. The Old Kingdom's Pyramid Texts include some variants found on Middle Kingdom coffins as well as on the walls of a few Saite period priests' and priestesses' tomb-chapels at Thebes that date from almost two thousand years later. The Middle Kingdom's Coffin Texts include some variants of Pyramid Texts as well as other Old Kingdom material and early versions of chapters of the Book of Going Forth by Day. Copies of the Book of Going Forth by Day are essentially papyrus documents, but many individual chapters are found on tomb walls and even on the walls of at least one royal mortuary temple; since this is the New Kingdom mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, the last large and the only well-preserved pharaonic temple, such texts could also have occurred on others now lost. Some of its chapters are also found on scarabs, shawabtis, linen strips, and hypocephali, and in many forms these continued to be very popular well into Roman times.

In the case of the Pyramid Texts, there is a clear chronological order to the surviving documents; the burial chamber of Unas, last king of the fifth dynasty, held the earliest known copy. Earlier examples might have been on perishable materials placed in tombs that were later robbed and despoiled. Most of the funerary literature has in common the reconciliation of the two principal cults involved with death and the afterlife, and both are related to the myth of divine kingship. They come down to us first and foremost in the royal context: the Pyramid Texts within the kings' burial chambers. Considered a living king from earliest times was the divine Horus—son and avenger of his father, Osiris—who at death became Osiris, with all the mythological connections involved. In the fifth dynasty's Pyramid Texts, the king has also become the “son of Re,” who at death joins his father on the sun's bark in his daytime and nighttime voyages through the sky. The cyclical nature of these cults, as well as their death and rebirth motifs, makes it possible for them to be assimilated together even if not always entirely reconciled. All three collections of texts have certain sections that show total separation, others showing some syncretism, and still others that show complete assimilation of the two deities, their cults, and their descriptions of the afterlife. What is remarkable is that these kings' texts were almost immediately used in queens' tombs, and thereafter were quickly taken over by nonroyals, then eventually made available to almost anyone.

The earliest examples of funerary literature in Old Kingdom pyramids were not all created specifically for the purpose of accompanying those royal burials. Judging from their contents, which refer to both pyramids and desert burials, and both royal and nonroyal owners, these texts indicate that they were composed from various sources dealing with death and the afterlife and were compiled by priests, generally of the Heliopolitan persuasion. The language and orthography of the texts also seem to indicate that the texts came from different time periods and perhaps from different places as well.

One interesting feature is that many if not all of the Pyramid Texts (and the Coffin Texts, too) were written originally in the first person, and an attempt (not always successful) was made to change the pronoun references to the actual names of the intended owners. This personalization or customizing of the texts was deemed essential to ensure that the owner was fully incorporated into the texts, but the effort involved hundreds of substitutions for each document. Coffins were occasionally reused with incomplete substitution of names, which seems to indicate that some individuals were more interested in the convenience or attractiveness of a second-hand coffin than in personalized textual content.

Manuscripts of the Book of Going Forth by Day include not only the name of the deceased with the title of Osiris prefixed to it but also, often, his or her official title in the bureaucracy, with filiation as well. Perhaps because of individual preferences, but also to keep the books' customized appearance, they were generally written to order from beginning to end rather than produced as anonymous shelf copies with spaces left for names to be filled in later. The few drawings or paintings of the deceased in the books can hardly be considered portraits, but with the names and titles of the deceased appended, and their correct gender and proper dress for the time depicted, the purchasers would probably have been satisfied. The cost of the books probably varied considerably, based on the length and height of the scrolls and on the details of workmanship, but the proliferation of short versions, especially from the Late period, suggests that some such guide was available to almost anyone who could afford any burial expenses at all.

The Book of Going Forth by Day is perhaps best known for the vignettes that accompany many of its chapters. Some of these drawings, such as the judgment scene of chapter 125, are very elaborate and provide the focal point of the book even when they are not the logical heart of the work. (This vignette, without accompanying text, survives alone on a very late papyrus.) The number of vignettes is far from uniform from copy to copy. In the case of the high priest Pinedjem of the twenty-first dynasty, there is no vignette for any of the chapters following the single introductory depiction of him at the beginning of the book, while in the book of his daughter Nesitanebetisheru, almost every chapter has a rather large though sketchy drawing.

Some manuscripts seem to show that artist and scribe worked separately (even if these tasks were done by the same person), and most frequently the layout of the whole with drawings was done before the texts were added. This, of course, resulted in some dislocation of drawings, and also in the omission or abbreviation of some texts because of lack of available space. There probably were manuscripts that were carefully collated, but there were also texts that had duplications and misreadings or were otherwise garbled; presumably the latter were provided by scribes who knew that the appearance of the document was enough to satisfy a buyer who either would not or could not read it.

It is reasonably clear that some of the utterances in the Pyramid Texts contain labels that were not intended to be complete sentences or part of the text proper. Some of these may have been titles or filing entries to identify the texts, and others were there to label the deities or objects in plans or vignettes that were not depicted in these pyramid sources. It is, of course, possible that the sources (perhaps on papyri) of the Pyramid Texts had rubrics or some vignettes or both, but the Coffin Texts provide the earliest examples of real rubrics written in red; they also have the earliest vignettes, some of which continued into the Book of Going Forth by Day.

Today, there are editions and translations of these bodies of texts available for study, but there are problems with each of the publications of the edited versions. For the Pyramid Texts, Kurt Sethe (1908–1922) first collected the utterances from the sarcophagus and burial chamber, then worked out toward the antechamber and entrance. Since it is now clear that the texts were originally set forth to follow the funeral procession into the tomb, Sethe's numbering of the spells essentially goes backwards. The pyramid of Unas (being the earliest to have these texts) was taken as a starting point, but it had only about a third of the known texts, and the new texts found in succeeding pyramids were tacked onto the first lot with little regard to where they belonged logically. R. O. Faulkner's translation in this numerical order, though fairly literal, makes no real sense of the whole. A. Piankoff's translation of the Unas texts is closer to the proper order in proceeding from the entrance inward, but he followed the texts around each room, rather than taking the texts of opposite walls to complement each other, and his translations are in some cases a bit free.

One interesting characteristic of some of the Pyramid Texts, which also survived on some coffins, is the mutilation of most of the hieroglyphic signs representing animate objects. In some cases, these individual hieroglyphs are actually carved as two separate pieces divided by blank space, and in others, the snakes, animals, and other creatures have knives in their backs. These were two practices intended to ensure that the intact animal representations would be unable to offer any threat to the deceased person buried in proximity to them.

In editing the Coffin Texts, A. de Buck and his team had neither an established chronological order to help them, nor beginnings or endings that were consistent from one place to another, or even from one coffin to another from the same place. De Buck logically started with one fairly long sequence of spells that occurred on a comparatively large number of manuscripts. He followed this with succeeding sequences that had the best representation, until eventually he had picked up all the loose ends. Exceptions to this method were the texts on papyri included with the corpus, which were quite logically taken in order, and also the Book of the Ways of Rosetan (modernly known as the Book of Two Ways), which was recognized as a complete unit regardless of where it occurred on the coffins, though it was generally on the inside bottoms of the coffins from Bersheh. These two lots were numbered and included at the end of the whole collection, though clearly the latter at least should not have been relegated to this position, and a few spells that belonged with this group had earlier been mistakenly edited separately. Again, a reading or translation of these Coffin Text spells in numerical order has no relation to the arrangement or order of the spells on any manuscript from any of the many places where they were found. Admittedly, it is no easy task to establish an order to these spells: they occur on all six inner faces of the coffins, and in some cases they can be shown to proceed from one side to its opposite parallel wall, and in other cases from one to another contingent sides, while the tops and bottoms generally seem independent.

Among the most difficult problems to resolve in dealing with the Coffin Texts is to establish the precise chronological order of the actual manuscripts, which would probably help in producing stemmata of the texts themselves which would help us better understand the differences among them. Although much development could have taken place in papyrus versions before the texts reached what are essentially definitive versions on the coffins, until the stemmata are worked out, any changes, major or minor, can be seen as going in either direction. Of special interest in the Coffin Texts is the diversity of the texts and their layout in documents from different places, especially since they were found at so many sites throughout Egypt. The coffins from Bersheh have been studied most, but the large number from Meir, and the huge size of the coffins from Siut, make these two sites particularly attractive for further research.

It would seem that the Book of Going Forth by Day would have been the easiest of these collections to edit properly; however, the very early publication of one Late period papyrus established an order for the chapters that was not relevant at all to earlier manuscripts. When E. Naville published a number of parallel versions of the much earlier eighteenth dynasty manuscripts, his desire was to establish the best early text of each chapter, but when he numbered them following Richard Lepsius's publication of the Turin Papyrus, he succeeded in destroying the logical arrangement of all the early documents. When newly discovered chapters are merely tacked onto the end of a growing collection, it is clear that translations of the chapters in numerical order keep getting further from any logical order; indeed, modern translators are in no agreement on where to end the Book of Going Forth by Day.

Division of the texts into units of varying size was indicated in the original manuscripts in several ways. The vertical columns of hieroglyphs that are the Pyramid Texts generally have horizontal line breaks with small squares atop and to one side of these dividing lines to turn them into “houses” (ḥwt) and thus to indicate textual units, which in this collection are usually termed “utterances.” For the Coffin Texts written in cursive hieroglyphs without lines to divide the vertical columns, the unit (known as a “spell”) could be indicated either by a bent arm in red or black, or by single or double horizontal strokes. These are often accompanied by rubrics (headings in red) which can either name a spell at its conclusion or otherwise introduce a spell in some form at its beginning. In the Book of Going Forth by Day, the units are likewise spells, though commonly termed “chapters” by Egyptologists and these are regularly headed by their assigned rubrics.

Of the three major collections of funerary literature, it is generally clear that these were not separate books in the Egyptian sense, though each could contain books or portions thereof. Many would say that the modern names given to these collections of funerary literature are inaccurate and should be discarded in favor of the ancient names, which survive at least in some cases. The old designation the Book of the Dead derives from a label in Arabic that refers to the fact that the books were commonly found with mummies. “The Beginning of the Spells for Going Forth by Day” is the way this “book” starts chapter 1 (and also chapter 17), and even though it is not clear that this describes all the spells rather than merely those at the beginning of the book, it is clear that the ancient Egyptians thought that it applied to the bulk of the work. Because chapter 163 is preceded by “Spells taken from another papyrus as additions to Going Forth by Day,” it is fairly clear that in the Late period the original book of that name included the spells through chapter 161. Chapter 162 regularly follows 165 and should be considered part of that added group. It is also clear, then, that this ancient name should not properly be applied to the present entire corpus of 192 chapters.

With respect to the numbering of chapters, it can only be said that any total can be quite misleading. Many chapters have variants that are labeled “A,” “B,” and so on, but sometimes the variants were actually additional, newly discovered chapters given the number of the preceding identifiable chapter (e.g., chapter 41B). Sometimes the same chapter was given two different numbers, as in the case of 52B and 189; but totally different chapters can have the same numbers as well. The whole series of W. Pleyte's chapters 166–174 have no relationship to the standard chapters with those numbers. It is also clear that many of these supposed additions actually had the titles of other works. Similarly, the rubric title of Spell I, found on perhaps three coffins of the entire Coffin Texts corpus, labels this as the “beginning of the Book of justifying a man in the necropolis.” If this were indeed the title for the bulk of the texts, it is strange that no form of “judgment scene” is to be found anywhere in that corpus. It can also be pointed out that there are other books in the Coffin Texts, including the Book of the Ways of Rosetau (otherwise known as the Book of Two Ways), which is both labeled as a book and has a typical colophon at its conclusion. A similar colophon is found on one coffin after Spell 467, indicating that this Field of Ḥetep spell or spells may also have been considered a book.

The book of the Field of Ḥetep is one of the more interesting units included in both the Coffin Texts (Spells 464–468) and the Book of Going Forth by Day (chapter 110). Ḥetep can be singular or plural and determined by either a deity or a bookroll or offerings, which means that it can refer to the god named Ḥetep, who presides over this field, or it can mean “peace” or “offerings.” There are references to the field in the Pyramid Texts, and the earliest description of the place, which seems to have been located in the western sky, presents it as a place where the deceased person lives and works for the god Osiris. The field has an abundance of water and is very productive, and in the Coffin Texts it was a sort of Elysian fields, or a paradise, where the deceased can enjoy a pleasant existence in the hereafter. The spells in the Coffin Texts that deal with the Field of Ḥetep are essentially different versions of the same text and vignette. On some coffins from Bersheh, the plan of the field seems to mark the starting point for the whole collection of texts. The Book of Going Forth by Day version, which can be much more elaborate than any version of the Coffin Texts, is for some reason found preceding the judgment scene (chapter 125) in the standard order of chapters on Late period manuscripts.

Some chapters in the Book of Going Forth by Day had a life of their own. One example is chapter 30, the heart spell, which is carved on stone amulets placed within the mummy's thoracic cavity before wrapping. Another is chapter 6, found on countless shawabtis, which were mummiform statuettes intended to act for the deceased with respect to any task that he might be called on to perform in the afterlife. In the Late period, chapter 162 was used separately under the head of the mummy to provide warmth.

Chapter 17 of the Book of Going Forth by Day has one of that work's most unique and interesting features—glosses. The development of these glosses can be traced fairly clearly in a large number of Middle Kingdom coffins with essentially the same material (i.e., Coffin Texts, Spell 335). This particular text has a number of rubrics, with questions about the meaning of each phrase, and it includes two or three quite different interpretations as answers to each question. These glosses indicate the difficulty that the Egyptians would have had in understanding some of the mythological and theological allusions in these texts; they also show how the proponents of different temples, gods, or religions could read and understand the same words entirely differently, entirely from their own perspectives. Some answers are strictly solar and others are Osirian, and some are less clear, but all these interpretive glosses, which may originally have been marginal notations, became part of the standard text and remained with it for the next two thousand years of Egyptian history.

Clearly, the fact that the standard text had occasionally become unintelligible would have been recognized by some scribes who could have corrected it—but apparently they did not dare to change it. For the really intractable sections of the Book of Going Forth by Day, most modern translators have opted to translate any available earlier parallels in the Coffin Texts, which generally make much better sense; but these were, of course, not the actual words copied for so many centuries.

The Book of That Which Is in the Underworld (Amduat) is generally a New Kingdom guidebook to the beyond that takes on significance as the principal such work in the royal tombs of the eighteenth dynasty. A portion of the work was included in the Book of Two Ways, which is dated at least to the early Middle Kingdom and probably earlier; and its inclusion of Sokar, the funerary god of Saqqara, the necropolis at Memphis, would seem to point to an Old Kingdom origin. Novelty, antiquity, and the illustrative nature of the work may all have helped bring it to the fore. The work itself is not a unity but has at least two and probably three or more versions. Two versions appear first in Thutmose III's tomb in the Valley of the Kings: one is the well-known painting of an enlarged papyrus roll surrounding the walls of the burial chamber, and the other comprises individually named deities in more than seven hundred boxes drawn on the walls of the antechamber to the tomb. The King's “papyrus roll” version has a cosmological plan that depicts the voyage and daily rebirth of the sun, with registers, passages with doors and keepers, and Sokar's mound—all to illustrate what was to be encountered in the afterlife journey. Shorter versions of this plan on actual papyri in different sizes belonging to the elite became fairly commonplace, especially in the twenty-first dynasty, and there are also a number of what are termed the “real” Amduat papyri, which have long rows of standing anthropomorphic deities.

The Book of Gates is the principal guidebook found in nineteenth dynasty royal tombs. The emphasis is on the gates with guardian deities, whose names must be known in order to pass them. This is an elaborate representation of what was a very old tradition, dating at least to the Book of Two Ways in the Coffin Texts, where there are seven gates with three keepers each, which became two different lists that survived separately as chapters 144 and 147 of the Book of Going Forth by Day. The Ramessid versions have twelve gates corresponding to the twelve hours of the night, which are also depicted in the star-clocks on the ceilings of the burial chambers.

The Book of Caverns is a later Ramessid (twentieth dynasty) underworld book that shows people in holes or caves, as well as some drowning in water or bound to stakes. As if everything before had been too easy and all the worthy deceased had succeeded in attaining their goals, this guidebook seems to be trying to show that not everyone makes it. It is certainly more threatening, and perhaps it is appropriate that it appears in very elaborate tombs just before the end of pharaonic Egypt.

The Book of the Heavenly Cow (its earliest version coming from Tutankhamun's tomb) begins as a mythological text, which relates how the aging sun god Re, distressed by the plotting of humans against him, takes counsel with the eldest gods and sends his eye, Hathor, to diminish the number of people on earth. Hathor was enjoying her task too much, but Re had a change of heart and provided beer as a substitute for blood to bring an end to her slaughtering. This is an etiology for the feast of Hathor and the concomitant beer-drinking, the propitiation for evildoing, and the sacrifice to ward off suffering—all are involved in this part of the text. In the next episode, Nut is the cow on whose back Re goes forth to overthrow his enemies. Riding high in the sky, Re makes Nut a multitude, and stars come into being, along with the Fields of Ḥetep and Iarru (“reeds”). Re gets Shu (“air”) and the Ḥeḥ gods to support the wobbly sky goddess, providing a picturesque cosmological description. The next scene brings in Geb the earth god, snakes, and the need for magic spells as protection against them. When eventually it is said that he who knows these divine words and spells will go forth and come down from the sky, it is clear that like the other funerary books, this is a guidebook for the deceased who joins Re and who must know the heavenly topography, names, spells, and so on, as magical means for “going forth by day.” The book has clear ties to the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of Going Forth by Day; what sets it apart is its unity, its humanized deities, and its picturesque literary style. There is also the aspect of divine punishment for the evil that people do.

Stelae are generally much better sources for information on personal piety than for funerary literature, and even instructional literature such as the Instructions for Merikare can provide much better ethical material. The one section of the funerary literature that provides the closest thing we have to a code of ethics or morality is the so-called Negative Confession, which is really a protestation of innocence (Book of the Dead, 125). As part of the judgment scene, where the heart of the deceased is weighed against the Feather of the goddess Maat (truth personified), these claims of innocence are addressed to forty-two judges—the number is presumably related to the number of nomes or districts of Upper and Lower Egypt. Of the divine judges from perhaps two dozen identifiable places, however, the vast majority are from the northern half of the country, with several locations mentioned twice. In addition to Heliopolis and Memphis as sites of major importance for the creation and compilation of funerary literature, Hermopolis and Herakleopolis may also have been particularly important for several of the books found in the Coffin Texts, and also for the Book of Going Forth by Day, chapters such as 64 and 175. The evils that the deceased says were not done by him or her in the Negative Confession include several generalizations such as “evil” or “wrongdoing”; many evils, such as robbery, killing, lying, cheating, stealing, doing violence, reviling the king or “god,” or committing adultery; some less serious crimes, such as being ill-tempered, eaves-dropping, being garrulous, inspiring terror, dissembling, gossiping, being puffed up or being loud-voiced; and some we cannot clearly understand as evils, such as wading in the water or washing the god. The practicing of homosexuality was a specified evil, though nothing was said about the mistreatment of either parents or children. Certain of the evils were specifically excepted when done in self-defense.

Of course, much of what has been said about the individuality of these collections of texts and their association with different periods is based on what has survived and how this material was published. Thus, the Pyramid Texts on Middle Kingdom coffins were omitted from the Coffin Texts publications—even when in some cases these were predominant—and these and almost all other later occurrences of the Pyramid Texts still remain unpublished.

It is clear that new discoveries could considerably change our thinking about the origins and applications of the various texts. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun revealed no papyri and comparatively little of a documentary nature, but the four golden shrines that were nested to encase his sarcophagus and coffins contain excerpts from a whole cross-section of the funerary literature. Texts that we identify specifically as Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and Book of Going Forth by Day, as well as the Book of That Which Is in the Underworld and the Book of the Heavenly Cow, all occur together on these shrines. The distinction between royal and nonroyal texts was probably not strictly maintained at any time, although it appears to us that certain texts first used for royalty later became more proletarian and that this led the priests serving the royals to seek out and, in some cases, produce new and different texts for their patrons.

All in all, ancient Egyptian funerary literature is far from being exhaustively studied. Many documents have not been published, and most have still not been studied as logical entities. Only after these basic first steps have been taken can the interrelationships of the various texts be analyzed and perhaps understood, at least a little better.

Bibliography
Allen, T. George. Occurrences of Pyramid Texts, with Cross Indexes of These and Other Egyptian Mortuary Texts. Chicago, 1950.

Allen, T. George. The Book of the Dead: or, Going Forth by Day. Chicago, 1974. The translation.

Buck, Adriaan de. The Egyptian Coffin Texts. 7 vols. Oriental Institute Publications, 34, 49, 64, 67, 73, 81, and 87. Chicago, 1935–1961. This is the standard edition of the transcribed texts.

Faulkner, Raymond O. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford, 1969. Translation of Sethe's edition.

Faulkner, Raymond O. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster, 1973–1978. Translation of the de Buck edition.

Faulkner, Raymond O. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Rev. ed. London, 1985. The translation.

Goyon, Jean-Claude. Rituels funéraires de l'ancienne Égypte. Paris, 1972.

Hornung, Erik. Das Amduat: Die Schrift des verborgenen Raumes, Ägy, 7 and 13. Wiesbaden, 1963–1967. Text and translation of the Book of That Which Is in the Underworld.

Hornung, Erik. Andreas Brodbeck, and Elisabeth Staehelin. Das Buch von den Pforten des Jenseits. Geneva, 1979–1980.

Hornung, Erik. Ägyptische Unterweltsbücher. 2d ed. Zurich, 1984. Translations of New Kingdom royal funerary literature.

Hornung, Erik. The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity, translated from German by David Warburton. New York, 1990. Description of funerary literature in New Kingdom royal tombs.

Lesko, Leonard H. The Ancient Egyptian Book of Two Ways. Near Eastern Studies, 17. Berkeley, 1972. Translation and commentary on one part of the Coffin Texts.

Lesko, Leonard H. Index of the Spells on Egyptian Middle Kingdom Coffins and Related Documents. Berkeley, 1979. Arrangement of the spells on the individual documents, including parallels to the Pyramid Texts.

Neville, Edouard. Das ägyptische Todtenbuch der XVIII. bisXX. Dynastie. 3 vols. Berlin, 1886.

Niwinski, Andrzej. Studies on the Illustrated Theban Funerary Papyri of the 11th and 10th Centuries B.C. Orbis biblicus et orientalis, 86. Freiburg, 1989.

Piankoff, Alexander. Le Livre des Portes. 3 vols. Mémoires publiés par les membres de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire, pp.74–75, pp.90. Cairo, 1939–1962. The edited text of the Book of Gates.

Piankoff, Alexander. Le Livre des Querets. Cairo, 1946. The edited text of the Book of Caves.

Sadek, Abdel Aziz. Contribution �* l'étude de l'Amdouat: Les variantes tardive du Livre de l'Amdouat dans les papyrus du Musée du Caire. Freiburg and Göttingen, 1985. Deals with the short (nonroyal) examples of Amduat.

Sethe, Kurt, Altägyptischen Pyramidentexte. 4 vols. Hildesheim, 1960. (Orig., Leipzig, 1908–1922.) The standard edition of the Pyramid Texts.


Leonard H. Lesko

How to cite this entry:
Leonard H. Lesko "Funerary Literature" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Ed. Donald B. Redford. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press. 7 June 2007 http://www.oxford-ancientegypt.com/entry?entry=t176.e0260
 
Last edited by a moderator:
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
'Book of Going Forth By Day' - Leonard H. Lesko

was the principal collection of funerary literature that was used from the New Kingdom until the early Roman period. It is popularly known as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, because its papyrus copies were often found buried with mummies. It was generally available to anyone who could copy, or afford to have copied, either the sometimes lengthy papyri documents or the briefer excerpts found on smaller sheets of papyrus or on short lengths of linen. Some of the chapters and spells from the book were also inscribed on coffins, in tombs, and even on temple walls, and individual spells known from some of those sources were associated with shawabtis (chapter 6), heart scarabs (chapter 30), and the hypocephali (which are flat circles of linen or papyrus, sometimes covered with gesso plaster, bearing chapter 162 of the Book of the Dead).

Although there are hundreds of Book of the Dead manuscripts extant, many have not yet been published, so there is still a serious lack of accurate and useful comparative editions of the texts from the different periods. One of the first publications of the Book of the Dead was in 1842, by Richard Lepsius, and this was of a manuscript in the Egyptian Museum at Turin; it was a text from Ptolemaic times that had 165 chapters, and it represented the fairly standard Late period selection and ordering of the texts.

E. A. Wallis Budge, as keeper of the Egyptian Collection in the British Museum, London, was a prolific editor of its manuscripts, and he published in 1894 and 1899 a number of that museum's finest Book of the Dead documents, which are still useful. He also produced a text-translation-and-vocabulary set in 1898, which though readily available in more recent editions is no longer of much use, since its reprints do not have the same pagination as the 1898 edition that is generally cited in our references—and his translations were already outdated when the work was published.

In 1886, Édouard Naville published what is still the standard edition of a number of comparable texts of the New Kingdom, though it was based on the order of the published Turin manuscript of much later date (Ptolemaic); it is further flawed by its numerous inconsistencies in transcription, which make it quite unreliable. There are a number of up-to-date translations of the Book of the Dead spells in the same order as those early editions, but almost all of them ignore the fact that a large number of earlier manuscripts had their own arrangements of spells; because the spells discovered later were merely added to the end of the growing corpus, the original books are still not well represented. Generally omitted as well are the introductory scenes of the deceased associating with various deities, which seem to set the tone for the selection of texts that follow. The texts generally involve two gods, Re and Osiris; still, individual manuscripts can show enough texts weighted toward one or the other deity to be considered oriented toward one deity or the other—and this orientation seems to be consistent with the introductory scene of each document.

Often, some relationship exists between an individual manuscript's orientation and its conclusion, though it is not always clear that the real end of any single book has been reached. Even for the Late period examples, which list chapters 162 to 165 as additions to the original, it is not always clear whether 165 or 162 is to be the final chapter (and of course many spells can and do occur beyond these). There are 192 spells presently associated with the work, and some of these include variants that differ so greatly that originally they should have been numbered separately.

Rubrics (entries in red ink) are found in most manuscripts; these are most frequently used for titles or for additional comments about the sources of individual spells and their effectiveness, or they give specific instructions for their use. For example a number of spells were labeled as “truly excellent, proved a million times.” Some were to be recited on certain days, making use of particular amulets, or with the requirement of ritual purity. In one oft-cited rubric, Prince Hordedef of the fourth dynasty is said to have discovered chapter 64 under the feet of the god at Hermopolis. The old and very interesting chapter 17 also used rubrics to present various interpretative glosses that had become attached to the sections of the original text; these show clearly that the ancients had some difficulty themselves in understanding the texts and were also not averse to providing their own not unbiased interpretations. For example, contradictory Osirian and Solar glosses were both attached to the text of chapter 17.

Two of the most interesting and important chapters of the Book of the Dead are 110 and 125. Chapter 110 was known already from the Coffin Texts to refer to the Elysian Fields or paradise for the ancient Egyptians; this Sekhet-ḥetepu, or Field of Offerings, is a place where an “equipped” or blessed spirit can plow, reap, eat, drink, copulate, and “do everything that is done upon earth.” Chapter 125 is a new addition to the funerary literature, which includes a “judgment scene,” where the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of truth. The deity Thoth presides and records; forty-two judges apparently represent the nomes of Egypt, though they are not consistently set forth; Ammamet is there to devour the guilty; but the vindicated always go forth to join Osiris.

What it takes to make up a complete Book of the Dead has not been defined. Many very short versions seem to have been complete in themselves, yet some may omit the “judgment scene” altogether, despite the fact that it seems central. These abbreviated manuscripts also lack particular spells, such as chapter 64 (variant), which is claimed to be complete enough to stand alone. Interestingly, a number of these short versions have only spells concerned with the voyage of the sun god Re.

Although many beautifully illustrated versions of the Book of the Dead exist on papyri, the book made for (and perhaps by) the nineteenth dynasty royal scribe Any, now in the British Museum, is certainly among the finest examples. The Greenfield Papyrus of Nesitanebetisheru, daughter of the high priest Pinedjem II of the twenty-first dynasty, at 41 meters (135 feet), is among the longest known, having almost all its chapters illustrated with large but rather basic vignettes. During that dynasty, many women had such books and some may even have been involved in their composition. If there had been great variety in earlier manuscripts, some additions and changes introduced at that time became the norm for later examples. During the Third Intermediate Period, many individuals had an abbreviated Book of That Which Is in the Underworld (Amduat) and special decrees of Amun-Re, as well, to complete their collections of guides to the beyond.


Bibliography
Allen, T. George. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day: Ideas of the Ancient Egyptians Concerning the Hereafter as Expressed in Their Own Terms. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, 37. Chicago, 1974. Translation.

Barguet, Paul. Le Livre des Morts des anciens Égyptiens. Paris, 1967. Translation.

Faulkner, Raymond O. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, rev. ed. London, 1985. Translation.

Naville, Édouard. Das aegyptische Todtenbuch der XVIII bis XX Dynastie. 3 vols. Berlin, 1886. Transcription of a number of New Kingdom parallel versions.



How to cite this entry:
Leonard H. Lesko "Book of Going Forth By Day" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Ed. Donald B. Redford. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press.
 
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
'Book of That Which Is In the Underworld,' - Leonard Lesko

one of several guidebooks to the beyond (or descriptions of the afterlife) that have been associated chiefly with the New Kingdom tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens in Western Thebes. Versions of the books from the eighteenth to the twentieth dynasty have been dated through their royal owners, but there were antecedents for at least one of those books that are recognizable in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts. There were also abbreviated versions of the books on papyri that belonged to nobles in the eighteenth dynasty.

The Book of That Which Is in the Underworld, or Amduat (imy-dwʒt), is the earliest and also the most detailed of the descriptions of the afterlife used in eighteenth dynasty royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. These were all guidebooks to the beyond, intended to assist the deceased kings in their journey through the night sky as pilots for the sun god, Re. In some cases, the deceased king, who was identified with Osiris, god of the dead, was also said to become Re himself in his circuit. There is nothing specifically moral or ethical about this book, except for the presumption that the deceased is able to join the gods. Those who had copies of the Book of Going Forth by Day (Book of the Dead) to accompany the Book of That Which Is in the Underworld might have regarded the former as a kind of initiation or prerequisite that had to be followed up by a detailed guide to the beyond.

Several of these New Kingdom books are divided into the hours of the night, and the number of the hours in these books was regularly twelve rather than the seven found in contemporary chapters of the Book of Going Forth by Day, and also in the Middle Kingdom antecedents of both that work and the guidebook. A major feature of the later royal guidebooks is the combat with the serpent Apophis, who threatens to devour the sun (an etiology for eclipses), but that probably developed quite naturally from earlier serpent spells and descriptions of demons that were supposed to be encountered in the night skies. Also encountered along the way, in the fourth and fifth hour, is Sokar, the Memphite god of the dead.

The earliest royal versions of the book appear to have been huge papyrus rolls with three connecting registers that encircled the walls of burial chambers having rounded corners to preserve the unbroken scroll effect. From this we can presume that their sources were on papyri, but we cannot postulate how much earlier they were originally prepared.

The manuscripts that survive on papyri are mainly from the burials of priests and their wives. They exist in two versions; the earlier one (sometimes called the “real Amduat”) features a long line of standing humanlike figures with the heads of different beings used to distinguish these demons from one another. The other version (the “abbreviated royal Amduat”), which survives mainly from the twenty-first dynasty, is an abbreviation of the eighteenth dynasty royal text; it has the same general plan of the night sky divided into hours but generally includes only the last four hours. The images in this version, as well as those in the royal tombs, are essentially stick figures like cursive hieroglyphs, which are consistent with the appearance of handwriting on papyri. At least one abbreviated version has the four hours condensed further to fit one sheet of papyrus, with enough identifying bits present but in apparent disarray.


Bibliography
Hornung, Erik. Das Amduat: Die Schrift des verborgenen Raumes. 3 vols. Ägyptologische Abhandlungen, 7, 13. Wiesbaden, 1963–1967. Text and translation of the Book of That Which Is in the Underworld.

Hornung, Erik. Ägyptische Unterweltsbücher. 2d ed. Zurich and Munich, 1984. Translations of New Kingdom royal funerary literature.

Hornung, Erik. The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity, translated from the German by David Warburton. New York, 1990. Description of funerary literature in New Kingdom royal tombs.

Sadek, Abdel-Aziz Fahmy. Contribution * l'étude de l'Amdouat: Les variantes tardives du Livre de l'Amdouat dans les papyrus du Musée du Caire. Orbis biblicus orientalis, 65. Freiburg and Göttingen 1985.


Leonard H. Lesko


How to cite this entry:
Leonard H. Lesko "Book of That Which Is In the Underworld" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Ed. Donald B. Redford. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press.
 
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
I'd post up articles on Two Brothers and Contendings of Horus and Seth, but it'd be more than 10% of one volume, so I can't unfortunately.

PM me if you want a direct link to them.
 

HNCS

Fanatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
74
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
Okay. Very short question..

In a nutshell, what will be the main differences in writing (i.e. hieroglyphs, hieratic) if you compare 18th dynasty to Rammesside society.

thanks.
 
Last edited:
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
HNCS said:
Okay. Very short question..

In a nutshell, what will be the main differences in writing (i.e. hieroglyphs, hieratic) if you compare 18th dynasty to Rammesside society.

thanks.
There's an orthographical change in both Hieroglyphs and Hieratic. There's also a basic language change (from Middle Egyptian -> Late Egyptian) which is reflected in all but funerary/monumental texts.

With literature, we obviously have the emergence of the Ramesside literary genre - ironically a return to the Middle Kingdom literary genre (Shipwrecked Sailor, Sinuhe) of the agent-central story. In the 18th dynasty, the only pieces of literature which were centred on one agent were autiobiographies. In the 19th-20th dynasties, we have a rise of these Middle Kingdomesque stories which are about one mortal person.

With funerary texts, there's what Baines calls a change of 'decorum'. Pre-Ramesside, the dead could only interect indirectly with the gods. This was explicity represented by the offering motif - the dead standing infront of an offering table and Osiris. Pre-Ramesside, the table would separate the dead from the gods, or there would be a visual feature (a pole or something) which separated them. During the later 19th dynasty, these are removed and the people literally, figuratively, and theologically commune directly with the gods.

I'm not sure how much that helps - if you need more specific info on any of the points, yell out.
 

HNCS

Fanatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
74
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
PwarYuex said:
There's an orthographical change in both Hieroglyphs and Hieratic. There's also a basic language change (from Middle Egyptian -> Late Egyptian) which is reflected in all but funerary/monumental texts.

With literature, we obviously have the emergence of the Ramesside literary genre - ironically a return to the Middle Kingdom literary genre (Shipwrecked Sailor, Sinuhe) of the agent-central story. In the 18th dynasty, the only pieces of literature which were centred on one agent were autiobiographies. In the 19th-20th dynasties, we have a rise of these Middle Kingdomesque stories which are about one mortal person.

Hmm... if i want specific info, it would be on the orthographical change, language change... and maybe just a few more general points on the return to middle kingdom..


Also, i have a more specific question. If Ramesside literature returned to middle kingdom literature....does this indicate perhaps a shift in policy?

thanks.
 
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
HNCS said:
Also, i have a more specific question. If Ramesside literature returned to middle kingdom literature....does this indicate perhaps a shift in policy?

thanks.
Hmm, that's a really good question. I think the answer would be a no. It's not a shift in policy, but rather a shift in philosophy: The Ramesside period marked a time of great retrospection - the kings depicted themselves in very archaic poses, there were elements of tombs (offering lists) which were very Old Kingdomish, there was a return to Old Kingdom vocab, etc.

The most important thing was that on some monuments, we have an attempt at being Middle Egyptian (the language that spawned in the MK), which is called Neo Middle Egyptian. Basically, it's the society trying to go back to the very stable and cosmo time of the MK kings.

I think it was because the Ramessides saw their society as ultra-modern and a bit too urbanised and industrial. They also had massive amounts of enemies around them - the Libyans, Punt, Nomads on the south, the Sea People, Syrians, etc to the north - for the first time in Egyptian history, they were worried.

I'll give you some specifics on the other things when I get home - I'm just about to go out.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

HNCS

Fanatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
74
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
PwarYuex said:
Hmm, that's a really good question. I think the answer would be a no. It's not a shift in policy, but rather a shift in philosophy: The Ramesside period marked a time of great retrospection - the kings depicted themselves in very archaic poses, there were elements of tombs (offering lists) which were very Old Kingdomish, there was a return to Old Kingdom vocab, etc.

The most important thing was that on some monuments, we have an attempt at being Middle Egyptian (the language that spawned in the MK), which is called Neo Middle Egyptian. Basically, it's the society trying to go back to the very stable and cosmo time of the MK kings.

I think it was because the Ramessides saw their society as ultra-modern and a bit too urbanised and industrial. They also had massive amounts of enemies around them - the Libyans, Punt, Nomads on the south, the Sea People, Syrians, etc to the north - for the first time in Egyptian history, they were worried.

I'll give you some specifics on the other things when I get home - I'm just about to go out.



I was wondering if you could post some of the information this week or as soon as possible.

My task is due this week. I"m getting rather desperate in trying to get all the ideas about change.

and of course, big big big thank you!
 
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
HNCS said:
I was wondering if you could post some of the information this week or as soon as possible.

My task is due this week. I"m getting rather desperate in trying to get all the ideas about change.

and of course, big big big thank you!
With literature: The Ramesside stories (Doomed Prince, Wenamun, etc) are the kind of journey text which was popular in the Middle Kingdom - Sinuhe, Shipwrecked Sailor, etc.

Earlier NK documents weren't as story-based, and, if they were, they were mythological (Contendings of Horus and Seth).

With religious texts: The personal piety shift can be seen in the Deir el Medina stelae; stela of Bakhi is a good example. The stelae which have three registers are also great: For example the person gets in trouble/the god rescues them/they praise god.

There's not much of a shift in funerary texts, though, all very similar to the older NK stuff. I suppose the main change is the change in decorum - the visual split between gods and mortals.
 
X

xeuyrawp

Guest
Here's an article that my supervisor wrote:


Piety. The concept of piety in ancient Egypt could be defined as a personal, individual expression of faith in and devotion to a deity, as opposed to institutionalized religious practice, which was traditionally the preserve of the king. The monarch was responsible for the maintenance of maat—the order of the universe, both cosmic and social, as established by the creator at creation—which included the maintenance of the relationship between the gods and humankind. This was achieved via the temple rituals conducted, in theory, by the king, but in practice by priests who acted for him. The ordinary person had no role in this activity.

Historical Developments
Evidence for personal religion prior to the New Kingdom is limited. Some personal names, which in ancient Egyptian are often theophoric, hint at a personal relationship between the deity and the bearer of the name. These names are particularly common in the Late period: for example, Padiese, “he, whom Isis gave” (Greek, Isidore). Yet some are attested from earliest times: for example, Shed-netjer, “whom the god rescues” (from the first dynasty); from the Old Kingdom there were the names Khui-wi-Ptah (or -Re, -Horus, -Khnum, or -Sobek), “may Ptah (or Re, Horus, etc.) protect me.” A few texts of the Middle Kingdom also make brief references to personal worship.

The paucity of evidence for personal religion prior to the New Kingdom can be explained by the limits set by what John Baines (1985) defined as “decorum,” a set of rules regarding what could and could not be expressed in image and/or text in certain contexts. These guidelines can be illustrated in the way deities appeared on nonroyal monuments. Until the Middle Kingdom, decorum excluded the possibility for nonroyal persons to depict deities on their monuments; they appeared only in texts, almost exclusively of a funerary nature, or in the form of their emblems. Not until the end of the Middle Kingdom were the first representations of nonroyal persons worshiping a deity inscribed on nonroyal stelae. Even there, a barrier usually in the form of a column of inscription and/or an offering table separated the worshiper from the deity. Not until the early New Kingdom and onward did images of deities regularly appear on nonroyal monuments.

Personal religion was encouraged by New Kingdom developments that contributed to a gradual breaking down of the barriers that separated individual and deity, such as the evolution and growth of festival processions of the deities. During the New Kingdom, evidence survives for a burgeoning of such processions, when the divine images were brought out of the seclusion of their temples and carried in a portable boat-shrine along a processional way. Although the images were hidden from view in the cabins of the boats (or barks, as they are often called), the ordinary person could approach them and seek the advice of the deity on all manner of personal issues, through an oracle.

Among the earliest literary evidence for personal piety in the New Kingdom are limestone ostraca, dated paleographically to the pre-Amarna period, which carry short prayers addressed to the god Amun. These ostraca may have been placed along the processional way taken by the god, and they bear some of the earliest sentiments of love and devotion to a deity: “Amun-Re, you are the beloved one, you are the only one!”

The growth of personal piety was accompanied by a diminution of the exclusive role of the king and official religion. As Jan Assmann (1984) has pointed out, one of the aims of King Akhenaten was to reverse that trend and restore to the monarch the central role in religion, as the mediator between the one god Aten and the people. His reform failed, indeed it succeeded in achieving the exact opposite—people were not prepared to abandon their old deities, and, since the official cults of the old gods were proscribed by the king, people were forced to turn to them directly. This situation probably explains the explosion of evidence for personal piety in both post-Amarna and Ramessid times, the latter dubbed by James H. Breasted in 1912 “the age of personal piety.”

The trauma of the Amarna period and its aftermath doubtless also contributed to the atmosphere of uncertainty that is evident in the following historical period. That uncertainty was illustrated by theophoric names, which contain the verb šd (“rescue,” “save”), names such as Shed-su-Amun (“may Amun save him”). Although sporadically met in earlier periods, such names were most frequently used in the New Kingdom (Ranke 1935, p. 330 f.). The letter of the scribe Butehamun to the captain of the bowmen Shed-su-Hor (“may Horus save him”) also reflected this phenomenon (Wente 1990, p. 196), as did the emergence of the god Shed, the personification of the concept of the rescuing activity of a deity demonstrated in the study of Hellmut Brunner (1958, pp. 17–19). The inscriptions of Si-mut Kiki (Wilson 1970) provide a particularly good example of some of the perceived dangers and illustrate the concept of a chosen personal deity, to whom the devotee was particularly attached and from whom protection was sought, a well-attested phenomenon of piety that made its first appearance at that time.

As Assmann pointed out (1989, p. 75 ff.), a further religious development in the New Kingdom generated a change in the role of maat. Whereas it was previously held that one's fate depended on one's behavior (if one lived a life in accordance with the principles of maat then one would perforce flourish; if one transgressed against it one would be punished—the king being the one who upheld maat and meted out punishment), instead one came to be seen as directly responsible to the deity, who personally intervened in the individual's life and punished wrongdoing. The misfortunes from which people then needed to be saved were not only those of an impersonal kind but also included divine wrath, meted out as punishment for perceived wrongdoing.

Sources
Archaeological sources for the practice of piety have survived in the form of shrines and votive offerings, but for a proper understanding of the phenomenon we are dependent on literary sources. These are varied, including biographical inscriptions, hymns, inscriptions on scarabs, Wisdom Literature and, in particular, the prayers (often penitential) of individuals. A very good example in a hymn may be found in those to Amun in the Leiden Papyrus (Prichard 1969, p. 369). The most important Wisdom teaching is that of Amenemope (Lichtheim 1976, pp. 146–163). The prayers of individuals, inscribed on stelae dedicated to the deity as votive offerings, are very similar to the biblical penitential psalms expressing sorrow for wrongdoing and thanks for forgiveness. The bulk of our evidence comes from the Deir el-Medina, in Western Thebes, from the village of the workmen who built the tombs of the kings. This bias is due primarily to the chance of good preservation of the site, rather than to any unique religious development that may have taken place there, although the fact that Thebes probably suffered from the excesses of the Amarna period more than other places may also have been a factor. Ashraf Sadek (1987) presented the evidence from other locations, among which the Wepwawet sanctuary at Assyut (where more than six hundred small stelae were discovered) was particularly significant.

The Elements of the Prayers
The following themes and terminology are regularly encountered in the prayers, hymns, and votive offerings:
1. The introductory words of praise and appeal to the deity often include a description of the deity who is said to be “one who hears petitions (nḥwt),” “who comes at the voice of the poor (nmḥw) in need,” “who comes at the voice of him who calls to him.”
2. In the description of the transgressor, the writer claims to be a “silent one,” that is, a devout person (gr); a poor, humble person (nmḥw). By way of apology, the claim is made to be ignorant and senseless (iwty ḥʒty), to be one who does not know good (nfr) from evil (bin).
3. The writer confesses to having committed an act of transgression (sp n thi), to having done what is abhorrent or “taboo” (btʒ or bwt), to having sworn falsely (ʿrḳ m ʿdʒ) by the deity.
4. The deity punishes the transgression, often with sickness; very frequent is the expression “seeing darkness by day,” an image for separation from the deity.
5. A promise is made to proclaim the might of the deity to all the world, to “son and daughter, the great and small, generations not yet born,” to “the fish in the water and the birds in the air,” to “the foolish and the wise.”
6. An account is given of answer to prayer—the deity is said to respond to the pleas of the petitioner and “to come as a sweet breeze” to be “merciful” (ḥtp) to “turn” (ʿn) to the petitioner “in peace” (ḥtp).

The Deities
There was a range of deities, from the major gods and goddesses worshiped throughout Egypt (such as Amun-Re, Ptah, Hathor, Thoth, Osiris, Wepwawet, Horakhty and Haoeris) to local deities (such as Meretseger, the personification of the western mountain, “the Peak,” at Thebes). Also worshipped were deified kings, such as Amenhotpe I and less commonly, mortals, such as Amenophis, Son of Hapu, an official of Amenhotpe III. Amun was popularly worshiped in his forms pʒ rhn nfr (“the goodly ram”) and smn nfr n ʿImn (“the goodly goose of Amun”). The prevalence of the former was based on his animal symbol, the ram, being the most public form of the god. It decorated the prow and stern of his portable bark, and the avenues leading to his temples in Thebes were lined with statues of rams. The god Thoth, patron of scribes, was favored by this profession, and prayers to him appear in the Ramessid schooling literature.

The Petitioners
One of the terms by which petitioners regularly referred to themselves in the penitential prayers was nmḥw, “a poor, humble person.” This does not mean that piety was a religion of the poor, since they would not have had the means to commission the monuments that provide us with our data. The people from Deir el-Medina who called themselves nmḥw were relatively well-situated artisans, and most of the dedications found in the shrines around the Great Sphinx at Giza are by people of middle, lower-middle, or low rank, but even the viceroy of Nubia Huy, addressed a prayer of personal piety to his master, the king Tutankhamun. The king was also involved in this movement: Ramesses II's record of the Battle of Kadesh, inscribed on temple walls and pylons, did on a massive scale what the small votive stelae of the ordinary person did more modestly. In the prayer of Ramesses III to Amun at Karnak, sentiments and expressions are found that parallel those of the nonroyal prayers.

Other terms used to designate the ideal god-fearing pious person were mʒʿty,” a just one,” comparable to the sadiq, “just,” of the biblical tradition; ḳbḥw, “the cool, quiet one”; and gr or gr mʒʿ, “the silent one” or “the one who is justly silent.” Their antithesis is šm or šm rʒ, “the hot or hot-mouthed one.” The term “the silent one” is found in prayers of personal piety but is even better known from the wisdom teachings; it refers to those who do not assert themselves but who place their trust in the divine, recognize the supreme free will of a deity, and are totally submissive to that will. That attitude is succinctly summarized in chapter 25 of the Instructions of Amenemope: “For man is clay and straw, God is his builder; he pulls down, he builds in a moment. He makes a thousand insignificant as he wishes, he makes a thousand people overseers when he is in his hour of life. Happy is he who reaches the West [i.e., the grave] being safe in the hand of god.” There, worldly success—once seen as the result of correct behavior, of a life lived in accordance with maat—is held to be totally in the gift of a god; not success, then, but rather an unbroken relationship with a god, was the true mark of a successful life. The model frequently used for the relationship between the individual and a deity is that of servant (bʒk) and master (nb); as does a servant his master, so the devout person “follows” (šms) and is “loyal” to (šms ḥr mw/mṯn) a deity.

The confessions of fault in the penitential prayers refer to “actual sin”; the reference is always to some concrete, individual act or an inner thought or personal attitude. A concept of “general sin” is not found (i.e., the concept of the existence of a barrier between humankind and the divine that is not the result of an individual deed or thought but of the general condition of humankind—the Christian concept of “original sin”). The closest to the latter would be the statement on the stela of Nebra, that “the servant is disposed to do evil” (Lichtheim 1976, p. 106).

Locations of Cults
Ashraf Sadek (1987) has collected the evidence for the locations of cults of personal piety. They include nonofficial shrines (such as the small chapels erected by groups of individuals at Deir el-Medina or the tiny shrines set up along the path from Deir el-Medina to the Valley of the Kings), as well as places provided at official cult centers (such as the eastern temple at Karnak, dedicated to Amun and “Ramesses who hears petitions,” or the monumental eastern gateway at Deir el-Medina, with its relief of “Ptah who hears petitions”). At the Tenth Pylon at Karnak, two individuals—Amenhotep, son of Hapu, and Piramesse—set up statues of themselves to act as mediators between the great god Amun and petitioners. The regular festival processions of the deities were also important occasions for the practice of personal religion; the promise in many of the penitential prayers—to make a public proclamation of the experienced greatness and mercy of the deity—was most probably fulfilled at such processions. The stela of Pataweret (Brunner 1958, pp. 6–12) from the Wepwawet sanctuary at Asyut provides valuable data on this aspect of personal religion. Divided into three registers, the bottom one depicts Pataweret's experience of the saving intervention of Wepwawet, called “the savior,” who rescued him from being taken by a crocodile. The other two registers show where he expressed his thanks to the god. In the middle one he is shown alone, praying before an image of the god at a shrine. In the top register he is shown publicly praising the god during a procession.

Although compositions comparable to those of personal piety in the Ramessid era are not known from later periods, many of the sentiments found in them appear in later biographical texts, and their formulas of piety live on in some of the Greco-Roman temple inscriptions.

See also Cults; Ethics and Morality; Hymns; and Religion.


Bibliography
Assmann, Jan. Ägyptische Hymnen und Gebete. Zurich, 1975. The most comprehensive collection of translations into a modern language of ancient Egyptian hymns and prayers; those dealing with piety are on pages 349–417.

Assmann, Jan. Ägypten: Theologie und Frömmigkeit einer frühen Hochkultur. Stuttgart, 1984. An excellent treatment of ancient Egyptian religion, including piety.

Assmann, Jan. State and Religion in the New Kingdom. In Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, James P. Allen, et al., pp. pp.55–88. Yale Egyptological Studies, 3. New Haven, 1989. A stimulating study on religious developments in the New Kingdom.

Baines, John. Fecundity Figures. Warminster, 1985.

Baines, John. Society, Morality, and Religious Practice. In Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice, edited by Byran E. Shafer, pp. pp.123–200. Ithaca, 1991. Considers piety within the larger context of ancient Egyptian society.

Breasted, James H. The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt. New York, 1912.

Brunner, Hellmut. Eine Dankstele an Upuaut . Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 16 (1958), pp.5–19; reprinted in Hellmut Brunner, Das Hörende Herz, pp. pp.173–188. Orbis biblicus et orientalis, 80. Freiburg and Göttingen, 1988. An important study on piety in the New Kingdom, which also traces the development of the god Shai, the personification of divine rescue.

Brunner, Hellmut. Persönliche Frömmigkeit. In Lexikon der Ägyptologie, 4: pp.951–963. Wiesbaden, 1982. A detailed article providing comprehensive references to sources on piety.

Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings. Vol. II, The New Kingdom. Berkeley, 1976. A modern and reliable translation of Egyptian texts, including a selection dealing with piety.

Prichard, J. B., ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton, 1979.

Ranke, Hermann. Die Ägyptischen Personennamen. Vols. 1–2. Glückstadt, 1935 and 1952. Volume I gives a dictionary of names. Volume II is a comprehensive study of the meaning of ancient Egyptian names.

Sadek, Ashraf Iskander. Popular Religion in Egypt during the New Kingdom. Hildesheim, 1987. A comprehensive study of all aspects of personal religion in Egypt.

Wente, Edward. Letters from Ancient Egypt. Atlanta, 1990.

Wilson, John A. The Theban Tomb (No. 49) of Si-Mut, Called Kiki , Journal of Near Eastern Studies 29 (1970), pp.187–192.


Boyo Ockinga, "Piety" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Ed. Donald B. Redford. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press. Macquarie University. 25 June 2007
 

cherry-toes

hunger strike
Joined
Apr 19, 2006
Messages
22
Location
behind you
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
You, whoever you are, are an absolute godsend. Im doing the same assessment task as HCNS, except mines a speech not a powerpoint presentation. My ancient tutor had given my two texts to work on but they were absolutely no help and i thought id have to rely solely on the internet. So you have helped me so much and I just wanted to say thank you.
 

HNCS

Fanatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
74
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
Once again thanks for your help!! because of you i got really good marks in this. so thanks.
 
Joined
May 12, 2007
Messages
228
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
Pwar-Yeux - thanks for all of those resources and help! I'm actually doing an assessment on literature myself and i am a little confused with all the different genres. Are Monumental Inscriptions a genre in its own right (it includes private texts such as biographies as well as Royal monuments) - or are private inscriptiosn and royal monuments separate genres? I'm a bit confused with differentiating them. I know private inscriptions are things like biographies - but they can also be related to historical issues such as the royal texts as well right?

Sorry if that's all a bit muddled; it reflects my mind right now >_<
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top