Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt: Lecture III. The Realms of the Dead—The Pyramid Texts—The Ascent to the Sky

Similarly the pyramid and temple were protected from decay for all time. When the dead king appears in the hereafter he is at once hailed with greetings by Atum, the ancient Sun-god; Atum then summons the gods: "Ho, all ye gods, come, gather together; come, unite as ye gathered together and united for Atum in Heliopolis, that he might hail you. Come ye, do ye everything which is good for king Pepi II for ever and ever." Atum then promises generous offerings "for all gods who shall cause every good thing to be king Pepi II's; who shall cause to endure this pyramid and this building like that where king Pepi II loved to be for ever and ever. All gods who shall cause to be good and enduring this pyramid and this building of king Pepi II they shall be equipped (or prepared), they shall be honored, they shall become souls, they shall become mighty; to them shall be given royal mortuary offerings, they shall receive divine offerings; to them shall joints be presented, to them shall oblations be made." 3

Again the priest addresses the Sun-god under his earliest name, Atum, and recalls the time when the god sat high on the sacred ben, the pyramidal symbol at Heliopolis,

and created the other gods. This then is a special reason why he should preserve the pyramid of the king forever. "Thou wast lofty," says the priest, "on the height; thou didst shine as Phœnix of the ben in the Phœnix-hall in Heliopolis. That which thou didst spew out was Shu; that which thou didst spit out was Tefnut (his first two children). Thou didst put thy arms behind them as a ka-arm, that thy ka might be in them. O Atum, put thou thy arms behind king Mernere, behind this building, and behind this pyramid, as a ka-arm, that the ka of king Mernere may be in it enduring for ever and ever. Ho, Atum! Protect thou this king Mernere, this his pyramid and this building of king Mernere." 1 The priest then commends the pyramid to the whole Ennead, and finally proceeds to another long Utterance, which takes up the names of all the gods of the Ennead one after the other, affirming that, "as the name of the god so-and-so is firm, so is firm the name of king Mernere; so are firm this his pyramid and this his building likewise for ever and ever." 2

Resting beneath the pyramid, the king's wants were elaborately met by a sumptuous and magnificent ritual performed on his behalf in the temple before his tomb. Of this ritual we know nothing except such portions of it as have been preserved in the Pyramid Texts. These show that the usual calendar of feasts of the living was celebrated for the king, 3 though naturally on a more splendid scale. Evidently the observances consisted chiefly in the presentation of plentiful food, clothing, and the like. One hundred and seventy-eight formulæ or utterances, forming about one-twentieth of the bulk of the Pyramid Texts, 4 contain the words spoken by the royal mortuary

priests in offering food, drink, clothing, ointment, perfume, and incense, revealing the endless variety and splendid luxury of the king's table, toilet, and wardrobe in the hereafter. The magnificent vases discovered by Borchardt at Abusir in the pyramid-temple of Neferirkere (twenty-eighth century B.C.) are a further hint of the royal splendor with which this ritual of offerings was maintained, while the beauty and grandeur of the pyramid-temples themselves furnished an incomparable setting within which all this mortuary magnificence was maintained.

All this system of mortuary maintenance early came under the complete domination of the Osirian faith, though the very tomb at which it was enacted was a symbol of the Sun-god. Osiris had died not in the distant sky like Re, but on earth as men die. The human aspects of his life and death led to the early adoption of the incidents in his story as those which took place in the life and death of every one. Horus had offered to his father the eye which Set had wrenched out, and this evidence of the son's self-sacrifice for the father's sake had made Osiris a "soul," and proven of incalculable blessing. The "Horus-eye" became the primal type of all offerings, especially those offered to the dead, Osiris having been dead when he received the eye. Thus every offering presented to the king in the ritual of the pyramids was called the "Horus-eye," no matter what the character of the offering might be. In presenting linen garments the priest addressed the dead king thus: "Ho! This king Pepi! Arise thou, put on thee the Horus-eye, receive it upon thee, lay it to thy flesh; that thou mayest go forth in it, and the gods may see thee clothed in it. . . . The Horus-eye is brought to thee, it removes not from thee

for ever and ever." 1 Again in offering ointment the priest assuming the office of Horus says: "Horus comes filled with ointment. He has embraced his father Osiris. He found him (lying) upon his side in Gehesti. Osiris filled himself with the eye of him whom he begat. Ho! This king Pepi II! I come to thee steadfast, that I may fill thee with the ointment that came forth from the Horus-eye. Fill thyself therewith. It will join thy bones, it will unite thy members, it will join to thee thy flesh, it will dissolve thy evil sweat to the earth. Take its odor upon thee that thy odor may be sweet like (that of) Re, when he rises in the horizon, and the horizon-gods delight in him. Ho! This king Pepi II! The odor of the Horus-eye is on thee; the gods who follow Osiris delight In thee." 2

The individual formulæ in the long offering-ritual are very brief. The prevailing form of offering is simply: "O king X! Handed to thee is the Horus-eye which was wrested from Set, rescued for thee, that thy mouth might be filled with it. Wine, a white jar." 3 The last words prescribe the offering which the formula accompanies. Similarly the method of offering or the accompanying acts may be appended to the actual words employed by the priest. Thus through the lengthy ritual of six or eight score such utterances, besides some others scattered through the Pyramid Texts, the priest lays before the dead king those creature comforts which he had enjoyed in the flesh. 4 In doing so he entered the mysterious

chamber behind the temple court, where he stepped into the presence of the pyramid itself, beneath which the king lay. Before the priest rose the great false door through which the spirit of the king might re-enter the temple from his sepulchre far beneath the mountain of masonry now towering above it. Standing before the false door the priest addressed the king as if present and presented a vast array of the richest gifts, accompanying each with the precribed formula of presentation which we have already discussed. But the insistent fact of death cannot be ignored even in these utterances which exist solely because the dead is believed to live and feels the needs of the living. In the silent chamber the priest feels the unresponsiveness of the royal dead yonder far beneath the mountainous pyramid, and hence from time to time calls upon him to rise from his sleep and behold the food and the gifts spread out for him. In order that none of these may be omitted, the priest summarizes them all in the promise to the king: "Given to thee are all offerings, all oblations, (even) thy desire, and that by which it is well for thee with the god forever." 1 Added to all this elaborate ritual of gifts there were also charms potent to banish hunger from the vitals of the king, and these, too, the priest from time to time recited for the Pharaoh's benefit. 2

The kings of the early Pyramid Age in the thirtieth century

1 But would the posterity of an Oriental sovereign never weary in giving him mortuary offerings every day? We shall see.

Such maintenance required a considerable body of priests in constant service at the pyramid-temple, though no list of a royal pyramid priesthood has survived to us. They were supported by liberal endowments, for which the power of the royal house might secure respect for a long time. The priesthood and the endowment of the pyramid of Snefru at Dahshur (thirtieth century B.C.) were respected and declared exempt from all state dues and levies by a royal decree issued by Pepi II of the Sixth Dynasty, three hundred years after Snefru's death. Moreover, there had been three changes of dynasty since the decease of Snefru. But such endowments, accumulating as they did from generation to generation, must inevitably break down at last. In the thirtieth century B.C., Snefru himself had given to one of his nobles "one hundred loaves every day from the mortuary temple of the mother of the king's children, Nemaathap." 2 This queen had died at the close of the Second Dynasty, some

two generations earlier. Snefru, while he may not have violated her mortuary income, at least disposed of it after it had served its purpose at her tomb, in rewarding his partisans. In the same way Sahure, desiring to reward Persen, one of his favorite nobles, finds no other resources available and diverts to Persen's tomb an income of loaves and oil formerly paid to the queen Neferhotepes every day. 1 There is in these acts of Snefru and Sahure a hint of one possible means of meeting the dilemma as the number of tomb endowments increased, viz., by supplying one tomb with food-offerings which had already served in another. Even so the increasing number of royal tombs made it more and more difficult as a mere matter of management and administration to maintain them. Hence even the priests of Sahure's pyramid in the middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., unable properly to protect the king's pyramid-temple, found it much cheaper and more convenient to wall up all the side entrances and leave only the causeway as the entrance to the temple. They seem to have regarded this as a pious work, for they left the name of the particular phyle of priests who did it, on the masonry of the doorways which they thus closed up. 2 After this the accidentally acquired sanctity of a figure of the goddess Sekhmet in the temple, a figure which enjoyed the local reverence and worship of the surrounding villages, and continued in their favor for centuries, resulted in the preservation of a large portion of the temple which otherwise would long before have fallen into ruin. Sahure's successor, Neferirkere, fared much worse. A few years after his death a successor of the same dynasty (Nuserre) broke away the causeway leading up to the

pyramid-temple that he might divert it to his own temple near by. The result was that the mortuary priests of Neferirkere, unable longer to live in the valley below, moved up to the plateau, where they grouped their sun-dried brick dwellings around and against the façade of the temple where they ministered. As their income dwindled these dwellings became more and more like hovels, they finally invaded the temple court and chambers, and the priests, by this time in a state of want, fairly took possession of the temple as a priestly quarter. Left at last without support, their own tumble-down hovels were forsaken and the ruins mingled with those of the temple itself. When the Middle Kingdom opened, six hundred years after Neferirkere's death, the temple was several metres deep under the accumulation of rubbish, and the mounds over it were used as a burial ground, where the excavations disclosed burials a metre or two above the pavement of the temple. The great Fourth Dynasty cemetery at Gizeh experienced the same fate. The mortuary priests whose ancestors had once administered the sumptuous endowments of the greatest of all pyramids, pushed their intrusive burials into the streets and areas between the old royal tombs of the extinct line, where they too ceased about 2500 B.C., four hundred years after Khufu laid out the Gizeh cemetery. Not long after 2500 B.C., indeed the whole sixty-mile line of Old Kingdom pyramids from Medûm on the south to Gizeh on the north had become a desert solitude. 1 This melancholy condition is discernible also in the reflections of the thoughtful in the Feudal Age five hundred years later as they contemplated the wreck of these massive tombs. (See pp. 181–4.)

What was so obvious centuries after the great Pharaohs

of the Pyramid Age had passed away was already discernible long before the Old Kingdom fell. The pyramids represent the culmination of the belief in material equipment as completely efficacious in securing felicity for the dead. The great pyramids of Gizeh represent the effort of titanic energies absorbing all the resources of a great state as they converged upon one supreme endeavor to sheath eternally the body of a single man, the head of the state, in a husk of masonry so colossal that by these purely material means the royal body might defy all time and by sheer force of mechanical supremacy make conquest of immortality. The decline of such vast pyramids as those of the Fourth Dynasty at Gizeh, and the final insertion of the Pyramid Texts in the pyramids beginning with the last king of the Fifth Dynasty about 2625 B.C., puts the emphasis on well-being elsewhere, a belief in felicity in some distant place not so entirely dependent upon material means, and recognizes in some degree the fact that piles of masonry cannot confer that immortality which a man must win in his own soul.

The Pyramid Texts as a whole furnish us the oldest chapter in human thinking preserved to us, the remotest reach in the intellectual history of man which we are now able to discern. It had always been supposed that the pyramids were all without inscription, until the native workmen employed by Mariette at Sakkara in 1880, the year before his death, penetrated the pyramid of Pepi I, and later that of Mernere. For the first edition of the Pyramid Texts we are indebted to Maspero, who displayed great penetration in discerning the general character of these texts, which he published during the next ten years. Nevertheless, it has been only since the appearance of Sethe's great edition in 1910 that it has been possible to

undertake the systematic study of these remarkable documents. 1

Written in hieroglyphic they occupy the walls of the passages, galleries, and chambers in five of the pyramids of Sakkara: the earliest, that of Unis, belonging at the end of the Fifth Dynasty in the latter half of the twenty-seventh century B.C., and the remaining four, those of the leading kings of the Sixth Dynasty, Teti, Pepi I, Mernere, and Pepi II, the last of whom died early in the twenty-fifth century B.C. They thus represent a period of about one hundred and fifty years from the vicinity of 2625 to possibly 2475 B.C., that is the whole of the twenty-sixth century and possibly a quarter of a century before and after it.

It is evident, however, that they contain material much older than this, the age of the copies which have come down to us. The five copies themselves refer to material then in existence which has not survived. We read in them of "the Chapter of Those Who Ascend," and the "Chapter of Those Who Raise Themselves Up," which purport to have been used on the occasion of various incidents in the myths. 2 They were thus regarded as older than our Pyramid Texts. Such older material, therefore, existed, whether we possess any of it or not. We find conditions of civilization also in the Pyramid Texts which were far older than the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. In

summoning the dead to rise he is bidden: "Throw off the sand from thy face," 1 or "Remove thy earth." 2 Such passages as these must have arisen in a time when the king was buried in a primitive grave scooped out of the desert sand. Similarly when the king's tomb is opened for him that he may rise he is assured: "The brick are drawn for thee out of the great tomb," 3 a passage which must have come into use when the kings used brick tombs like those at Abydos in the First and Second Dynasties. Like the sand grave or the brick tomb, is the common representation of the king crossing the celestial waters on the two reed floats, used by the peasants of Nubia to this day.

Parallel with these hints in the conditions of civilization are others referring to the political conditions, which plainly place some of the Pyramid Texts in the days before the rise of the dynasties, in the age when South and North were warring together for supremacy, that is before 3400 B.C. We find a sycomore-goddess addressed thus: "Thou hast placed the terror of thee in the heart of the kings of Lower Egypt, dwelling in Buto" (the capital of the prehistoric Delta kingdom), 4 a passage evidently written from the point of view of the South in hostility toward the North. We read of Horus "who smote the Red Crowns"; 5 again "the White (southern) Crown comes forth, it has devoured the Great (northern) Crown;" 6 or "the horizon burns incense to Horus of Nekhen (capital of the South), . . . the flood of its flame is against you, ye wearers of the Great (northern) Crown." 7 It is said of the king that

1 and in the hereafter he is crowned with the White (southern) Crown. 2 There too he receives the southern (Upper Egyptian) district of the blessed Field of Rushes, 3 and he descends to the southern district of the Field of Offerings. 4 As priest of Re in the hereafter the king has a libation jar "which purifies the Southland." 5 Finally, "it is king Unis who binds with lilies the papyrus (the two flowers of North and South); it is king Unis who reconciles the Two Lands; it is king Unis who unites the Two Lands." 6 It is evident therefore that the Pyramid Texts contain passages which date from before the union of the Two Lands, that is before the thirty-fourth century B.C.; and also others which belong to the early days of the union when the hostilities had not yet ceased, but the kings of the South were nevertheless maintaining control of the North and preserving the united kingdom. All these are written from the southern point of view. It should not be forgotten also that some of them were composed as late as the Old Kingdom itself, like the formulæ intended to protect the pyramid, 7 which of course are not earlier than the rise of the pyramid-form in the thirtieth century B.C. Within the period of a century and a half covered by our five copies also, differences are noticeable. Evidences of editing in the later copies, which, however, are not found in the earlier copies, are clearly discernible. The processes of thought and the development of custom and belief which brought them forth were going on until the last copy was produced in the early twenty-fifth century B.C. They therefore represent a period of at least a

thousand years, and a thousand years, it should not be forgotten, which was ended some four thousand five hundred years ago. Such a great mass of documents as this from the early world exists nowhere else and forms a storehouse of experience from the life of ancient man which largely remains to be explored.

While their especial function may be broadly stated to be to insure the king felicity in the hereafter, they constantly reflect, as all literature does, the ebb and flow of the life around them, and they speak in terms of the experience of the men who produced them, terms current in the daily life of palace, street, and bazaar, or again terms which were born in the sacred solitude of the inner temple. To one of quick imagination they abound in pictures from that long-vanished world of which they are the reflection. While they are concerned chiefly with the fortunes of the king, these do not shut out the world around. Of the happiness of the king beyond the grave it is said: "This that thou hast heard in the houses and learned in the streets on this day when king Pepi was summoned to life." 1 Of this life in the houses and on the streets of five thousand years ago we catch fleeting glimpses: the swallows twittering on the wall, 2 the herdman wading the canal immersed to his middle and bearing across the helpless young of his flock, 3 the crooning of the mother to her nursing child at twilight, 4 "the hawk seen in the evening traversing the sky," 5 the wild goose withdrawing her foot and escaping the hand of the baffled fowler in the marsh, 6 the passenger at the ferry with nothing to offer the boatmen for a seat in the crowded ferry-boat, but who is allowed to embark and work his passage wearily bailing the leaky craft; 7

the noble sitting by the pool in his garden beneath the shade of the reed booth; 1 these pictures and many others are alive with the life of the Nile-dweller's world. The life of the palace is more fully and picturesquely reflected than that of the world outside and around it. We see the king in hours heavy with cares of state, his secretary at his side with writing kit and two pens, one for black and the other for the red of the rubrics; 2 again we discern him in moments of relaxation leaning familiarly on the shoulder of a trusted friend and counsellor, 3 or the two bathe together in the palace pool and royal chamberlains approach and dry their limbs. 4 Often we meet him heading a brilliant pageant as he passes through the streets of the residence with outrunners and heralds and messengers clearing the way before him; 5 when he ferries over to the other shore and steps out of the glittering royal barge, we see the populace throwing off their sandals, and then even their garments, as they dance in transports of joy at his coming; 6 again we find him surrounded by the pomp and splendor of his court at the palace gate, or seated on his gorgeous throne, adorned with lions’ heads and bulls’ feet. 7 In the palace-hall "he sits upon his marvellous throne, his marvellous sceptre in his hand; he lifts his hand toward the children of their father and they rise before this king Pepi; he drops his hand toward them and they sit down (again)." 8 To be sure these are depicted as incidents of the life beyond the grave, but the subject-matter and the colors with which it is portrayed are drawn from the life here and the experience here. It is the gods who cast off their sandals and their raiment to dance for joy at the arrival of the king, as he crosses the heavenly

But notwithstanding the fact that these archaic texts are saturated with the life out of which they have come, they form together almost a terra incognita. As one endeavors to penetrate it, his feeling is like that of entering a vast primeval forest, a twilight jungle filled with strange forms and elusive shadows peopling a wilderness through which there is no path. An archaic orthography veils and obscures words with which the reader may be quite familiar in their later and habitual garb. They serve too in situations and with meanings as strange to the reader as their spelling. Besides these disguised friends, there is a host of utter strangers, a great company of archaic words which have lived a long and active life in a world now completely lost and forgotten. Hoary with age they totter into sight for a brief period, barely surviving in these ancient texts, then to disappear forever, and hence are never met with again. They vaguely disclose to us a vanished world of thought and speech, the last of the unnumbered æons through which prehistoric man has passed till he finally comes within hailing distance of us as he enters the historic age. But these hoary strangers, survivors of a forgotten age, still serving on for a generation or two in the Pyramid Texts, often remain strangers until they disappear; we have no means of making their acquaintance or forcing them to reveal to us their names or the message which they bear, and no art of lexicography can force them all to yield up their secrets. Combined with these

words, too, there is a deal of difficult construction, much enhanced by the obscure, dark, and elusive nature of the content of these archaic documents; abounding in allusions to incidents in lost myths, to customs and usages long since ended, they are built up out of a fabric of life, thought, and experience largely unfamiliar or entirely unknown to us.

We have said that their function is essentially to insure the king's felicity in the hereafter. The chief and dominant note throughout is insistent, even passionate, protest against death. They may be said to be the record of humanity's earliest supreme revolt against the great darkness and silence from which none returns. The word death never occurs in the Pyramid Texts except in the negative or applied to a foe. Over and over again we hear the indomitable assurance that the dead lives. "King Teti has not died the death, he has become a glorious one in the horizon"; 1 "Ho! King Unis! Thou didst not depart dead, thou didst depart living"; 2 "Thou hast departed that thou mightest live, thou hast not departed that thou mightest die"; 3 "Thou diest not"; 4 "This king Pepi dies not"; 5 "King Pepi dies not by reason of any king . . . (nor) by reason of any dead"; 6 "Have ye said that he would die? He dies not; this king Pepi lives forever"; 7 "Live! Thou shalt not die"; 8 "If thou landest (euphemism for "diest"), thou livest (again)"; 9 "This king Pepi has escaped his day of death"; 10—such is the constant refrain of these texts. Not infrequently the utterance concludes with the assurance: "Thou livest, thou livest, raise thee up"; 11 or "Thou diest not, stand up,

raise thee up"; 1 or "Raise thee up, O this king Pepi, thou diest not"; 2 or an appendix is added as a new utterance by itself: "O lofty one among the Imperishable Stars, thou perishest not eternally." 3 When the inexorable fact must be referred to, death is called the "landing" or the "mooring" as we have seen it above, 4 or its opposite is preferred, and it is better to mention "not living" than to utter the fatal word; 5 or with wistful reminiscence of lost felicity once enjoyed by men, these ancient texts recall the blessed age "before death came forth." 6

While the supreme subject of the Pyramid Texts is life, eternal life for the king, they are a compilation from the most varied sources. Every possible agency and influence was brought to bear to attain the end in view, and all classes of ancient lore deemed efficacious or found available for this purpose were employed by the priests who put together this earliest surviving body of literature. Speaking chronologically, there are strata here representing the different centuries for a thousand years or more as we have seen; but speaking in terms of subject-matter, we must change the figure and regard the Pyramid Texts as a fabric into which the most varied strands have been woven. Whether we make a vertical or a horizontal section, whether we cut across the fabric transversely or longitudinally these varied elements are exposed and contrasted. Cutting transversely we discover the varied constituents side by side, the strands of the warp running in most cases from end to end of the fabric; whereas when we cut longitudinally we disclose the changes due to time as the woof is wrought into the fabric. We shall make the transverse cut first and ascertain the character of the

constituent strands, without reference to the time element. Our question is, what is the content of the Pyramid Texts?

It may be said to be in the main sixfold:

1. A funerary ritual and a ritual of mortuary offerings at the tomb.

2. Magical charms.

3. Very ancient ritual of worship.

4. Ancient religious hymns.

5. Fragments of old myths.

6. Prayers and petitions on behalf of the dead king.

There is of course some miscellaneous matter and some which falls under several of the above classes at once. Taking up these six classes we find that the priestly editors have arranged their materials in sections often of some length, each section headed by the words: "Utter (or Recite) the words." Each such section has been called by Sethe in his edition a "Spruch," and we call them "Utterances." Of these the first of the five pyramids, that of Unis, contains two hundred and twenty-eight, while the others contain enough additional "Utterances" to make up a total of seven hundred and fourteen. In their modern published form, including the variants, they fill two quarto volumes containing together over a thousand pages of text. 1

With the exception of the funerary and offering ritual, which is at the head of the collection, and with which we have already dealt in the preceding lectures, the material was arranged by the successive editors almost at haphazard. If such an editor had the materials before him in groups he made no effort to put together groups of like content, but he copied as he happened to come upon his

sources. He must have had before him a series of ancient books, each containing a number of groups of Utterances falling into all six of the above classes, but he copied each book from beginning to end before he took up the next one. Thus it is that we find groups of charms, or prayers, or hymns devoted to the same subject embedded in various places widely separated, or distributed throughout the entire collection, without any attempt to bring them together.

There can be no doubt that a considerable portion of the Pyramid Texts were intended to be employed as charms. Some of these were used by the mortuary priest at the interment; others were wielded by the deceased himself in self-defence. "King Pepi is a magician, King Pepi is one who is possessed of magic," 1 say the texts. The dead are called "the glorious by reason of (or 'by means of') their equipped mouths," 2 meaning that their mouths are equipped with the charms, prayers, and ritual of the Pyramid Texts. It is evident that the dead king was supposed to employ magic power, and the agency of this power was the Pyramid Texts themselves. They are sometimes unequivocally called magical charms. "This charm that is in the belly of king Pepi is on him when he ascends and lifts himself to the sky" affirms one passage, 3 and the Utterance referred to is an accompanying list of the limbs of the king, which are thus protected. Again in a remarkable passage the ancient text insists: "It is not this king Pepi who says this against you, ye gods; it is the charm which says this against you, ye gods," 4 and "this" is the text of the accompanying Utterance. The possession of such charms was vitally important, so that a special charm was included to prevent the departed

1

The distinction between a charm and a prayer in these texts is difficult for the reason that a text of a character originally in no way connected or identified with magical formula may be employed as such. We find a Sun-hymn 2 called a "charm" in the Pyramid Texts. Again the archaic hymn to Nut, 3 a fragment of ancient ritual, is later employed as a household charm. 4 The question is not infrequently one of function rather than one of content. The serpent-charms are distinguishable as such in the Pyramid Texts at the first glance in most cases; but the question whether a hymn or a prayer may not be designed to serve as a charm is sometimes not easily decided. The question is an important one, because some have averred that the whole body of Pyramid Texts is simply a collection of magical charms, and that therefore the repetition of any Utterance was supposed to exert magical power. Such a sweeping statement cannot be demonstrated. An ancient hymn supposed to be repeated by the dead king, when it is accompanied by no express statement that it is a charm, may have served the same function with regard to the god to whom it is addressed, which it served in the ancient ritual from which it was taken; and because some such hymns have been inserted in charms is no sufficient reason for concluding that all such hymns in the Pyramid Texts are necessarily charms. The Pyramid Texts themselves are one of the most important documents in which we may observe the gradual invasion of mortuary religious beliefs by the power of magic, but when the last of the Pyramid Texts was edited

in the twenty-fifth century B.C. the triumph of magic in the realm of such beliefs was still a thousand years away.

Besides the funerary and offering ritual employed at the tomb, and besides the charms unquestionably present, there is then a large residuum of ancient religious literature, consisting of ritual of worship, religious hymns, fragments of old myths, and finally prayers on behalf of the dead (Nos 3, 4, 5, and 6, above). An Osirian Utterance in the Pyramid Texts 1 occurs over a thousand years later as part of the ritual at Abydos on the wall of the Atum chapel in the Seti temple of Osiris. There can be little doubt that it was temple ritual also in the Pyramid Age. It is not unlikely that the religious hymns embedded in this compilation, like the impressive Sun-hymn in Utterance 456, 2 or the archaic hymn to the Sky-goddess, 3 or the hymn to Osiris as Nile, 4 also belonged to temple rituals. In this case they fall in the same class with temple ritual and should not be made a class by themselves. In so far as the fragments of the old myths fall into poetic form they too are not distinguishable from the religious hymns. These fragments in most cases recite current incidents in which some god enjoys some benefit or passes through some desirable experience or attains some triumph, and the same good fortune is now desired for the deceased king. Many of them, as we have already seen, relate to matters which unhappily are unintelligible without a full knowledge of the myth from which they are drawn.

While the content of the Pyramid Texts may be thus indicated in a general way, a precise and full analysis is a far more difficult matter. The form of the literature contained

is happily more easily disposed of. Among the oldest literary fragments in the collection are the religious hymns, and these exhibit an early poetic form, that of couplets displaying parallelism in arrangement of words and thought—the form which is familiar to all in the Hebrew psalms as "parallelism of members." It is carried back by its employment in the Pyramid Texts into the fourth millennium B.C., by far earlier than its appearance anywhere else. It is indeed the oldest of all literary forms known to us. Its use is not confined to the hymns mentioned, but appears also in other portions of the Pyramid Texts, where it is, however, not usually so highly developed.

Besides this form, which strengthens the claim of these fragments to be regarded as literature in our sense of the term, there is here and there, though not frequently, some display of literary quality in thought and language. There is, for example, a fine touch of imagination in one of the many descriptions of the resurrection of Osiris: "Loose thy bandages! They are not bandages, they are the locks of Nephthys," 1 the weeping goddess hanging over the body of her dead brother. The ancient priest who wrote the line sees in the bandages that swathe the silent form the heavy locks of the goddess which fall and mingle with them. There is an elemental power too in the daring imagination which discerns the sympathetic emotion of the whole universe as the dread catastrophe of the king's death and the uncanny power of his coming among the gods of the sky are realized by the elements. "The sky weeps for thee, the earth trembles for thee" say the ancient mourners for the king, 2 or when they see him in imagination ascending the vault of the sky they say:

A fundamental question which arises as one endeavors to interpret these ancient documents is that of the method of employment. How were they used? In all likelihood the entire collection was recited by the mortuary priests on the day of burial. The entire offering ritual (including in the different pyramids one hundred and seventy-eight "Utterances") was furthermore recited on all feast days, and probably also on all other days. The fact that each "Utterance" is headed by the words "recite the words" also indicates this manner of employing them. A large proportion are personal equipment of the dead king to be recited by him as occasion demanded. This is shown by the curious fact that a number of long sections were in the first person originally, and were so engraved on the pyramid walls; but these passages were afterward altered to the third person, usually by the insertion of the king's name over the old personal pronoun. It is evident that many of the charms were designed for use by the dead, as when a Sun-hymn is accompanied by directions stating that the king is to employ it as a charm, which, if he knows it, will secure him the friendship of the Sun-god. 2 When the whole collection was recited by the priest he of course personified the king, in all passages where the king speaks in the first person, just as he personified so many of the gods who are depicted speaking and acting in these texts; but the fact that a large body

of texts address the dead king in the second person clearly shows that they were uttered by the priest or some one on the king's behalf. In one case the speaker is the living and still reigning king who offers eye-paint to his departed royal ancestor. 1

On one other question in this connection there can be no doubt. These mortuary texts were all intended for the king's exclusive use, and as a whole contain beliefs which apply only to the king. 2 This is not to say, however, that some archaic texts in use among the people have not here and there crept into the collection. To these may possibly belong the addresses to the dead as if buried in the desert sand, or a few others like simple serpent charms, or passages according the king hereafter a destiny not strictly peculiar to him and one which ordinary mortals already believed attainable by them. It is a significant fact that the nobles of the age made practically no use of the Pyramid Texts in their own tombs.

While the Pyramid Texts have not been able to shake off the old view of the sojourn at the tomb, they give it little thought, and deal almost entirely with a blessed life in a distant realm. Let it be stated clearly at the outset that this distant realm is the sky, and that the Pyramid Texts know practically nothing of the hereafter in the Nether World. Echoes of other archaic notions of the place of the dead have been preserved here and there.

1 Another ancient belief conceives the dead as somewhere in the distant "west," but this belief plays practically no part in the Pyramid Texts, and is discernible there only in an archaic title of the mortuary Anubis of Siut, who occasionally has appended to his name the words "First or Lord of the Westerners," 2 a designation which served as the name of an old mortuary god at Abydos, who was later identified with Osiris, and his name appropriated by him also occurs a number of times in the Pyramid Texts. 3 But the "west" hardly attains even a subordinate rôle in the beliefs which dominate the Pyramid Texts. We hear of it once as a means of gaining access to the Sun-god: "These thy four ways which are before the tomb of Horus, wherein one goes to the (Sun-) god, as soon as the sun goes down. He (the Sun-god) grasps thy arm. . . ." 4 In one passage, too, the dead is adjured to go to the "west" in preference to the east, in order to join the Sun-god, but in this very passage he appears as one whose function was in the east. 5 An analogous passage affirms: "King Unis rests from life (dies) in the west, . . . King Unis dawns anew in the east." 6 The west is mentioned casually, also along with the other celestial regions where the Sun-god in his course finds the translated Pharaoh. 7 It is the east which with constant reiteration is affirmed to be the most sacred of all regions, and that to which the dead king

should fare. Indeed he is explicitly cautioned against the west: "Go not on those currents of the west; those who go thither, they return not (again)." 1 In the Pyramid Texts it may be fairly said that the old doctrine of the "west" as the permanent realm of the dead, a doctrine which is later so prominent, has been quite submerged by the pre-eminence of the east.

This "east," therefore, is the east of the sky, and the realm of the dead is a celestial one, using the term with none of its frequent theological significance in English. Two ancient doctrines of this celestial hereafter have been commingled in the Pyramid Texts: one represents the dead as a star, and the other depicts him as associated with the Sun-god, or even becoming the Sun-god himself. It is evident that these two beliefs, which we may call the stellar and the Solar hereafter, were once in a measure independent, and that both have then entered into the form of the celestial hereafter which is found in the Pyramid Texts. In the cloudless sky of Egypt it was a not unnatural fancy which led the ancient Nile-dweller to see in the splendor of the nightly heavens the host of those who had preceded him; thither they had flown as birds, rising above all foes of the air, 2 and there they now swept across the sky as eternal stars. 3 It is especially those stars which are called "the Imperishable Ones" in which the Egyptian saw the host of the dead. These are said to be in the north of the sky, 4 and the suggestion that the circumpolar stars, which never set or disappear, are the ones which are meant is a very probable one. 5 While there are Utterances in the Pyramid Texts which define

the stellar notion of the hereafter without any reference to the Solar faith, 1 and which have doubtless descended from a more ancient day when the stellar belief was independent of the Solar, it is evident that the stellar notion has been absorbed in the Solar. There is a trace of the process in the endeavor to reconcile the northern station of the "Imperishables" with the "east" as the place of the dead in the Solar faith. We find provision made that the deceased king "may ferry over to Re, to the horizon . . . to his station on the east side of the sky, in its northern region among the Imperishable (Stars)." 2 Thus the stellar and the Solar elements were combined, though the Solar beliefs predominate so strongly that the Pyramid Texts as a whole and in the form in which they have reached us may be said to be of Solar origin.

The Solar destiny was perhaps suggested by the daily disappearance and reappearance of the sun. We find the texts assuring us, "This king Pepi lives as lives he (= the Sun-god) who has entered the west of the sky, when he rises in the east of the sky." 3 It should be noted that the place of living again is, however, the east, and it is not only the east, but explicitly the east of the sky. Death was on earth; life was to be had only in the sky.

1 Sometimes it is the water of the traditional Nile sources at Elephantine which, as especially sacred and pure, should be employed, 2 or the dead king appears there and the goddess of the cataract, Satis, performs the ceremonies

of purification. 1 That this purification might have moral aspects we shall later (p. 171) see. But it was chiefly intended to produce ceremonial cleanness, and when this was attained the king was prepared to undertake the journey to the sky.

We have already had occasion to remark that the region toward which he fared was the east of the sky, which in the Pyramid Texts is far more sacred than the west (pp. 100–102). Not only was the Sun-god born there every day as we have seen, but also the other gods. Over there was "this field, where the gods were begotten, over which the gods rejoice on these their New Year's Days," 2 and there likewise they were born. 3 Similarly according to one view, not infrequently occurring, the deceased king is born there. 4 It was there too that the eye of Horus fell when it was wrenched out by Set. 5 In this sacred place are the doors of the sky, 6 before which stands "that tall sycomore east of the sky whereon the gods sit." 7 Again we hear of "the two sycomores which are on yonder side of the sky," which the king seizes when "they ferry him over and set him on the east side of the sky." 8 Here in this sacred place too the dead king finds the Sun-god, or is found by him, 9 here he ascends to the sky, 10 and here the ferry lands which has brought him over. 11

When the deceased Pharaoh turned his face eastward toward this sacred region he was confronted by a lake lying along the east which it was necessary for him to cross in order to reach the realm of the Sun-god. It was on the further, that is eastern, shore of this lake that the eye of Horus had fallen in his combat with Set. 1 It was called the "Lily-lake," and it was long enough to possess "windings," 2 and must have stretched far to the north and south along the eastern horizon. 3 Beyond it lay a strange wonder-land, alive with uncanny forces on every hand. All was alive, whether it was the seat into which the king dropped, or the steering-oar to which he reached out his hand, 4 or the barque into which he stepped, 5 or the gates through which he passed. To all these, or to anything which he found, he might speak; and these uncanny things might speak to him, like the swan-boat of Lohengrin. Indeed it was a wonder-world like that in the swan-stories or the Nibelungen tales of the Germanic traditions, a world like that of the Morte d’Arthur, where prodigies meet the wayfarer at every turn.

To the dweller along the Nile the most obvious way to cross the Lily-lake is to embark in a ferry-boat. We find it among the rushes of the lake-shore with the ferryman standing in the stern poling it rapidly along. To do so he faces backward, and is therefore called "Face-behind," or "Look-behind." 6 He rarely speaks, but stands in silence awaiting his passenger. Numerous are the pleas and the specious petitions by which the waiting Pharaoh

seeks to cajole this mysterious boatman with averted face. We hear him assured that "this king Pepi is the herdman of thy cattle who is over thy breeding-place," 1 and who must therefore be ferried over at once in the ferryman's own interests. Or the king brings with him a magic jar the power of which the boatman cannot resist, 2 or the ferryman is assured that the Pharaoh is "righteous in the sight of the sky and of the earth" and of the isle to which they go. 3 Again the king is the dwarf or pygmy of the royal dances "who gladdens the (king's) heart before the great throne," 4 and he must therefore be hastened across to the court of Re to gladden the Sun-god. Indeed this is matter of common knowledge, as the ferryman is now told: "This is what thou hast heard in the houses and learned in the streets on this day when this king Pepi was summoned to life. . . . Lo, the two who are on the throne of the Great God (Re), they summon this king Pepi to life and satisfaction forever: they are Prosperity and Health. (Therefore) ferry over this king Pepi to the field of the good seat of the Great God." 5 We hear the boatman's challenge of the new-corner: "Whence hast thou come?" and the dead king must prove his royal lineage. 6 Or appeal may be made directly to Re: "O Re! Commend king Teti to 'Look-behind' ferryman of the Lily-lake, that he may bring that ferry-boat of the Lily-lake, for king Teti, in which he ferries the gods to yonder side of the Lily-lake, that he may ferry king Teti to yonder side of the Lily-lake, to the east side of the sky." 7 If in spite of all the king's efforts the shadowy boatman proves obdurate and refuses to bring his boat to the shore, then the king addresses the oar in the ferryman's hand: "Ho!

1 and if his words are powerful enough, the oar brings in the boat for the king. Sometimes it is on the opposite shore in charge of four curly haired guardians. These four are peremptorily summoned to bring it over to the king: "If ye delay to ferry over the ferry-boat to this king Pepi, this king Pepi will tell this your name to the people, which he knows; 2 . . . king Pepi will pluck out these locks that are in the middle of your heads like lotus flowers in the garden." 3

Again, as so frequently in these texts, an unknown speaker in the king's behalf stands forth and threatens the boatman: "If thou dost not ferry over king Unis, then he will place himself upon the wing of Thoth. He, (even) he will ferry over king Unis to yonder side of the horizon." 4 There is also another ferryman of a boat bearing the remarkable name of "Eye of Khnum," 5 who may be called upon in emergency; and should all other means fail the sceptres of the Imperishable Stars may serve as ferryman 6 or the two sycomores in the east may be prevailed upon to perform the same office for the king. 7 Even Re himself is not unwilling to appear and ferry the dead king across. 8 In any case the dead cannot be left without a ship, for he possesses the cunning charm which brings them all together: "The knots are tied, the ferryboats are brought together for the son of Atum. The

son of Atum is not without a boat; king Mernere is with the son of Atum; the son of Atum is not without a boat." 1

From the earliest days the prehistoric peasant might cross the Nile on two reed floats bound firmly together side by side like two huge cigars. 2 One of the earliest folk-tales of the Sun-god's voyage depicted him as crossing the celestial waters on such a pair of floats, and however primitive they might be, their use by the Sun-god had become common and involuntary belief. It required but the proper "sympathetic" transference of their use by Re to the dead Pharaoh, to insure him certain passage like that of the Sun-god. Horus (who, we recall, is but another form of the Sun-god) ferries over to the east of the sky on the two floats and he commends the dead king to "these four youths who sit on the east side of the sky, these four youths who sit in the shade of the tower of Kati," 3 "these four youths who stand on the east side of the sky . . . (and) who bind together the two floats for Re, . . ." will also "bind together the two floats for this king Pepi." 4 Thus just as "the two floats of the sky are placed for Re that he may ferry over therewith to the horizon," so "the two floats of the sky are placed for

king Unis that he may ferry over therewith to the horizon to Re." 1

But even these many devices for crossing the eastern sea might fail and then the king must commit himself to the air and make the ascent to the sky. "Thy two wings are spread out like a falcon with thick plumage, like the hawk seen in the evening traversing the sky, "says the mysterious speaker to the king. 2 "He flies who flies; this king Pepi flies away from you, ye mortals. He is not of the earth, he is of the sky. . . . This king Pepi flies as a cloud to the sky, like a masthead bird; this king Pepi kisses the sky like a falcon, this king Pepi reaches the sky like the Horizon-god (Harakhte)." 3 The variant text has like a grasshopper, and in accordance with this we find that the dead king was born with the back of a grasshopper. 4 As the Egyptian grasshopper flies like a bird to vast heights, the back of a grasshopper was undoubtedly an appropriate adjunct to the royal anatomy. But it was the falcon, the sacred bird of the Sun-god, whose lofty flight was especially desired for the king. He is "the great falcon upon the battlements of the house of him of the hidden name." 5 "Thy bones are falconesses, goddesses dwelling in the sky," say they to the king; 6 or again, "Thou ascendest to the sky as a falcon, thy feathers are (those of) geese." 7 The speaker also sees him escaping from the hands of men as the wild goose escapes the hand of the fowler clutching his feet and flies away to the sky; 8 "the tips of his wings are those of the

great goose." 1 Thus he "flies as a goose and flutters as a beetle." 2 "His face is (that of) falcons and his wings are (those of) geese"; 3 "king Unis flaps his wings like a zeret-bird," 4 and the wind bears him on high. "King Unis goes to the sky, king Unis goes to the sky! On the wind! On the wind!" 5 "The clouds of the sky have taken him away, they exalt king Unis to Re." 6 He "has ascended upon the rain-cloud." 7 Or the priest sees strange forms in the cloud of incense that soars above him and he cries: "He ascends upon the smoke of the great incense-burning." 8

In the oblique rays of the sun also, shooting earthward through some opening in the clouds, they beheld a radiant stairway let down from the sky that the king might ascend. "King Pepi has put down this radiance as a stairway under his feet, whereon king Pepi ascended to this his mother, the living Uræus that is on the head of Re." 9 "Thou climbest, thou mountest the radiance, "says the speaker 10 as he beholds the king grasping the Solar rays. 11 Thus "stairs to the sky are laid for him that he may ascend thereon to the sky." 12 It is of course with the city of the sun that this stairway is associated: "The spirits of Heliopolis, they set up for him a stairway in order to reach the top." 13 Sometimes the Solar splendor seems stretched out to him like vast arms, and the king "is a flame (moving) before the wind to the ends of the sky, to the ends of the earth when the arm of the sunbeams is lifted with king Unis." 14 Lest any portion of the king's body should fail to rise with him, all of his members, or at least the more important

ones, twenty-six in number, are enumerated by name, beginning with the crown of his head and descending through face, eyes, nose, mouth, etc., to his toes, each member being identified with a different god, "when he ascends and lifts himself to the sky." This canny device is of irresistible magical potency, so that "every god who shall not lay steps for this king Pepi when he ascends" shall suffer loss of all his offerings. Moreover, the gods are bidden to remember that "It is not this king Pepi who says this against you, it is the charm which says this against you, ye gods." On the other hand, "every god who shall lay steps for king Pepi when he ascends" is promised all offerings, and if he extends a helping hand to the king as he climbs up, this god's "ka shall be justified by Geb." 1

Again the broad sunbeams slanting earthward seem like a ladder to the imagination of this remote people and they say, "King Unis ascends upon the ladder which his father Re (the Sun-god) made for him. " 2 Indeed we find the Sun-god making the ladder: "Atum has done that which he said he would do for this king Pepi II, binding for him the rope-ladder, joining together the (wooden) ladder for this king Pepi II; (thus) this king is far from the abomination of men." 3 Again it is the four sons of

1 An old Solar legend places the ladder in charge of Set, or at least associates it closely with him. We find it called the "ladder which carried the Ombite (Set)"; 2 but it also appears occasionally under the guardianship of Kebehet, daughter of Anubis. 3 Sometimes the Sun-god summons all his divine subjects to assist in making the ladder. "It is done for this king Pepi by Atum as it was done for himself (Atum). He brings to this Pepi the gods belonging to the sky, he brings to him the gods belonging to the earth. They place their

arms under him. They make a ladder for king Pepi that he may ascend upon it to the sky." 1 The spectacle of the ascending king calls forth the admiration of the gods: "'How beautiful to see, how satisfying to behold,' say the gods, 'when this god (meaning the king) ascends to the sky. His fearfulness is on his head, his terror is at his side, his magical charms are before him.' 2 Geb has done for him as was done for himself (Geb). The gods and souls of Buto, the gods and souls of Hierakonpolis, the gods in the sky and the gods on earth come to him. They make supports for king Unis on their arm(s). Thou ascendest, O king Unis, to the sky. Ascend upon it in this its name 'Ladder.'" 3

Men and gods together are called upon in mighty charms to lift the king. "O men and gods! Your arms under king Pepi! Raise ye him, lift ye him to the sky, as the arms of Shu are under the sky and he raises it. To the sky! To the sky! To the great seat among the gods!" 4 Or the daughter of the ancient mortuary Anubis offers him her shoulder: "Kebehet places him on her shoulder, she puts him down among the gardens (like) the herdmen of the calves," 5 a picture which we often see in the mastaba reliefs, as the cowherd wades cautiously across the canal, immersed to the waist, with a calf borne tenderly upon his shoulders, while the solicitous mother beast follows anxiously behind licking the flanks of the calf. Should all other means fail, Isis and Nephthys will offer their hips upon which the king mounts, while his father Atum reaches down and seizes the arm of the Pharaoh; 6 or the earth itself may rise under the feet of the

waiting king and lift him to the sky, where Tefnut grasps his arm 1 and leads him into the celestial fields.

But the possibility remained that the gates of the celestial country might not be opened to the new-comer. Over and over again we find the assurance that the double doors of the sky are opened before the Pharaoh: "Opened are the double doors of the horizon; unlocked are its bolts" 2 is a constant refrain in the Pyramid Texts. That art which opened the door for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves had opened many a gate in the ancient East, thousands of years before the Arabian Nights made it familiar to us of the western world. The king faces the gates with these words: "O lofty one, (Gate) whom no one names! Gate of Nut! King Teti is Shu who came forth from Atum. O Nun! (the primeval waters) cause that this (gate) be opened for king Teti." 3 "He causes that those double doors of the sky be opened for king Teti (by the following charm):

A similar method appealed to the fact that the sky-gates had once opened to each of the four eastern Horuses, and by sympathetic analogy they must now inevitably do the same for the king. "The double doors of the sky are opened, the double doors of the firmament are thrown open to Horus of the gods. . . . The double doors of the sky are opened to this king Pepi, the double doors of the

firmament are thrown open to this king Pepi." 1 In the same way the approaching king is identified with the four eastern Horuses one after the other, after which Re may be appealed to as his father: "O father of king Pepi, O Re! Take thou this king Pepi with thee for life to thy mother Nut, who opens the double doors of the sky to this king Pepi, who throws open the double doors of the firmament to this king Pepi." 2

The difficulty of the gates and the ascension might, however, be met by an appeal of men directly to the Sun-god: "'Ho Re,' say men, when they stand beside this king Pepi on earth while thou appearest in the east of the sky, 'give thy arm to king Pepi; take thou him with thee to the east side of the sky.'" 3

It will be seen that in spite of the conviction of life, abounding life, with which the Pyramid Texts are filled, they likewise reveal the atmosphere of apprehension which enveloped these men of the early world as they contemplated the unknown and untried dangers of the shadow world. Whichever way the royal pilgrim faced as he looked out across the eastern sea he was beset with apprehensions of the possible hostility of the gods, and there crowded in upon him a thousand fancies of danger and opposition which clouded the fair picture of blessedness beyond. There is an epic touch in the dauntless courage, with which the solitary king, raising himself like some elemental colossus, and claiming sway over the gods themselves, confronts the celestial realm and addresses the

1 'Limitless' is thy name. The name of thy father is 'Possessor-of-Greatness.' Thy mother is 'Satisfaction,' who bears thee every morning. The birth of 'Limitless' in the horizon shall be prevented, if thou preventest this king Pepi from coming to the place where thou art." 2 The king wielding his magical power thus makes himself sovereign of the universe and will stop the very rising ("birth") of the sun if he is halted at the gate of the Sun-god's realm. Far less impressive is the king's threat directed against the gods who oppose him as he mounts the ladder. "Every spirit and every god who shall oppose his arm to this king Pepi, when he ascends to the sky on the ladder of the god, the earth shall not be hoed for him, an offering shall not be brought for him, he shall not ferry over to the evening meal in Heliopolis, he shall not ferry over to the morning meal in Heliopolis." 3 Likewise Kebehet, the daughter of Anubis, perched on the two uprights of the ladder, is adjured to "open the way of king Unis, that king Unis may pass by," and in the same words the "Ostrich on the shore of the Lily-lake" and the "Bull of Re, having four horns," one toward each of the cardinal points, are warned to make way for him. 4

And so at last the departed king draws near the eastern shore of the Lily-lake, 5 and "this king Pepi finds the glorious by reason of their equipped mouths, 6 sitting on

the two shores of the lake, . . . the drinking-place of every glorious one by reason of his equipped mouth." Then they challenge the new arrival and the king replies: "I am a glorious one by reason of his equipped mouth." "'How has this happened to thee,' say they to king Pepi, . . . 'that thou hast come to this place more august than any place?' 'Pepi has come to this place more august than any place, because the two floats of the sky were placed,' says the morning-barque, 'for Re'"; 1 and at the story of his successful crossing as Re had crossed, the celestials break out into jubilee. 2 Thereupon the Pharaoh lands, takes up their manner of life, and sits before the palace ruling them. 3 Again we hear a solitary voice issuing from the world of the dead and challenging the king as he ascends and passes through the gates of the sky, led by Geb: "Ho! Whence comest thou, son of my father?" And another voice answers: "He has come from the Divine Ennead that is in the sky, that he may satisfy them with their bread." Again comes the challenge: "Ho! Whence comest thou, son of my father?" and we hear the reply: "He has come from the Divine Ennead that is on earth, that he may satisfy them with their bread." The questioner is still unsatisfied: "Ho! Whence comest thou, son of my father?" "He has come from the Zenedzender-barque." And then we hear the question for the last time: "Ho! Whence comest thou, son of my father?" "He has come from these his two mothers, the two vultures with long hair and hanging breasts, who are on the mountain of Sehseh. They draw their breasts over the mouth of king Pepi, but they do not wean him forever." Thereafter the challenging voice is silent 4 and the Pharaoh enters the kingdom of the sky.

Footnotes

71:1 BAR, I, 503.

71:2 BAR, III, 16, l. 5; Cairo Hymn to Amon, V, ll. 1–2, VIII, ll. 3–4; Piankhi Stela, l. 105 = BAR, IV, 871.

71:3 Pyr. § 1652.

72:1 Ut. 599 and 600. Their content with quotations is given below, pp. 76–77.

73:1 It was published, without indication of its original position, by Maspero, Annales du Service des antiquités, III, pp. 206 ff. and plate; see Schaefer, Zeitschrift für aegypt. Sprache, 41, 84, who demonstrates its original position. This had also been noted in the author's History of Egypt, Fig. 94.

73:2 The same inscription is found accompanying the eyes on the outside of the Middle Kingdom coffin of Sebek-o at Berlin. (See Steindorff, Grabfunde des Mittleren Reichs, II, 5, 1.)

73:3 It is evident that the identification of Osiris with the pyramid and temple in Pyr. §§ 1657–8 is secondary and another evidence of his intrusion in the Solar faith of which the Pyr. Texts furnish so many examples.

74:1 There is possibly another connection in which the pyramid form may be discerned as belonging to the Sun-god. The triangle of zodiacal light which some have claimed to be able to discover in the east at sunrise at certain times, and the writing of the Solar god, Soped's name with a triangle or pyramid after it, may have some connection with the use of the pyramid as a Solar symbol. The architectural evolution of the form through the compound mastaba, the terraced structure, like the so-called "terraced pyramid" of Sakkara, has long been understood.

74:2 Pyr. Ut. 534, all of which is a long prayer intended to prevent the appropriation of pyramid, temple, and their possessions by Osiris or the gods of his cycle. This important Utterance is taken up again in connection with the dedication of the pyramid, pp. 75–76.

76:1 Pyr. §§ 1276–7.

76:2 Pyr. § 1266.

76:3 Pyr. Ut. 599.

77:1 Pyr. Ut. 600.

77:2 Pyr. Ut. 601.

77:3 Pyr. § 2117.

77:4 Ut. 26–203.

79:1 Pyr. Ut. 453.

79:2 Pyr. Ut. 637.

79:3 Pyr. Ut. 54.

79:4 The ritual of offerings, properly so called, in the Pyramid Texts, begins at Ut. 26 and continues to Ut. 203. This ritual as a whole has received an Osirian editing and only Ut. 44 and 50 are clearly Solar. Each Spruch, or Utterance, contains the words to be used by the priest, with some designation of the offering, sometimes no more than the words "Horus-eye." Not infrequently directions as to the place where the offering is to be put accompany the formula, with memoranda also of the quantity and the like. A little group of prayers and charms (Ut. 204–212) follows the offering-ritual. This group also concerns offerings, but it is all Solar except the first and last utterance. The other texts concerning material needs scattered through the Pyramid Texts, conceive the king as dwelling no longer in the tomb in most cases (e.g., Ut. 413). There is a group of twelve Utterances on food (Ut. 338–349), and a larger group concerned chiefly with the physical necessities (Ut. 401–426).

80:1 Pyr. §§ 101 c, d.

80:2 Pyr. § 204.

81:1 Pyr. §§ 2117–18, restored from Pap. Schmitt.

81:2 BAR, I, 173.

82:1 BAR, I, 241.

82:2 Borchardt, Das Grabdenkmal des Koenigs Sahure, pp. 94 ff.

83:1 Confer Reisner, Boston Mus. of Fine Arts Bulletin, IX, 16.

85:1 Maspero'S edition appeared in his journal, the Recueil, in volumes 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14; it later appeared in a single volume. Sethe's edition of the hieroglyphic text in two volumes (Die Altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte von Kurt Sethe, Leipzig, 1908–10) will be accompanied by further volumes containing translation and discussion of the texts, and with palæographic material by H. Schaefer.

85:2 Pyr. § 1245; see also § 1251.

86:1 Pyr. § 1878 b.

86:2 Pyr. § 747, same in § 1732.

86:3 Pyr. § 572.

86:4 Pyr. § 1488; this passage was first remarked by Sethe as showing the early date of the document, Zeitschr. für aegypt. Sprache, 38, 64.

86:5 Pyr. § 2037.

86:6 Pyr. § 239.

86:7 Pyr. § 295.

87:1 Pyr. § 410.

87:2 Pyr. Ut. 524.

87:3 Pyr. § 1084.

87:4 Pyr. § 1087.

87:5 Pyr. § 1179.

87:6 Pyr. § 388.

87:7 Pyr. Ut. 599–600; see infra, pp. 75–76.

88:1 Pyr. § 1189.

88:2 Pyr. § 1216.

88:3 Pyr. § 1348.

88:4 Pyr. § 912.

88:5 Pyr. § 1048.

88:6 Pyr. § 1484.

88:7 Pyr. § 335.

89:1 Pyr. § 130.

89:2 Pyr. § 954.

89:3 Pyr. § 730.

89:4 Pyr. Ut. 323.

89:5 Pyr., passim.

89:6 Pyr. § 1197.

89:7 Pyr. § 1123.

89:8 Pyr. § 1563.

91:1 Pyr. § 350.

91:2 Pyr. § 134.

91:3 Pyr. § 833.

91:4 Pyr. § 775.

91:5 Pyr. § 1464 c.

91:6 Pyr. § 1468 c–d.

91:7 Pyr. § 1477 b.

91:8 Pyr. § 2201 c.

91:9 Pyr. § 1975 b.

91:10 Pyr. § 1453 a–h.

91:11 Pyr. § 1262.

92:1 Pyr. § 867.

92:2 Pyr. § 875.

92:3 Pyr. Ut. 464.

92:4 See also Pyr. § 1090.

92:5 Pyr. § 1335.

92:6 Pyr. § 1466 d.

93:1 Exactly 1051.

94:1 Pyr. § 924 b.

94:2 Pyr. § 930 a.

94:3 Pyr. § 1318 c.

94:4 Pyr. § 1324.

95:1 Pyr. Ut. 678.

95:2 Pyr. Ut. 456.

95:3 Pyr. Ut. 429–435.

95:4 Erman, Zauberspr. für Mutter and Kind, 5, 8–6, 8.

96:1 Pyr. Ut. 637.

96:2 See above, pp. 13–14.

96:3 Pyr. Ut. 427–435.

96:4 Pyr. Ut. 581.

97:1 Pyr. § 1363.

97:2 Pyr. § 1365.

98:1 Pyr. § 393.

98:2 Pyr. Ut. 456.

99:1 Pyr. Ut. 605.

99:2 The presence of the word "mn" = "so and so" instead of the king's name (Pyr. § 147) does not necessarily indicate the use of the passage by any one, but simply shows that the priestly copyist, when first recording this text in his manuscript, did not know for what king it was to be employed. Then in copying it on the wall the draughtsman by oversight transferred the "so and so" from his manuscript to the wall, instead of changing it to the king's name.

100:1 Pyr. § 873 et al.

100:2 Pyr. §§ 745 a, 1833, 2198 b.

100:3 E. g., §§ 650, 759. See infra, p. 38.

100:4 Pyr. § 1355.

100:5 Pyr. §§ 1531–2; see also § 1703, where, by total inversion of the myth, the king is born in the west. Similarly in § 470 it is the western horn of the sky-bull that is removed for the passage of the dead.

100:6 Pyr. § 306.

100:7 Pyr. § 919.

101:1 Pyr. § 2175.

101:2 Pyr. § 1216.

101:3 See the author's History of Egypt, p. 64.

101:4 Pyr. § 1080.

101:5 Borchardt, in Erman, Handbuch der aegypt. Rel., p. 107.

102:1 Pyr. Ut. 328, 329, 503.

102:2 Pyr. § 1000.

102:3 Pyr. § 1469.

102:4 Pyr. § 604.

103:1 Pyr. §§ 27–29, 275, 920–1; Ut. 323.

103:2 Pyr. § 864.

104:1 Pyr. § 1116.

104:2 Pyr. § 1187.

104:3 Pyr. § 928.

104:4 Pyr. § 607.

104:5 Pyr. §§ 594–6, 947.

104:6 Pyr. §§ 1343, 1440.

104:7 Pyr. § 916.

104:8 Pyr. § 1433.

104:9 Pyr. § 919.

104:10 Pyr. §§ 326, 883, 1530.

104:11 Pyr. § 1541. The supremacy of the east is such that even the Osirian Isis and Nephthys appear as "the great and mighty pair, who are in the east of the sky" (Pyr. § 2200). In spite of the fact that Osiris is "First of the Westerners" he goes to the east in the Pyramid Texts, and the pair, Isis and Nephthys, carry the dead into the east (Pyr. Ut. 702). In Pyr. §§ 1496–8 the east combines with the south and "the middle of the sky" as places where the ascent to the sky may be made.

105:1 Pyr. § 595 b.

105:2 Pyr. § 2061 c.

105:3 Pyr. §§ 802, 1376–7. On the eastern position of this lake see also Pyr. Ut. 359. The chief references on the subject are Pyr. §§ 469 a, 543 b. 802 a, 1102 d, 1138 d, 1162 d, 1228 d, 1376 c, 1345 c, 1441 a, 1084 b; Ut. 359.

105:4 Pyr. § 6021.

105:5 Pyr. § 926.

105:6 Pyr. §§ 1201, 1227.

106:1 Pyr. § 1183.

106:2 Pyr. § 1185.

106:3 Pyr. § 1188.

106:4 Pyr. § 1189.

106:5 Pyr. §§ 1189–91.

106:6 Pyr. § 1091.

106:7 Pyr. §§ 599–600.

107:1 Pyr. Ut. 616.

107:2 To know the name of a god is to be able to control him.

107:3 Pyr. § 1223. See also: Pyr. §§ 597, 599, 697, 925, 946, 999, 1091, 1441, 1769, 1429, and Ut. 310, 516–522, 616.

107:4 Pyr. § 387; see also §§ 595–7, 1489, 1175.

107:5 This is of course parallel with the designation, "Eye of Horus," which may also be applied to the boat. See Pyr. §§ 946, 445, 1769.

107:6 Pyr. § 1432.

107:7 Pyr. § 1433.

107:8 Pyr. § 363.

108:1 Pyr. § 1472.

108:2 The writer was once, like the Pharaoh, without a boat in Nubia, and a native from a neighboring village at once hurried away and returned with a pair of such floats made of dried reeds from the Nile shores. On this somewhat precarious craft he ferried the writer over a wide channel to an island in the river. It was the first time that the author had ever seen this contrivance, and it was not a little interesting to find a craft which he knew only in the Pyramid Texts of 5000 years ago still surviving and in daily use on the ancient river in far-off Nubia. There can be no doubt that this is the craft so often called the "two sḥnwy" (dual) in the Pyr. Texts.

108:3 Pyr. § 1105.

108:4 Pyr. § 1026.

109:1 Pyr. § 337. The floats were a favorite means of crossing; they are found frequently in the Pyramid Texts. See besides the above passages also §§ 342, 351, 358, 464, 926–7, 932–5, 999–1000, 1085–6, 1103, 1705.

109:2 Pyr. § 1048.

109:3 Pyr. §§ 890–1.

109:4 Pyr. § 1772.

109:5 Pyr. § 1778.

109:6 Pyr. § 137.

109:7 Pyr. § 913.

109:8 Pyr. § 1484.

110:1 Pyr. § 1122.

110:2 Pyr. § 366.

110:3 Pyr. § 461.

110:4 Pyr. § 463.

110:5 Pyr. § 309.

110:6 Pyr. § 336.

110:7 Pyr. § 1774.

110:8 Pyr. § 365.

110:9 Pyr. § 1108.

110:10 Pyr. § 751.

110:11 Pyr. § 547.

110:12 Pyr. § 365.

110:13 Pyr. § 1090.

110:14 Pyr. § 324.

111:1 All the preceding from Pyr. Ut. 539. It seems impossible to separate these primitive means of reaching the sky from the similar or identical means employed in later astral theology in the Mediterranean. They have survived in the grotesque tale of the ascent of Alexander in the late western (Latin) version of Pseudo-Callisthenes, from which they passed even into art. See Burlington Magazine, vol. VI, pp. 395, ff. The ladder of the next paragraph was a common device in astral mortuary theology. (See Cumont, Astrology and Religion, p. 184.)

111:2 Pyr. § 390; similarly the ladder is associated with Heliopolis in Pyr. § 978.

111:3 Pyr. § 2083.

112:1 Pyr. §§ 2078–81. The exhortation at the end is addressed to the four sons of Horus of Letopolis, Imset, Hapi, Dewamutef, and Kebehsenuf, who made the ladders. Some of the names and epithets are obscure; the two lions are Shu and Tefnut, see § 696 c and parallels. The Solar character of the ladder is evident in this passage also, which is one of the indications that the four sons of Horus are of Solar origin. Even in Osirianized passages the Solar origin of the ladder is unequivocal. See especially Pyr. § 472; also § 971 and infra, p. 153.

112:2 Pyr. § 1253. In § 971 it is called "ladder of Set," though as a pendant to this it is also called "ladder of Horus." Throughout this Utterance (478), however, it is afterward called the "ladder of Set," and it is evidently regarded as his, even though Osiris climbs it. Is this another form of the tradition that Set was forced to carry Osiris?

112:3 Pyr. § 468; besides the preceding references see also Pyr. § 1431, where the ladder is called "Ascender to the sky."

113:1 Pyr. §§ 1473–4.

113:2 For the interpretation of this equipment, see p. 61, note 3.

113:3 Pyr. §§ 476–9.

113:4 Pyr. § 1101.

113:5 Pyr. § 1348.

113:6 Pyr. §§ 379–380.

114:1 Pyr. § 990.

114:2 Pyr. § 194.

114:3 Pyr. § 603.

114:4 Pyr. § 604.

115:1 Pyr. § 1408.

115:2 Pyr. §§ 1479–80. There are four Utterances which are built up on the four Horuses: 325, 563, and 479, which are of the same general structure; and 573 of different structure, in which the identification of the king with the four Horuses perhaps takes place. On the latter see also infra, pp. 154–6.

115:3 Pyr. § 1496.

116:1 To know the name of a god was to hold sway over him.

116:2 Pyr. §§ 1434–5. Compare similar threatening of the Sun-god, infra, p. 308.

116:3 Pyr. § 978.

116:4 Pyr. §§ 468–471; see also §§ 504, 1432, and 914.

116:5 This was the case whether he ferried over by boat or employed the ladder; for the latter was set up in the east, and the ascent was made there; e.g., Pyr. § 928.

116:6 For the explanation of this term see p. 94.

117:1 Pyr. §§ 930–2.

117:2 Pyr. § 935.

117:3 Pyr. §§ 936–8.

117:4 Pyr. §§ 1116–19.