Ancient Egyptian literature
Ancient
Egyptian literature was written in
the Egyptian language from Ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature.
Writing in Ancient Egypt—both hieroglyphic and hieratic—first
appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the late phase of predynastic Egypt.
By the Old Kingdom (26th
century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works included funerary texts, epistles and letters,
religious hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical
texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It was not
until the early Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to 17th century BC) that a
narrative Egyptian literature was created. This was a "media
revolution" which, according to Richard B. Parkinson, was the result of the rise of an
intellectual class of scribes,
new cultural sensibilities about individuality, unprecedented levels of
literacy, and mainstream access to written materials.
However, it is possible that the overall literacy rate was
less than one percent of the entire population. The creation of literature was
thus an elite exercise, monopolized by a scribal class attached to government
offices and the royal court of the ruling pharaoh. However,
there is no full consensus among modern scholars concerning the dependence of
ancient Egyptian literature on the sociopolitical order of the royal courts.
Middle Egyptian,
the spoken
language of the Middle Kingdom, became a classical language during the New Kingdom (16th
century BC to 11th century BC), when the vernacular language known as Late Egyptian first
appeared in writing. Scribes of the New Kingdom
canonized and
copied many literary texts written in Middle Egyptian, which remained the
language used for oral readings of sacred hieroglyphic texts. Some genres of
Middle Kingdom literature, such as "teachings" and fictional tales, remained popular in the New Kingdom, although
the genre of prophetic texts was
not revived until the Ptolemaic period (4th century BC to 1st century
BC). Popular tales included the Story of Sinuhe
and The Eloquent Peasant, while important teaching texts
include the Instructions of Amenemhat and The Loyalist Teaching. By the New
Kingdom period, the writing of commemorative graffiti on sacred
temple and tomb walls flourished as a unique genre of literature, yet it
employed formulaic phrases similar to other genres. The acknowledgment of
rightful authorship remained important only in a few genres, while texts of the
"teaching" genre were pseudonymous
and falsely attributed to prominent historical figures.
Ancient Egyptian
literature has been preserved on a wide variety of media. This includes papyrus scrolls and
packets, limestone or ceramic ostraca,
wooden writing boards, monumental stone edifices and coffins. Texts
preserved and unearthed by modern archaeologists represent a small fraction of
ancient Egyptian literary material. The area of the floodplain of the Nile is under-represented because the moist
environment is unsuitable for the preservation of papyri and ink inscriptions.
On the other hand, hidden caches of literature, buried for thousands of years,
have been discovered in settlements on the dry desert margins of Egyptian civilization.
Hieroglyphs, hieratic, and Demotic
The slab stela of the Old Kingdom
Egyptian princess
Neferetiabet (dated c.
2590–2565 BC),
from her tomb at Giza, with hieroglyphs carved and painted on limestone
By the Early Dynastic Period in the late 4th
millennium BC, Egyptian hieroglyphs and their cursive form hieratic were
well-established written
scripts.
Egyptian hieroglyphs are small artistic
pictures of natural objects. For example, the hieroglyph for door-bolt, pronounced se, produced the s sound; when this hieroglyph was
combined with another or multiple hieroglyphs, it produced a combination of
sounds that could represent abstract concepts like sorrow, happiness, beauty,
and evil. The Narmer
Palette, dated c.
3100 BC during the last phase of Predynastic Egypt,
combines the hieroglyphs for catfish and chisel to produce the name of King Narmer.
The Egyptians
called their hieroglyphs "words of god" and reserved their use for
exalted purposes, such as communicating with divinities and spirits of the dead through funerary texts.
Each hieroglyphic word both represented a specific object and embodied the
essence of that object, recognizing it as divinely made and belonging within
the greater cosmos. Through
acts of priestly ritual, like burning incense, the priest
allowed spirits and deities to read the hieroglyphs decorating the surfaces of
temples. In funerary texts beginning in and following the Twelfth dynasty, the Egyptians believed that disfiguring, and
even omitting certain hieroglyphs, brought consequences, either good or bad,
for a deceased tomb occupant whose spirit relied on the texts as a source of
nourishment in the afterlife. Mutilating the hieroglyph of a venomous snake, or
other dangerous animal, removed a potential threat. However, removing every
instance of the hieroglyphs representing a deceased person's name would deprive
his or her soul of
the ability to read the funerary texts and condemn that soul to an inanimate
existence.
The Abbott Papyrus, a
record written in the hieratic
script;
it describes an inspection of
royal tombs in the Theban Necropolis
and is dated to the 16th regnal
year of the Ramesses
IX, c. 1110 BC.
Hieratic is a
simplified, cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Like hieroglyphs, hieratic
was used in sacred and religious texts. By the 1st millennium BC, calligraphic
hieratic became the script predominantly used in funerary papyri and temple rolls. Whereas the
writing of hieroglyphs required the utmost precision and care, cursive hieratic
could be written much more quickly and was therefore more practical for scribal
record-keeping. Its primary purpose was to serve as a shorthand script
for non-royal, non-monumental, and less formal writings such as private
letters, legal documents, poems, tax records, medical texts, mathematical treatises, and instructional guides. Hieratic could be
written in two different styles; one was more calligraphic and usually reserved
for government records and literary manuscripts, the other was used for
informal accounts and letters.
By the mid-1st
millennium BC, hieroglyphs and hieratic were still used for royal, monumental,
religious, and funerary writings, while a new, even more cursive script was
used for informal, day-to-day writing: Demotic.
The final script adopted by the ancient Egyptians was the Coptic alphabet, a
revised version of the Greek
alphabet.
Coptic became the standard in the 4th century AD when Christianity became
the state religion
throughout the Roman
Empire; hieroglyphs were discarded as idolatrous images
of a pagan tradition, unfit for writing the Biblical canon.
Writing implements and materials
involved in the inspection and
clearing of tombs during
the Twenty-first dynasty of Egypt, c.
1070–945 BC
Egyptian
literature was produced on a variety of media. Along with the chisel, necessary for making inscriptions
on stone, the chief writing tool of ancient Egypt was the reed pen, a reed fashioned into
a stem with a bruised, brush-like end. With pigments of carbon black and red ochre, the reed pen was used to write on
scrolls of papyrus—a thin
material made from beating together strips of pith from the Cyperus papyrus
plant—as well as on small ceramic or limestone ostraca known as potsherds. It is
thought that papyrus rolls were moderately expensive commercial items, since
many are palimpsests,
manuscripts that have their original contents erased to make room for new written works.
This, alongside tearing off pieces of papyrus documents to make smaller
letters, suggests that there were seasonal shortages caused by the limited
growing season of Cyperus papyrus. It also explains the frequent use of
ostraca and limestone flakes as writing media for shorter written works.
In addition to stone, ceramic ostraca,
and papyrus, writing media also included wood, ivory, and plaster.
By the Roman Period of Egypt, the traditional Egyptian reed pen had
been replaced by the chief writing tool of the Greco-Roman world:
a shorter, thicker reed pen with a cut nib. Likewise,
the original Egyptian pigments were discarded in favor of Greek lead-based inks. The adoption of Greco-Roman writing
tools had an impact on Egyptian handwriting, as
hieratic signs became more spaced, had rounder flourishes, and greater angular
precision.
Preservation of written material
Underground
Egyptian tombs built in the desert provide possibly the most protective
environment for the preservation of papyrus documents. For example, there are
many well-preserved Book
of the Dead funerary papyri placed in tombs to act as afterlife
guides for the souls of the deceased tomb occupants.
However, it was only customary during the late Middle Kingdom and first half of
the New Kingdom to place non-religious papyri
in burial chambers. Thus, the majority of well-preserved literary papyri are
dated to this period.
Most settlements
in ancient Egypt were
situated on the alluvium of the Nile floodplain. This moist environment was unfavorable for
long-term preservation of papyrus documents. Archaeologists have discovered a
larger quantity of papyrus documents in desert settlements on land elevated
above the floodplain, and in settlements that lacked irrigation works, such as Elephantine, El-Lahun, and El-Hiba.
Egyptian peasants harvesting papyrus,
from a mural painting
in a Deir el-Medina tomb
dated to the early
Writings on more
permanent media have also been lost in various ways. Stones with inscriptions
were frequently re-used as building materials, and ceramic ostraca require a
dry environment to ensure the preservation of the ink on their surfaces.
Whereas papyrus rolls and packets were usually stored in boxes for safekeeping,
ostraca were routinely discarded in waste pits; one such pit was discovered by
chance at the Ramesside-era
village of Deir el-Medina, and
has yielded the majority of known private letters on ostraca. Documents found
at this site include letters, hymns, fictional narratives, recipes, business
receipts, and wills
and testaments. Penelope Wilson
describes this archaeological find as the equivalent of sifting through a
modern landfill or waste container.
She notes that the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina were incredibly literate by
ancient Egyptian standards, and cautions that such finds only come "...in
rarefied circumstances and in particular conditions."
John W. Tait
stresses, "Egyptian material survives in a very uneven fashion ...
the unevenness of survival comprises both time and space." For instance,
there is a dearth of written material from all periods from the Nile Delta but an
abundance at western Thebes,
dating from its heyday.
He notes that while some texts were copied numerous times, others survive from
a single copy; for example, there is only one complete surviving copy of the Tale of the shipwrecked sailor from the
Middle Kingdom. However, Tale of the shipwrecked sailor also appears in
fragments of texts on ostraca from the New Kingdom.
Many other literary works survive only in fragments or through incomplete
copies of lost originals.
Classical, Middle, Late, and Demotic Egyptian language
Columns with inscribed and painted
Egyptian hieroglyphs,
built during the reign of Ramesses II (r.
1279–1213 BC)
Although writing
first appeared during the very late 4th millennium BC, it was only used to
convey short names and labels; connected strands of text did not appear until
about 2600 BC, at the beginning of the Old Kingdom. This
development marked the beginning of the first known phase of the Egyptian language: Old Egyptian. Old
Egyptian remained a spoken
language until about 2100 BC, when, during the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, it evolved into Middle Egyptian.
While Middle Egyptian was closely related to Old Egyptian, Late Egyptian was
significantly different in grammatical
structure. Late Egyptian possibly appeared as a vernacular language as early as 1600 BC, but was not used as a
written language
until c. 1300 BC during the Amarna Period of
the New Kingdom. Late
Egyptian evolved into Demotic by the 7th century BC, and although Demotic remained a
spoken language until the 5th century AD, it was gradually replaced by Coptic beginning in
the 1st century AD.
Hieratic was used
alongside hieroglyphs for writing in Old and Middle Egyptian, becoming the
dominant form of writing in Late Egyptian. By the New
Kingdom and throughout the rest of ancient Egyptian history, Middle Egyptian became a classical language that was usually reserved for reading and
writing in hieroglyphs. For the rest of ancient Egyptian history, Middle
Egyptian remained the spoken language for more exalted forms of literature,
such as historical records, commemorative autobiographies, religious hymns, and
funerary spells. However, Middle Kingdom literature written in Middle Egyptian
was also rewritten in hieratic during later periods.
Literary functions: social, religious and educational
found in the western cemetery at Giza, Fifth dynasty of Egypt (25th to 24th centuries BC)
Throughout
ancient Egyptian history, reading and writing were the main requirements for
serving in public office, although government officials were assisted in their
day-to-day work by an elite, literate
social group known as scribes.
As evidenced by Papyrus Anastasi I of the Ramesside Period, scribes could even
be expected, according to Wilson, "...to organize the excavation of a lake
and the building of a brick ramp, to establish the number of men needed to
transport an obelisk and to
arrange the provisioning of a military mission". Besides government
employment, scribal services in drafting letters, sales documents, and legal
documents would have been frequently sought by illiterate people. Literate
people are thought to have comprised only 1% of the population, the remainder
being illiterate farmers, herdsmen, artisans, and other laborers, as well as
merchants who required the assistance of scribal secretaries. The privileged
status of the scribe over illiterate manual laborers was the subject of a
popular Ramesside Period instructional text, The Satire of the Trades, where lowly, undesirable
occupations, for example, potter, fisherman, laundry man, and soldier, were
mocked and the scribal profession praised. A similar demeaning attitude towards
the illiterate is expressed in the Middle Kingdom Teaching of Khety,
which is used to reinforce the scribes' elevated position within the social
hierarchy.
The scribal class
was the social group responsible for maintaining, transmitting, and canonizing
literary classics, and writing new compositions. Classic works, such as the Story of Sinuhe
and Instructions of Amenemhat, were copied by schoolboys as
pedagogical exercises in writing and to instill the required ethical and moral
values that distinguished the scribal social class. Wisdom texts of the
"teaching"
genre represent the majority of pedagogical texts written on ostraca during the
Middle Kingdom; narrative tales, such as Sinuhe and King Neferkare and General Sasenet, were
rarely copied for school exercises until the New Kingdom.
William Kelly Simpson describes narrative tales such as Sinuhe
and The shipwrecked sailor as "...instructions or teachings in the
guise of narratives", since the main protagonists of
such stories embodied the accepted virtues of the day, such as love of home or
self-reliance.
There are some
known instances where those outside the scribal profession were literate and
had access to classical literature. Menena, a draughtsman working at Deir
el-Medina during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt, quoted passages
from the Middle Kingdom narratives Eloquent Peasant
and Tale of the shipwrecked sailor in an
instructional letter reprimanding his disobedient son. Menena's Ramesside
contemporary Hori, the scribal author of the satirical letter in Papyrus Anastasi I,
admonished his addressee for quoting the Instruction of Hardjedef in the unbecoming manner of a
non-scribal, semi-educated person. Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert further explains
this perceived amateur affront to orthodox literature:
What may be
revealed by Hori's attack on the way in which some Ramesside scribes felt
obliged to demonstrate their greater or lesser acquaintance with ancient
literature is the conception that these venerable works were meant to be known
in full and not to be misused as quarries for popular sayings mined
deliberately from the past. The classics of the time were to be memorized
completely and comprehended thoroughly before being cited.
Hieroglyphs from the Mortuary Temple of Seti I,
now located at the Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak
There is scant
but solid evidence in Egyptian literature and art for the practice of oral reading of texts to audiences.
The oral performance word "to recite" (šdj) was usually
associated with biographies,
letters, and spells. Singing (ḥsj) was meant for praise songs, love songs,
funerary laments, and
certain spells. Discourses
such as the Prophecy of Neferti suggest that compositions were meant
for oral reading among elite gatherings. In the 1st millennium BC Demotic short story cycle
centered around the deeds of Petiese,
the stories begin with the phrase "The voice which is before
Pharaoh", which indicates that an oral speaker and audience was involved
in the reading of the text. A fictional audience of high government officials
and members of the royal court are mentioned in some texts, but a wider,
non-literate audience may have been involved. For example, a funerary stela of Senusret I (r.
1971–1926 BC) explicitly mentions people who will gather and listen to a scribe
who "recites" the stela inscriptions out loud.
Literature also
served religious purposes. Beginning with the Pyramid Texts
of the Old Kingdom, works of funerary
literature written on tomb walls, and later on coffins, and papyri placed
within tombs, were designed to protect and nurture souls in their afterlife.
This included the use of magical spells, incantations, and
lyrical hymns. Copies of non-funerary literary texts found in non-royal tombs
suggest that the dead could entertain themselves in the afterlife by reading these
teaching texts and narrative tales.
See also Egyptian influences in the Hebrew Bible.
Although the
creation of literature was predominantly a male scribal pursuit, some works are
thought to have been written by women. For example, several references to women
writing letters and surviving private letters sent and received by women have
been found. However, Edward
F. Wente asserts that, even with explicit references to women
reading letters, it is possible that women employed others to write documents.
Dating, setting, and authorship
The stela of Minnakht, chief of the scribes, hieroglyph
inscriptions, dated to the reign
of Ay (r. 1323–1319 BC)
Richard B. Parkinson and Ludwig D. Morenz
write that ancient Egyptian literature—narrowly defined as belles-lettres
("beautiful writing")—were not recorded in written form until the
early Twelfth dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. Old Kingdom
texts served mainly to maintain the divine cults, preserve souls in the
afterlife, and document accounts for practical uses in daily life. It was not
until the Middle Kingdom that texts were written for the purpose of
entertainment and intellectual curiosity. Parkinson and Morenz also speculate
that written works of the Middle Kingdom were transcriptions of the oral literature of
the Old Kingdom. It is known that some oral
poetry was preserved in later writing; for example, litter-bearers' songs were
preserved as written verses in tomb inscriptions of the Old
Kingdom.
Dating texts by
methods of palaeography,
the study of handwriting, is problematic because of differing styles of
hieratic script.
The use of orthography,
the study of writing systems and symbol usage, is also problematic, since some
texts' authors may have copied the characteristic style of an older archetype.
Fictional accounts were often set in remote historical settings, the use of
contemporary settings in fiction being a relatively recent phenomenon. The
style of a text provides little help in determining an exact date for its
composition, as genre and authorial choice might be more concerned with the
mood of a text than the era in which it was written.
For example, authors of the Middle Kingdom could set fictional wisdom texts in the
golden age of the
Old Kingdom (e.g. Kagemni, Ptahhotep, and the prologue of Neferti),
or they could write fictional accounts placed in a chaotic age resembling more
the problematic life of the First Intermediate Period (e.g. Merykare and The Eloquent Peasant).
Other fictional texts are set in illo tempore (in an indeterminable era)
and usually contain timeless themes.
One of the Heqanakht papyri, a
collection of hieratic
private
letters dated to the Eleventh dynasty of the Middle Kingdom
Parkinson writes
that nearly all literary texts were pseudonymous, and
frequently falsely attributed to well-known male protagonists of earlier
history, such as kings and viziers. Only the literary genres of "teaching" and
"laments/discourses" contain works attributed to historical authors;
texts in genres such as "narrative tales" were never attributed to a
well-known historical person. Tait asserts that during the Classical Period of
Egypt, "Egyptian scribes constructed their own view of the history of the
role of scribes and of the 'authorship' of texts", but during the Late Period, this role was instead maintained
by the religious elite attached to the temples.
There are a few
exceptions to the rule of pseudonymity. The real authors of some Ramesside
Period teaching texts were acknowledged, but these cases are rare, localized, and
do not typify mainstream works.. Those who
wrote private and sometimes model letters were acknowledged as the original
authors. Private letters could be used in courts of law as testimony, since a
person's unique handwriting could be identified as authentic. Private letters
received or written by the pharaoh were sometimes inscribed in hieroglyphics on
stone monuments to celebrate kingship, while kings' decrees inscribed on stone stelas were often made public.
Literary genres and subjects
For
technical works outside literature proper, see Medical papyri and Egyptian mathematics.
Modern
Egyptologists categorize Egyptian texts into genres, for example "laments/discourses"
and narrative tales. The only genre of literature named as such by the ancient
Egyptians was the "teaching" or sebayt genre. Parkinson states that
the titles of a work, its opening statement, or key words found in the body of
text should be used as indicators of its particular genre. Only the genre of
"narrative tales" employed prose writing, yet many of the works of
that genre, as well as those of other genres, were written in verse format. Most
ancient Egyptian verses were written in couplet form, but
sometimes triplets and quatrains were
used.
Instructions and teachings
A New Kingdom copy on
papyrus of
the Loyalist Teaching,
written in hieratic script
The
"instructions" or "teaching" genre, as well as the genre of
"reflective discourses", can be grouped within the larger corpus of wisdom literature
found in the ancient Near East. The genre is didactic in nature
and is thought to have formed part of the Middle Kingdom scribal education syllabus. However,
teaching texts often incorporate narrative elements that can instruct as well
as entertain. Parkinson asserts that there is evidence that teaching texts were
not created primarily for use in scribal education, but for ideological
purposes. For example, Adolf
Erman (1854–1937) writes that the fictional instruction given by Amenemhat I (r.
1991–1962 BC) to his sons "...far exceed the bounds of school philosophy,
and there is nothing whatever to do with school in a great warning his children
to be loyal to the king". While narrative literature, embodied in works
such as The Eloquent Peasant, emphasize the individual hero who
challenges society and its accepted ideologies, the teaching texts instead
stress the need to comply with society's accepted dogmas.
Key words found
in teaching texts include "to know" (rh) and "teach"
(sba.yt). n be represented by an authoritative figure (such as a vizier or king)
providing moral guidance to his son(s). It is sometimes difficult to determine
how many fictional addressees are involved in these teachings, since some texts
switch between singular and plural when referring to their audiences.
Examples of the
"teaching" genre include the Maxims of Ptahhotep, Instructions of Kagemni, Teaching for King Merykare, Instructions of Amenemhat, Instruction of Hardjedef, Loyalist Teaching,
and Instructions of Amenemope. Teaching texts that have
survived from the Middle Kingdom were written on papyrus manuscripts. No
educational ostraca from the Middle Kingdom have survived. The earliest
schoolboy's wooden writing board, with a copy of a teaching text (i.e. Ptahhotep),
dates to the Eighteenth dynasty. Ptahhotep and Kagemni
are both found on the Prisse
Papyrus, which was written during the Twelfth dynasty of the Middle
Kingdom. The entire Loyalist Teaching survives only in manuscripts from
the New Kingdom, although the entire first
half is preserved on a Middle Kingdom biographical stone stela commemorating
the Twelfth dynasty official Sehetepibre. Merykare, Amenemhat,
and Hardjedef are genuine Middle Kingdom works, but only survive in
later New Kingdom copies. Amenemope is
a New Kingdom compilation.
Narrative tales and stories
The Westcar Papyrus,
although written in hieratic
during the Fifteenth to Seventeenth dynasties,
contains the Tale of the Court of King
Cheops,
which is written in a phase of Middle Egyptian
that is dated to the Twelfth dynasty.
The genre of
"tales and stories" is probably the least represented genre from
surviving literature of the Middle Kingdom and Middle Egyptian.
In Late Egyptian literature, "tales and stories" comprise the majority
of surviving literary works dated from the Ramesside Period of
the New Kingdom into the Late Period. Major narrative works from the
Middle Kingdom include the Tale of the Court of King
Cheops, King Neferkare and General Sasenet, The Eloquent Peasant, Story of Sinuhe,
and Tale of the shipwrecked sailor. The New
Kingdom corpus of tales includes the Quarrel of Apepi and Seqenenre, Taking of Joppa,
Tale of the doomed prince, Tale of Two Brothers, and the Report of Wenamun.
Stories from the 1st millennium BC written in Demotic include the story of the Famine Stela (set
in the Old Kingdom, although written during the Ptolemaic dynasty)
and short story cycles of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods that transform well-known historical figures
such as Khaemweset (Nineteenth Dynasty) and Inaros (First Persian Period) into fictional, legendary heroes. This
is contrasted with many stories written in Late Egyptian, whose authors
frequently chose divinities as protagonists and mythological places as
settings.
A raised-relief depiction of Amenemhat I
accompanied
by deities; the death of Amenemhat
I is reported
by his son Senusret I in the Story of Sinuhe.
Parkinson defines
tales as "...non-commemorative, non-functional, fictional narratives"
that usually employ the key word "narrate" (sdd). He describes
it as the most open-ended genre, since the tales often incorporate elements of
other literary genres. For example, Morenz describes the opening section of the
foreign adventure tale Sinuhe as a "...funerary
self-presentation" that parodies the typical autobiography found
on commemorative funerary stelas. The autobiography is for a courier whose
service began under Amenemhat I. Simpson states that the death of Amenemhat I
in the report given by his son, coregent,
and successor Senusret
I (r. 1971–1926 BC) to the army in the beginning of Sinuhe is
"...excellent propaganda". Morenz describes The shipwrecked sailor
as an expeditionary report and a travel-narrative myth. Simpson notes the
literary device of the story within a story in The shipwrecked sailor may
provide "...the earliest examples of a narrative quarrying report". With the setting
of a magical desert island, and a character who is a talking snake, The
shipwrecked sailor may also be classified as a fairy tale. While
stories like Sinuhe, Taking of Joppa, and the Doomed prince
contain fictional portrayals of Egyptians abroad, the Report of Wenamun
is most likely based on a true account of an Egyptian who traveled to Byblos in Phoenicia to obtain
cedar for shipbuilding during
the reign of Ramesses
XI.
Narrative tales
and stories are most often found on papyri, but partial and sometimes complete
texts are found on ostraca. For example, Sinuhe is found on five papyri
composed during the Twelfth and Thirteenth dynasties. This text was later
copied numerous times on ostraca during the Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties, with one ostraca
containing the complete text on both sides.
Laments, discourses, dialogues, and prophecies
The Middle
Kingdom genre of "prophetic
texts", also known as "laments", "discourses",
"dialogues",
and "apocalyptic literature", include such works as the Admonitions of Ipuwer, Prophecy of Neferti, and Dispute between a man and his Ba. This
genre had no known precedent in the Old Kingdom and no known original
compositions were produced in the New Kingdom.
However, works like Prophecy of Neferti were frequently copied during
the Ramesside Period of the New Kingdom, when
this Middle Kingdom genre was canonized but discontinued. Egyptian prophetic
literature underwent a revival during the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty
and Roman period of Egypt with works such as the Demotic
Chronicle, Oracle of the Lamb, Oracle of the Potter, and two prophetic texts that focus
on Nectanebo II (r.
360–343 BC) as a protagonist. Along with "teaching" texts, these
reflective discourses (key word mdt) are grouped with the wisdom
literature category of the ancient Near East.
The ba
in bird form, one component of the Egyptian soul
that is discussed in the Middle
Kingdom discourse
In Middle Kingdom
texts, connecting themes include a pessimistic outlook, descriptions of social
and religious change, and great disorder throughout the land, taking the form
of a syntactic
"then-now" verse formula. Although these texts are usually described
as laments, Neferti digresses from this model, providing a positive
solution to a problematic world. Although it survives only in later copies from
the Eighteenth dynasty onward, Parkinson asserts
that, due to obvious political content, Neferti was originally written
during or shortly after the reign of Amenemhat I. Simpson calls it "...a
blatant political pamphlet designed to support the new regime" of the
Twelfth dynasty founded by Amenemhat, who usurped the throne from the Mentuhotep line of
the Eleventh dynasty. In the narrative discourse, Sneferu (r.
2613–2589 BC) of the Fourth dynasty summons to court the sage and lector priest
Neferti. Neferti entertains the king with prophecies that the land will enter
into a chaotic age, alluding to the First Intermediate Period, only to be restored to its former
glory by a righteous king— Ameny—whom the ancient Egyptian would readily
recognize as Amenemhat I. A similar model of a tumultuous world transformed
into a golden age by a savior king was adopted for the Lamb and Potter,
although for their audiences living under Roman domination, the savior was yet
to come.
Although written
during the Twelfth dynasty, Ipuwer only survives from a Nineteenth dynasty papyrus. However, A man
and his Ba is found on an original Twelfth dynasty papyrus, Papyrus Berlin 3024. These two
texts resemble other discourses in style, tone, and subject matter, although
they are unique in that the fictional audiences are given very active roles in
the exchange of dialogue. In Ipuwer, a sage addresses an unnamed king
and his attendants, describing the miserable state of the land, which he blames
on the king's inability to uphold royal virtues. This can be seen either as a
warning to kings or as a legitimization of the current dynasty, contrasting it
with the supposedly turbulent period that preceded it. In A man and his Ba,
a man recounts for an audience a conversation with his ba (a component
of the Egyptian
soul) on whether to continue living in despair or to seek death as
an escape from misery.
Poems, songs, hymns, and afterlife texts
This vignette scene from the Book of the Dead of
Hunefer (Nineteenth dynasty)
shows his heart being weighed
against the feather of
truth.
If his heart is lighter than the
feather, he is allowed into the afterlife;
if not, his heart is swallowed by Ammit.
The funerary stone slab stela was first produced during the early Old Kingdom. Usually found in mastaba tombs, they combined raised-relief artwork with inscriptions bearing the name of the deceased, their official titles (if any), and invocations.
The funerary stone slab stela was first produced during the early Old Kingdom. Usually found in mastaba tombs, they combined raised-relief artwork with inscriptions bearing the name of the deceased, their official titles (if any), and invocations.
Funerary poems
were thought to preserve a monarch's soul in death. The Pyramid Texts are
the earliest surviving religious literature incorporating poetic verse. These texts do not appear in
tombs or pyramids originating before the reign of Unas (r. 2375–2345 BC), who had the Pyramid of Unas
built at Saqqara. The
Pyramid Texts are chiefly concerned with the function of preserving and
nurturing the soul of the sovereign in the afterlife. This aim eventually
included safeguarding both the sovereign and his subjects in the afterlife. A
variety of textual traditions evolved from the original Pyramid Texts: the Coffin Texts of the
Middle Kingdom, the so-called Book of the Dead,
Litany of Ra,
and Amduat written
on papyri from the New Kingdom until the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization.
Poems were also
written to celebrate kingship. For example, at the Precinct of Amun-Re at Karnak, Thutmose III (r.
1479–1425 BC) of the Eighteenth dynasty erected a stela commemorating his
military victories in which the gods bless Thutmose in poetic verse and ensure
for him victories over his enemies. In addition to stone stelas, poems have
been found on wooden writing boards used by schoolboys. Besides the
glorification of kings, poems were written to honor various deities, and even the Nile.
A blind harpist, from a mural of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, 15th century BC
Surviving hymns
and songs from the Old Kingdom include the
morning greeting hymns to the gods in their respective temples. A cycle of
Middle-Kingdom songs dedicated to Senusret III (r.
1878–1839 BC) have been discovered at El-Lahun. Erman
considers these to be secular songs used to greet the pharaoh at Memphis, while
Simpson considers them to be religious in nature but affirms that the division
between religious and secular songs is not very sharp. The Harper's Song, the
lyrics found on a tombstone of the Middle Kingdom and on Papyrus Harris 500 from the New Kingdom,
was to be performed for dinner guests at formal banquets.
During the reign
of Akhenaten (r.
1353–1336 BC), the Great Hymn to the Aten—preserved in tombs of Amarna, including the tomb of Ay—was written to the Aten, the sun-disk deity given exclusive patronage
during his reign. Simpson compares this composition's wording and sequence of
ideas to those of Psalm
104.
Only a single
poetic hymn in the Demotic script has been preserved. However, there are many
surviving examples of Late-Period Egyptian religious hymns written in
hieroglyphs on temple walls.
No Egyptian love song has been
dated from before the New Kingdom, these being
written in Late Egyptian, although it is speculated that they existed in
previous times. Erman compares the love songs to the Song of Songs,
citing the labels "sister" and "brother" that lovers used
to address each other.
Private letters, model letters, and epistles
the script was written as an
exercise by a schoolboy in Ancient Egypt.
He copied four letters
from the vizier Khay (who was active during the reign of Ramesses II).
The ancient
Egyptian model letters and epistles
are grouped into a single literary genre. Papyrus rolls sealed with mud stamps
were used for long-distance letters, while ostraca were frequently used to
write shorter, non-confidential letters sent to recipients located nearby.
Letters of royal or official correspondence, originally written in hieratic,
were sometimes given the exalted status of being inscribed on stone in
hieroglyphs. The various texts written by schoolboys on wooden writing boards
include model letters. Private letters could be used as epistolary model
letters for schoolboys to copy, including letters written by their teachers or
their families. However, these models were rarely featured in educational
manuscripts; instead fictional letters found in numerous manuscripts were used.
The common epistolary formula used in these model letters was "The
official A. saith to the scribe B".
The oldest-known private
letters on papyrus were found in a funerary temple dating to the
reign of Djedkare-Izezi
(r. 2414–2375 BC) of the Fifth dynasty. More letters are dated to the Sixth dynasty, when the epistle subgenre began. The
educational text Book of Kemit, dated to the Eleventh dynasty, contains a list of epistolary greetings and
a narrative with an ending in letter form and suitable terminology for use in
commemorative biographies.
Other letters of the early Middle Kingdom have also been found to use
epistolary formulas similar to the Book of Kemit. The Heqanakht papyri,
written by a gentleman farmer, date to the Eleventh dynasty and represent some
of the lengthiest private letters known to have been written in ancient Egypt.
During the late
Middle Kingdom, greater standardization of the epistolary formula can be seen,
for example in a series of model letters taken from dispatches sent to the Semna fortress of Nubia during the reign of Amenemhat III (r.
1860–1814 BC). Epistles were also written during all three dynasties of the New Kingdom. While letters to the dead had been written
since the Old Kingdom, the writing of petition
letters in epistolary form to deities began in the Ramesside Period, becoming
very popular during the Persian and Ptolemaic periods.
The epistolary Satirical
Letter of Papyrus Anastasi I written during the Nineteenth dynasty was a pedagogical and
didactic text copied on numerous ostraca by schoolboys. Wente describes the
versatility of this epistle, which contained "...proper greetings with
wishes for this life and the next, the rhetoric composition, interpretation of aphorisms in wisdom
literature, application of mathematics to engineering problems and the calculation of
supplies for an army, and the geography of western Asia".
Moreover, Wente calls this a "...polemical tractate" that counsels
against the rote, mechanical learning of terms for places, professions, and
things; for example, it is not acceptable to know just the place names of western
Asia, but also important details about its topography and
routes. To enhance the teaching, the text employs sarcasm and irony.
Biographical and autobiographical texts
Further
information: Weni
the Elder and Harkhuf
Catherine Parke,
Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, writes that the earliest "commemorative
inscriptions" belong to ancient Egypt and date to the 3rd
millennium BC. She writes: "In ancient Egypt the formulaic accounts of
Pharaoh's lives praised the continuity of dynastic power. Although typically
written in the first person, these pronouncements are public, general
testimonials, not personal utterances." She adds that as in these ancient
inscriptions, the human urge to "...celebrate, commemorate, and
immortalize, the impulse of life against death", is the aim of biographies written
today.
A funerary stela of a man named Ba (seated,
sniffing a sacred lotus
while receiving libations);
Ba's son Mes and wife Iny are also
seated. The identity of the libation bearer is unspecified.
The stela is dated to the Eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom period.
Olivier Perdu, a
professor of Egyptology
at the Collège de France, states that biographies did not exist in
ancient Egypt,
and that commemorative writing should be considered autobiographical.
Edward L. Greenstein, Professor of Bible at the Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University, disagrees with Perdu's terminology,
stating that the ancient world produced no "autobiographies" in the
modern sense, and these should be distinguished from 'autobiographical' texts
of the ancient world. However, both Perdu and Greenstein assert that
autobiographies of the ancient Near East should not be equated with the modern
concept of autobiography.
In her discussion
of the Ecclesiastes
of the Hebrew Bible,
Jennifer Koosed, associate professor of Religion at Albright College,
explains that there is no solid consensus among scholars as to whether true
biographies or autobiographies existed in the ancient world. One of the major
scholarly arguments against this theory is that the concept of individuality did
not exist until the European Renaissance,
prompting Koosed to write "...thus autobiography is made a product of
European civilization: Augustine begat Rosseau begat Henry Adams, and so on". Koosed asserts that the use of
first-person "I" in ancient Egyptian commemorative funerary texts
should not be taken literally since the supposed author is already dead.
Funerary texts should be considered biographical instead of autobiographical.
Koosed cautions that the term "biography" applied to such texts is
problematic, since they also usually describe the deceased person's experiences
of journeying through the afterlife.
Beginning with
the funerary stelas for officials of the late Third dynasty, small amounts of biographical detail were added
next to the deceased men's titles. However, it was not until the Sixth dynasty that narratives of the lives and careers of
government officials were inscribed. Tomb biographies became more detailed
during the Middle Kingdom, and included information about the deceased person's
family. The vast majority of autobiographical texts are dedicated to scribal
bureaucrats, but during the New Kingdom some
were dedicated to military officers and soldiers. Autobiographical texts of the
Late Period place a greater stress upon seeking help from deities than acting
righteously to succeed in life. Whereas earlier autobiographical texts
exclusively dealt with celebrating successful lives, Late Period
autobiographical texts include laments for premature death, similar to the epitaphs of ancient
Greece.
Decrees, chronicles, king lists, and histories
The
Annals of Pharaoh Thutmose III at Karnak
Modern historians
consider that some biographical—or autobiographical—texts are important
historical documents. For example, the biographical stelas of military generals
in tomb chapels built under Thutmose III provide much of the information known
about the wars in Syria and Palestine. However,
the annals of Thutmose
III, carved into the walls of several monuments built during his reign, such as
those at Karnak, also preserve information about these campaigns. The annals of
Ramesses II (r.
1279–1213 BC), recounting the Battle of Kadesh
against the Hittites include, for the first time in Egyptian literature, a
narrative epic poem,
distinguished from all earlier poetry, which served to celebrate and instruct.
Other documents
useful for investigating Egyptian history are ancient lists of kings found in terse chronicles, such as
the Fifth dynasty Palermo stone.
These documents legitimated the contemporary pharaoh's claim to sovereignty.
Throughout ancient Egyptian history, royal decrees recounted the deeds of ruling
pharaohs. For example, the Nubian
pharaoh Piye (r. 752–721
BC), founder of the Twenty-fifth dynasty, had a stela erected and
written in classical Middle Egyptian that describes with unusual nuances and
vivid imagery his successful military campaigns.
An Egyptian
historian, known by his Greek name as Manetho (c.
3rd century BC), was the first to compile a comprehensive history of Egypt. Manetho
was active during the reign of Ptolemy
II (r. 283–246 BC) and used The Histories by the Greek Herodotus (c.
484 BC–c. 425 BC) as his main source of inspiration for a history of Egypt written
in Greek. However, the primary sources for Manetho's work were the king list
chronicles of previous Egyptian dynasties.
Tomb and temple graffiti
Artistic graffiti of a
canine figure at the Temple of Kom Ombo,
built during the Ptolemaic dynasty
Fischer-Elfert
distinguishes ancient Egyptian graffiti
writing as a literary genre. During the New Kingdom,
scribes who traveled to ancient sites often left graffiti messages on the walls
of sacred mortuary
temples and pyramids, usually in commemoration of these structures. Modern
scholars do not consider these scribes to have been mere tourists, but pilgrims visiting
sacred sites where the extinct cult centers could be used for communicating
with the gods. There is evidence from an educational ostracon found in the tomb
of Senenmut (TT71) that formulaic graffiti writing was
practiced in scribal schools. In one graffiti message, left at the mortuary temple of Thutmose III at Deir el-Bahri, a
modified saying from The Maxims of Ptahhotep is incorporated into a prayer
written on the temple wall. Scribes usually wrote their graffiti in
separate clusters to distinguish their graffiti from others'. This led to
competition among scribes, who would sometimes denigrate the quality of
graffiti inscribed by others, even ancestors from the scribal profession.
Legacy, translation and interpretation
After the Copts converted to Christianity in the
first centuries AD, their Coptic Christian
literature became separated from the pharaonic and Hellenistic literary traditions. Nevertheless, scholars
speculate that ancient Egyptian literature, perhaps in oral form, had an impact
on Greek
and Arabic literature. Parallels are drawn between the Egyptian
soldiers sneaking into Jaffa
hidden in baskets to capture the city in the story Taking of Joppa and
the Mycenaean Greeks
sneaking into Troy inside the Trojan Horse in Homer's Iliad.The Taking of Joppa has
also been compared to the Arabic story of Ali Baba in One Thousand and One Nights. It has been
conjectured that Sinbad the Sailor may have been inspired by the pharaonic Tale
of the shipwrecked sailor.Some Egyptian literature was commented on by
scholars of the ancient world. For example, the Jewish Roman historian Josephus (37 –c.
100 AD) quoted and provided commentary on Manetho's historical texts.
The trilingual Rosetta Stone in
the British Museum
The most recently
carved hieroglyphic inscription of ancient Egypt
known today is found in a temple
of Philae, dated
precisely to 394 AD during the reign of Theodosius I (r.
379–395 AD). In the 4th century AD, the Hellenized Egyptian Horapollo compiled
a survey of almost two hundred Egyptian hieroglyphs and provided his
interpretation of their meanings, although his understanding was limited and
he was unaware of the phonetic uses of each hieroglyph. This survey was
apparently lost until 1415, when the Italian Cristoforo Buondelmonti acquired it at the island of Andros. Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680) was the first in Europe to realize that Coptic was a
direct linguistic descendant of ancient Egyptian In his Oedipus Aegyptiacus, he made the first concerted
European effort to interpret the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs, albeit
based on symbolic inferences.
It was not until
1799, with the Napoleonic discovery of a trilingual (i.e.
hieroglyphic, Demotic, Greek) stela inscription on the Rosetta Stone, that
modern scholars were able to decipher ancient Egyptian literature. The first
major effort to translate the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone was made by Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832) in 1822. The earliest
translation efforts of Egyptian literature during the 19th century were
attempts to confirm Biblical events.
Before the 1970s, scholarly consensus was that
ancient Egyptian literature—although sharing similarities with modern literary
categories—was not an independent discourse, uninfluenced by the ancient
sociopolitical order. However, from the 1970s onwards, a growing number of
historians and literary scholars have questioned this theory. While scholars
before the 1970s treated ancient Egyptian literary works as viable historical
sources that accurately reflected the conditions of this ancient society,
scholars now caution against this approach. Scholars are increasingly using a
multifaceted hermeneutic approach to the study of individual
literary works, in which not only the style and content, but also the cultural,
social and historical context of the work are taken into account. Individual
works can then be used as case studies for reconstructing the main
features of ancient Egyptian literary discourse.
Book of the Dead
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected
from The Book of the Dead)
For
other uses, see Book of the Dead (disambiguation).
This detail scene, from the
Papyrus of Hunefer (ca. 1275
B.C.), shows the scribe Hunefer's heart being weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the
jackal-headed Anubis. The
Ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of
the gods, records the result. If his heart is lighter than the feather, Hunefer
is allowed to pass into the afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the waiting
chimeric devouring creature Ammit
composed of the deadly crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus. Vignettes such as
these were a common illustration in Egyptian books of the dead.
The Book of
the Dead is the modern name of an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the
beginning of the New
Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC. The original Egyptian name
for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw is translated as "Book of Coming Forth by
Day".Another translation would be "Book of emerging forth into the
Light". The text consists of a number of magic spells intended to assist a
dead person's journey through the Duat,
or underworld, and into the afterlife. The Book of the Dead was part of
a tradition of funerary texts which includes the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. Some
of the spells included were drawn from these older works and date to the 3rd
millennium BC. Other spells were composed later in Egyptian history, dating to
the Third Intermediate Period (11th to 7th
centuries BC).
There was no
single or canonical Book of the Dead. The surviving papyri contain a
varying selection of religious and magical texts and vary considerably in their
illustration. Some people seem to have commissioned their own copies of the Book
of the Dead, perhaps choosing the spells they thought most vital in their
own progression to the afterlife. The Book of the Dead was most commonly
written in hieroglyphic or hieratic
script on a papyrus scroll, and
often illustrated with vignettes depicting the deceased and their journey into
the afterlife. The Book of the Dead was placed in the coffin or burial
chamber of the deceased. A number of the spells which made up the Book were
also inscribed on tomb walls and sarcophagi.
Development
Part of the Pyramid Texts, a
precursor of the
Book of the Dead, inscribed
on the tomb of Teti
In the Middle Kingdom, a new funerary text emerged, the Coffin Texts. The
Coffin Texts used a newer version of the language, new spells, and included
illustrations for the first time. The Coffin Texts were most commonly written
on the inner surfaces of coffins, though they occasionally found on tomb walls
or on papyri. The Coffin Texts were available to wealthy private individuals,
vastly increasing the number of people who could expect to participate in the
afterlife; a process which has been described as the "democratization of
the afterlife".
The Book of
the Dead first developed in Thebes towards the
beginning of the Second Intermediate Period, around 1700 BC. The
earliest known occurrence of the spells included in the Book of the Dead
is from the coffin of Queen Mentuhotep, of the 13th dynasty, where
the new spells were included amongst older texts known from the Pyramid Texts
and Coffin Texts. Some of the spells introduced at this time claim an older
provenance; for instance the rubric to spell 30B states that it was discovered
by the Prince Hordjedef in the reign of King Menkaure, many
hundreds of years before it is attested in the archaeological record.
By the 17th dynasty, the Book of the Dead had become
widespread not only for members of the royal family, but courtiers and other
officials as well. At this stage, the spells were typically inscribed on linen
shrouds wrapped around the dead, though occasionally they are found written on
coffins or on papyrus.
The New Kingdom saw the
Book of the Dead develop and spread further. The famous Spell 125, the 'Weighing of the Heart', is first known from the reign of Hatshepsut and Tuthmose III,
c.1475 BC. From this period onward the Book of the Dead was typically
written on a papyrus scroll, and the text illustrated with vignettes. During the 19th dynasty in
particular, the vignettes tended to be lavish, sometimes at the expense of the
surrounding text. In the Third Intermediate Period, the Book of the Dead started
to appear in hieratic script, as
well as in the traditional hieroglyphics. The hieratic scrolls were a cheaper
version, lacking illustration apart from a single vignette at the beginning,
and were produced on smaller papyri. At the same time, many burials used
additional funerary texts, for instance the Amduat.
During the 25th and 26th dynasties, the
Book of the Dead was updated, revised and standardized. Spells were
consistently ordered and numbered for the first time. This standardized version
is known today as the 'Saite recession', after the Saite (26th) dynasty. In the
Late period and Ptolemaic period,
the Book of the Dead remained based on the Saite recession, though
increasingly abbreviated towards the end of the Ptolemaic period. New funerary
texts appeared, including the Book of Breathing
and Book of Traversing Eternity.
The last use of the Book of the Dead was in the 1st century BC, though
some artistic motifs drawn from it were still in use in Roman times.
Spells
The mystical Spell 17, from the Papyrus of Ani.
The vignette at the top
illustrates, from left to right, the god Heh as a
representation of the Sea;
a gateway to the realm of Osiris;
the Eye of Horus; the
celestial cow Mehet-Weret;
and a human head rising from a
coffin, guarded by the four Sons of Horus.
The Book of
the Dead is made up of a number of individual texts and their accompanying
illustrations. Most sub-texts begin with the word ro, which can mean
mouth, speech, a chapter of a book, spell, utterance, or incantation. This
ambiguity reflects the similarity in Egyptian thought between ritual speech and
magical power. In the context of the Book of the Dead, it is typically
translated as either "chapter" or "spell". In this article,
the word "spell" is used.
At present, some
192 spells are known, though no single manuscript contains them all. They
served a range of purposes. Some are intended to give the deceased mystical
knowledge in the afterlife, or perhaps to identify them with the gods: for
instance, Spell 17, an obscure and lengthy description of the god Atum. Others are incantations to ensure
the different elements of the dead person's being were preserved and reunited,
and to give the deceased control over the world around him. Still others
protect the deceased from various hostile forces, or guide him through the
underworld past various obstacles. Famously, two spells also deal with the judgment
of the deceased in the Weighing of the Heart ritual.
Such spells as
26-30, and sometimes spells 6 and 126 relate to the heart, and were inscribed
on scarabs.
The texts and
images of the Book of the Dead were magical as well as religious. Magic
was as legitimate an activity as praying to the gods, even when the magic was
aimed at controlling the gods themselves Indeed, there was little distinction
for the Ancient Egyptians between magical and religious practice. The concept
of magic (heka) was also intimately linked with the spoken and written
word. The act of speaking a ritual formula was an act of creation; there is a
sense in which action and speech was one and the same thing. The magical power
of words extended to the written word. Hieroglyphic script was held to have
been invented by the god Thoth,
and the hieroglyphs themselves were powerful. Written words conveyed the full
force of a spell. This was even true when the text was abbreviated or omitted,
as often occurred in later Book of the Dead scrolls, particularly if the
accompanying images were present. The Egyptians also believed that knowing the
name of something gave power over it; thus, the Book of the Dead equips
its owner with the mystical names of many of the entities he would encounter in
the afterlife, giving him power of them.
The spells of the
Book of the Dead made use of several magical techniques which can also
be seen in other areas of Egyptian life. A number of spells are for magical amulets, which would protect the deceased
from harm. In addition to being represented on a Book of the Dead
papyrus, these spells appeared on amulets wound into the wrappings of a mummy.
Everyday magic made use of amulets in huge numbers. Other items in direct
contact with the body in the tomb, such as headrests, were also being
considered to have amulet value. A number of spells also refer to Egyptian
beliefs about the magical healing power of saliva.
Organization
Almost every Book
of the Dead was unique, containing a different mixture of spells drawn from
the corpus of texts available. For most of the history of the Book of the
Dead there was no defined order or structure. In fact, until Paul Barguet's 1967 "pioneering
study" of common themes between texts, Egyptologists concluded there was
no internal structure at all. It is only from the Saite period (26th dynasty) onwards
that there is a defined order.
The Books of the
Dead from the Saite period tend to organize the Chapters into four sections:
- Chapters 1–16 The deceased enters the tomb, descends to the underworld, and the body regains its powers of movement and speech.
- Chapters 17–63 Explanation of the mythic origin of the gods and places, the deceased are made to live again so that they may arise, reborn, with the morning sun.
- Chapters 64–129 The deceased travels across the sky in the sun ark as one of the blessed dead. In the evening, the deceased travels to the underworld to appear before Osiris.
- Chapters 130–189 Having been vindicated, the deceased assumes power in the universe as one of the gods. This section also includes assorted chapters on protective amulets, provision of food, and important places.
Egyptian concepts of death and afterlife
A depiction of the ba, an
element of the soul
The spells in the
Book of the Dead depict Egyptian beliefs about the nature of death and
the afterlife. The Book of the Dead is a vital source of information
about Egyptian beliefs in this area.
Preservation
One aspect of
death was the disintegration of the various kheperu, or modes of
existence. Funerary rituals served to re-integrate these different aspects of
being. Mummification
served to preserve and transform the physical body into a sah, an
idealised form with divine aspects; the Book
of the Dead contained spells aimed at preserving the body of the deceased,
which may have been recited during the process of mummification. The heart,
which was regarded as the aspect of being which included intelligence and
memory, was also protected with spells, and in case anything happened to the
physical heart, it was common to bury jeweled heart scarabs with a body to provide a replacement. The ka,
or life-force, remained in the tomb with the dead body, and required sustenance
from offerings of food, water and incense. In case priests or relatives failed
to provide these offerings, Spell 105 ensured the ka was satisfied. The
name of the dead person, which constituted their individuality and was required
for their continued existence, was written in many places throughout the Book,
and spell 25 ensured the deceased would remember their own name. The ba
was a free-ranging spirit aspect of the deceased. It was the ba,
depicted as a human-headed bird, which could "go forth by day" from
the tomb into the world; spells 61 and 89 acted to preserve it. Finally, the shut,
or shadow of the deceased, was preserved by spells 91, 92 and 188. If all these
aspects of the person could be variously preserved, remembered, and satiated,
then the dead person would live on in the form of an akh. An akh
was a blessed spirit with magical powers who would dwell among the gods.
Afterlife
The nature of the
afterlife which the dead person enjoyed is difficult to define, because of the
differing traditions within Ancient Egyptian religion. In the Book of the Dead,
the dead were taken into the presence of the god Osiris, who was confined to the
subterranean Duat. There are also spells to enable the ba or akh
of the dead to join Ra as he travelled
the sky in his sun-barque, and help him fight off Apep. As well as joining the Gods, the Book
of the Dead also depicts the dead living on in the 'Field of Reeds', a
paradisaical likeness of the real world. The Field of Reeds is depicted as a
lush, plentiful version of the Egypt
of the living. There are fields, crops, oxen, people and waterways. The
deceased person is shown encountering the Great Ennead, a group of gods, as well as
his or her own parents. While the depiction of the Field of Reeds is pleasant
and plentiful, it is also clear that manual labour is required. For this reason
burials included a number of statuettes named shabti, or later ushebti. These
statuettes were inscribed with a spell, also included in the Book of the
Dead, requiring them to undertake any manual labour that might be the
owner's duty in the afterlife. It is also clear that the dead not only went to
a place where the gods lived, but that they acquired divine characteristics
themselves. In many occasions, the deceased is mentioned as "The Osiris -
[Name]" in the Book of the Dead.
Two 'gate spells'. On the top
register, Ani and his wife face the 'seven gates of the House of Osiris'.
Below, they encounter ten of the
21 'mysterious portals of the House of Osiris in the Field of Reeds'.
All are guarded by unpleasant protectors.
The path to the
afterlife as laid out in the Book of the Dead was a difficult one. The
deceased was required to pass a series of gates, caverns and mounds guarded by
supernatural creatures. These terrifying entities were armed with enormous
knives and are illustrated in grotesque forms, typically as human figures with
the heads of animals or combinations of different ferocious beasts. Their
names—for instance, "He who lives on snakes" or "He who dances
in blood"—are equally grotesque. These creatures had to be pacified by
reciting the appropriate spells included in the Book of the Dead; once
pacified they posed no further threat, and could even extend their protection
to the dead person. Another breed of supernatural creatures was 'slaughterers'
who killed the unrighteous on behalf of Osiris; the Book of the Dead
equipped its owner to escape their attentions.As well as these supernatural
entities, there were also threats from natural or supernatural animals,
including crocodiles, snakes, and beetles.
Judgement
The Weighing of the Heart ritual, shown in the Book of the Dead
of Sesostris
If all the
obstacles of the Duat could be negotiated, the deceased would be judged
in the Weighing of the Heart ritual, depicted in Spell 125. The
deceased was led by the god Anubis
into the presence of Osiris. There, the dead person swore that he had not
committed any sin from a list of 42
sins, reciting a text known as the "Negative Confession".
Then the dead person's heart was weighed on a pair of scales, against the
goddess Ma'at, who embodied
truth and justice. Ma'at was often represented by an ostrich feather, the
hieroglyphic sign for her name. At this point, there was a risk that the
deceased's heart would bear witness, owning up to sins committed in life; Spell
30B guarded against this eventuality. If the scales balanced, this meant the
deceased had led a good life. Anubis would take them to Osiris and they would
find their place in the afterlife, becoming maa-kheru, meaning
"vindicated" or "true of voice”. If the heart was out of balance
with Ma'at, then another fearsome beast called Ammit, the Devourer, stood ready to
eat it and put the dead person's afterlife to an early and unpleasant end.
This scene is
remarkable not only for its vividness but as one of the only parts of the Book
of the Dead with any explicit moral content. The judgment of the dead and the
Negative Confession were a representation of the conventional moral code which
governed Egyptian society. For every "I have not..." in the Negative
Confession, it is possible to read an unexpressed "Thou shall not".
While the Ten
Commandments of Judaeo-Christian ethics are rules of conduct laid
down by divine revelation, the Negative Confession is more a divine enforcement
of everyday morality. Views differ among Egyptologists about how far the
Negative Confession represents a moral absolute, with ethical purity being
necessary for progress to the Afterlife. John Taylor points out the wording of
Spells 30B and 125 suggests a pragmatic approach to morality; by preventing the
heart from contradicting him with any inconvenient truths, it seems that the
deceased could enter the afterlife even if their life had not been entirely
pure. Ogden Goblets says "without an exemplary and moral existence, there
was no hope for a successful afterlife", while Geraldine Pinch suggests
that the Negative Confession is essentially similar to the spells protecting
from demons, and that the success of the Weighing of the Heart depended on the
mystical knowledge of the true names of the judges rather than on the
deceased's moral behavior.
Producing a Book of the Dead
Part of the Book of the Dead
of Pinedjem II. The
text is hieratic,
except for hieroglyphics in the
vignette. The use of red pigment,
and the joins between papyrus
sheets, is also visible
A close-up of the Papyrus of Ani,
showing the cursive hieroglyphs of the text
A Book of the
Dead papyrus was produced to order by scribes. They were commissioned by
people in preparation for their own funeral, or by the relatives of someone
recently deceased. They were expensive items; one source gives the price of a Book
of the Dead scroll as one deben of
silver, perhaps half the annual pay of a labourer. Papyrus itself was evidently
costly, as there are many instances of its re-use in everyday documents,
creating palimpsests. In one
case, a Book of the Dead was written on second-hand papyrus.
Most owners of
the Book of the Dead were evidently part of the social elite; they were
initially reserved for the royal family, but later papyri are found in the
tombs of scribes, priests and officials. Most owners were men, and generally
the vignettes included the owner's wife as well. Towards the beginning of the
history of the Book of the Dead, there are roughly 10 copies belonging
to men for every one for a woman. However, during the Third Intermediate
Period, 2/3 were for women; and women owned roughly a third of the hieratic
paypri from the Late and Ptolemaic Periods.
The dimensions of
a Book of the Dead could vary widely; the longest is 40m long while some
are as short as 1m. They are composed of sheets of papyrus joined together, the
individual papyri varying in width from 15 cm to 45 cm. The scribes
working on Book of the Dead papyri took more care over their work than
those working on more mundane texts; care was taken to frame the text within
margins, and to avoid writing on the joints between sheets. The words peret
em heru, or 'coming forth by day' sometimes appear on the reverse of the
outer margin, perhaps acting as a label.
Books were often
prefabricated in funerary workshops, with spaces being left for the name of the
deceased to be written in later. For instance, in the Papyrus of Ani, the
name "Ani" appears at the top or bottom of a column, or immediately
following a rubric introducing him as the speaker of a block of text; the name
appears in a different handwriting to the rest of the manuscript, and in some
places is mis-spelt or omitted entirely.
The text of a New Kingdom Book
of the Dead was typically written in cursive hieroglyphs, most often from left to right, but also
sometimes from right to left. The hieroglyphs were in columns, which were
separated by black lines - a similar arrangement to that used when hieroglyphs
were carved on tomb walls or monuments. Illustrations were put in frames above,
below, or between the columns of text. The largest illustrations took up a full
page of papyrus.
From the 21st Dynasty
onward, more copies of the Book of the Dead are found in hieratic script.
The calligraphy is similar to that of other hieratic manuscripts of the New Kingdom; the text is written in horizontal lines across wide columns (often
the column size corresponds to the size of the papyrus sheets of which a scroll
is made up). Occasionally a hieratic Book of the Dead contains captions
in hieroglyphic.
The text of a Book
of the Dead was written in both black and red ink, regardless of whether it
was in hieroglyphic or hieratic script. Most of the text was in black, with red
used for the titles of spells, opening and closing sections of spells, the
instructions to perform spells correctly in rituals, and also for the names of
dangerous creatures such as the demon Apep. The black ink used was based on carbon, and the red ink on ochre, in both cases mixed with water.
The style and
nature of the vignettes used to illustrate a Book of the Dead varies
widely. Some contain lavish colour illustrations, even making use of gold leaf. Others
contain only line drawings, or one simple illustration at the opening.
Book of the
Dead papyri were often the work of
several different scribes and artists whose work was literally pasted together.
It is usually possible to identify the style of more than one scribe used on a
given manuscript, even when the manuscript is a shorter one. The text and illustrations
were produced by different scribes; there are a number of Books where
the text was completed but the illustrations were left empty.
Discovery, translation, interpretation
and preservation
Karl Richard Lepsius, first translator of a complete Book
of the Dead manuscript
The existence of
the Book of the Dead was known as early as the Middle Ages, well before
its contents could be understood. Since it was found in tombs, it was evidently
a document of a religious nature, and this led to the widespread
misapprehension that the Book of the Dead was the equivalent of a Bible or Qu'ran.
The first modern
facsimile of a Book of the Dead was produced in 1805 and included in the
Description de l'Égypte produced by the staff of
Napoleon's expedition to Egypt.
In 1822, Jean Francois Champollion began to translate hieroglyphic
text; he examined some of the Book of the Dead papyri and identified
them as a funerary ritual.
In 1842 Karl Richard Lepsius published a translation of a manuscript
dated to the Ptolemaic era and coined the name "Book
of the Dead". He also introduced the spell numbering system which is
still in use, identifying 165 different spells. Lepsius promoted the idea of a
comparative edition of the Book of the Dead, drawing on all relevant
manuscripts. This project was undertaken by Edouard Naville,
starting in 1875 and completed in 1886, producing a three-volume work including
a selection of vignettes for every one of the 186 spells he worked with, the
variations of the text for every spell, and commentary. In 1876, Samuel Birch of the
British Museum
published a photographic copy of the papyrus of Nebseny.
The work of E. A. Wallis Budge, Birch's successor at the British Museum,
is still in wide circulation - including both his hieroglyphic editions and his
English translations, though the latter are now considered inaccurate and
out-of-date. More recent translations in English have been published by T. G.
Allen (1974) and Raymond O. Faulkner (1972). As more work has been done on the Book
of the Dead, more spells have been identified, and the total now stands at
192.
Research work on
the Book of the Dead has always posed technical difficulties thanks to
the need to copy very long hieroglyphic texts. Initially, these were copied out
by hand, with the assistance either of tracing paper or a camera lucida. In
the mid-19th century, hieroglyphic fonts became available and made lithographic
reproduction of manuscripts more feasible. In the present day, hieroglyphics
can be rendered in desktop publishing software and this, combined with digital
print technology, means that the costs of publishing a Book of the Dead
may be considerably reduced. However, a very large amount of the source
material in museums around the world remains unpublished
Notable rock band
The Grateful Dead purportedly were reading over a translation
of parts of the Book of the Dead when they came across the phrases, "We
now return our souls to the creator, as we stand on the edge of eternal
darkness. Let our chant fill the void in order that others may know. In the
land of the night the ship of the sun is drawn by the grateful dead." The
name stuck.
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento