Greg Reeder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I just looked through Strudwick before I posted my
> above request to you.
> Anthony there is what I said, very, very little.
> You can't build a theology on a few names of gods.
> That goes for Weeks' work as well.( I think all
> are online IIRC so go ahead and cite which ones
> you mean). The tombs that are covered in that
> series
> have no religious texts as such only a mention of
> a god here and a god there. ... like Anubis and
> his shrine.

It is no small task, Greg...and mentioning three will do little more than point you to a general direction of the kind of reading that is required to begin to assemble a context for pre-PT cosmology.

I'll start with Weeks... first one that grabs me is in the tomb of Iymery. I did some extra research into this tomb because of a specific image I saw inside that seemed most intriguing.

Here's a snippet:

Quote

The lower register on the north wall shows Shepseskafankh standing in a boat. On the south wall, a sailing vessel carries his son, Iymery. In Egyptian belief, these barques were vessels said to be piloted by the deceased, who was generally shown standing, baton in hand, before a cabin housing his soul. Often, two such boats were represented: the first would show the deceased standing near the bow; the second would show him seated. This is not the case in Iymery's mastaba, hwoever, for here are representations of two different individuals, not two representations of the same person. Boreaux has commented....(french text which I do not have the time to transcribe)...

A single column of text lies immediately in front of these boats. On the north wall we read:

Pay attention to the steering rope! The Canal of the West, when we travel, then it is right!"

Barques, canals, traveling west.... these are clues to the cosmography of ancient Egypt, Greg. Clearly, we must pay close attention when deciphering these items.

Here is another quote, this time from Userkaf, the first king of the Fifth Dynasty:

Quote

Bottom Right, above Vulture
Nekhbet, the white one of Nekhen, may she give life.

Line at the Bottom of the Block, Part of the Scene Below
May she give life, stability and dominion, all joy and health for ever

Strudwick, p. 83

Whoever Nekhbet turns out to be, we know for a fact that by the end of the Fourth Dynasty, she grants "life, stability and dominion".

I really am just opening pages at random here, Greg. Here's another one, this time from the tomb of Djoser:

Quote

The subjects of the relief panels are Djoser's ritual acts during the Sed festival, as he stands in the shrines of the gods, runs the ritual race, seizes the two lands, possesses the two skies, and stands recrowned as the eternal monarch of Egypt.The reliefs replicate subject matter (and sometimes format) from the Early Dynastic ticket labels (e.g. the race between territorial markers on a Den label) and sed-related Palermo Stone year entries (e.g., a statue of Khasekhemwy), as well as from the Narmer Palette (the theme of subjugation and victory) and the Narmer Macehead (the race between markers that later becomes part of the sed festival.

Notions of Cosmos in the Step Pyramid Complex, Florence Dunn Friedman, Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson, ed. Peter Der Manuelian, Project Supervisor, Rita E. Freed, Boston, 1996.

What does this teach us about their worldview? How interrelated is their worldview with their physical environment?

Here's another one that I found very interesting, from the mortuary temple of Sahure, early Dynasty Five:

Quote

A scene of Sahure standing before Nekhbet and Khnum and being suckled by the former.
Above the king: (Horus) Nebkhau, (king of Upper and Lower Egypt) Sahure, given life forever.
Above Nekhbet:(Nekhbet), the white one of Nekhen, (mistress of the divine mansion of) Upper Egypt, mistress of teh Per-wer.
after the above epithets, perhaps a speech of the god: (All life and dominion) which are in my sight are for your nose, for ever.
Between both gods: May all protection and life be around (literally behind) him, may he be healthy for ever.
Above Khnum: he who dwells in the "House of protection," the lord of Her-wer (Antinoe), he who dwells in the cataract city, lord of the house of Khnum.

Nigel Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age, 2005, p. 85

There, Nekhbet again, granting the same powers to the Sahure that we saw being granted to Userkaf, another king from the same time.

Notice how this changes by the time we get to Nekhbet's first reference in the Pyramid Texts, where she appears first in the pyramid of Teti:

Quote

Should Teti hunger, Dual Lion will hunger. Should Teti thirst, Nebkhet will thirst.

Teti, 276, Allen, p. 91

Or the only other mentions of Nekhbet, from the pyramid of Pepi, which include spell 470, chiefly concerning the boat made for Pepi by Khnum:

Quote

...Fetch for this Pepi that Khnum-made boat that is in the Winding Canal.
Swallower, open the path for Pepi! O, Heat-snake, open the path for this Pepi. Nekhbet, open the path for this Pepi!

Allen, p. 162

But finally here, in the most extensive reference, we get a glimpse of the powers once commanded by Nekhbet:

Quote

May you defend him, Nekhbet. When you have (defended) Pepi, Nekhbet, in the midst of the Official's Enclosure in Heliopolis, and have commanded him to him that is in his service, this Pepi shall be served.

Allen, Pepi spell 509, p. 178

Think about what we've seen evolve here from the beginning of Dynasty Five to the beginning of Dynasty Six. A principle figure in the revivification of the king has been virtually airbrushed out of the cosmology. In all the pyramid texts, Nekhbet appears but these three times. Prior to the the texts, well, I grabbed those references by chance. I did not intend to write anything about Nekhbet when I started this post...it just happened. In the temple of Sahure, we have full depictions of this goddess, along with Khnum, suckling and granting eternal life to the dead king. By the time of the Pyramid Texts, she's been relegated to a footnote.


>
> Do you really think I am not familiar with Old
> Kingdom texts? (on the other hand I am always open
> to new discoveries and would be interested in any
> texts I have overlooked) You are talking about
> texts just from the 4th Dynasty and maybe the
> beginning of the 5th?
> So what are the texts you are talking about? Quote
> 3 of them to give me a flavor.

Well, there you go. I hope I got this done before you went out for the evening. I had to feed and groom the horses before putting them out for the night.

Anthony

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.