they believed and how they died. In Egypt, walking around cemeteries has provided a veritable library of information about thousands of years of Egyptian life and beliefs. For instance, in the carved limestone tombs near the Old Kingdom pyramid of King Unas (c. 2375–2345 BCE), archaeologists found a “house for the afterlife,” complete with men’s and women’s quarters, a master bedroom, and bathrooms with latrines. But perhaps more significant was the discovery of columns of hieroglyphics called the Pyramid Texts, considered the world’s oldest known religious writings, carved more than four thousand years ago in the tomb of King Unas.
If you grew up on a diet of Walt Disney witches, the word “spell” probably invokes notions of hocus-pocus and “eye of newt.” But the Pyramid Texts’ collection of “spells” and incantations (the exact Egyptian phrase for them was “words to be spoken”) was far less exotic. Actually, in modern parlance, the Pyramid Texts were more like “how-to” manuals—travel guides to the afterlife. Evoking the names of the enormous pantheon of Egyptian gods, the “spells” they contained provided the dead king with the “scripts” that were necessary for his safe passage, survival, and well-being in the land of the dead. They sometimes warned of dangers and included the correct dialogues with gatekeepers and ferrymen he would encounter along the way, providing the deceased with a “cheat sheet” of answers to questions that would vouch for his legitimacy as a king and heir of the gods. Typical of the Texts is this “Utterance,” in which the king is ferried across the sky to join the sun god:
The reed-floats of the sky are set down for me,
That I may cross on them to the horizon, to Harakhti.
The Nurse-canal is opened,
The Winding Waterway is flooded,
The Field of Rushes are filled with water,
And I am ferried over
To yonder eastern side of the sky,
To the place where the gods fashioned me,
Wherein I was born, new and young.
More than two hundred of these “spells” were found in the tomb of King Unas, but more than eight hundred others have been discovered since in other tombs dating from this early period. The vast pantheon of Egyptian gods is hinted at by the fact that more than two hundred different gods are mentioned in the various Pyramid Texts. Although once reserved for kings, Pyramid Texts began to appear in the tombs of non-royalty by the end of the Old Kingdom’s Sixth Dynasty, suggesting a fundamental change in Egyptian society that might explain the disorder that sent the Old Kingdom into decline.
Over time, the Egyptian obsession with preparing properly for the afterlife produced ornate coffins painted with hymns and requests to the gods in another collection of spells, known as Coffin Texts . This is the modern name for a collection of more than eleven hundred spells and recitations, some of them similar to versions from the Pyramid Texts, which were painted on wooden coffins. Some of these texts included maps showing the safest route for the soul to take as the dead person negotiated the treacherous path through the underworld.
The last—and perhaps best known—form of burial literature is another collection, which was misnamed The Book of the Dead when it was discovered and translated in the nineteenth century CE. Used for more than a thousand years, The Book of the Dead, known to the Egyptians as “The Book of Coming Forth by Day,” was a New Kingdom innovation, consisting of almost two hundred spells or formulas designed to assist the spirits of the dead achieve and maintain a full and happy afterlife. These spells had such titles as “For Going Out Into the Day and Living After Death,” “For Passing by the Dangerous Coil of Apep” (Apep was a terrible serpent in Egyptian mythology), or advice with the ring of a “Hint from Heloise”—” For Removing Anger From the Heart of the God.” Another provided the incantation for
If you grew up on a diet of Walt Disney witches, the word “spell” probably invokes notions of hocus-pocus and “eye of newt.” But the Pyramid Texts’ collection of “spells” and incantations (the exact Egyptian phrase for them was “words to be spoken”) was far less exotic. Actually, in modern parlance, the Pyramid Texts were more like “how-to” manuals—travel guides to the afterlife. Evoking the names of the enormous pantheon of Egyptian gods, the “spells” they contained provided the dead king with the “scripts” that were necessary for his safe passage, survival, and well-being in the land of the dead. They sometimes warned of dangers and included the correct dialogues with gatekeepers and ferrymen he would encounter along the way, providing the deceased with a “cheat sheet” of answers to questions that would vouch for his legitimacy as a king and heir of the gods. Typical of the Texts is this “Utterance,” in which the king is ferried across the sky to join the sun god:
The reed-floats of the sky are set down for me,
That I may cross on them to the horizon, to Harakhti.
The Nurse-canal is opened,
The Winding Waterway is flooded,
The Field of Rushes are filled with water,
And I am ferried over
To yonder eastern side of the sky,
To the place where the gods fashioned me,
Wherein I was born, new and young.
More than two hundred of these “spells” were found in the tomb of King Unas, but more than eight hundred others have been discovered since in other tombs dating from this early period. The vast pantheon of Egyptian gods is hinted at by the fact that more than two hundred different gods are mentioned in the various Pyramid Texts. Although once reserved for kings, Pyramid Texts began to appear in the tombs of non-royalty by the end of the Old Kingdom’s Sixth Dynasty, suggesting a fundamental change in Egyptian society that might explain the disorder that sent the Old Kingdom into decline.
Over time, the Egyptian obsession with preparing properly for the afterlife produced ornate coffins painted with hymns and requests to the gods in another collection of spells, known as Coffin Texts . This is the modern name for a collection of more than eleven hundred spells and recitations, some of them similar to versions from the Pyramid Texts, which were painted on wooden coffins. Some of these texts included maps showing the safest route for the soul to take as the dead person negotiated the treacherous path through the underworld.
The last—and perhaps best known—form of burial literature is another collection, which was misnamed The Book of the Dead when it was discovered and translated in the nineteenth century CE. Used for more than a thousand years, The Book of the Dead, known to the Egyptians as “The Book of Coming Forth by Day,” was a New Kingdom innovation, consisting of almost two hundred spells or formulas designed to assist the spirits of the dead achieve and maintain a full and happy afterlife. These spells had such titles as “For Going Out Into the Day and Living After Death,” “For Passing by the Dangerous Coil of Apep” (Apep was a terrible serpent in Egyptian mythology), or advice with the ring of a “Hint from Heloise”—” For Removing Anger From the Heart of the God.” Another provided the incantation for
Similar Books
