Pistol Wrote:
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> The practice of afterlife invocations in the name
> of the deceased pre-existed the LAST king of the
> 5th dynasty; Unas. Unas was the FIRST king to
> include invocations etched inside his pyramid and
> also the FIRST king NOT to build a separate Sun
> temple as his 5th dynasty predecessors had.

Incorrect. Djedkare-Isesi was the first king not to build a separate Sun temple as his predecessor Niuserre had.

> It may very well be that the primary reason Unas
> has texts on the walls of his tomb is directly
> related to his exclusion of building a Sun temple,
> as a sort of 'magical' compensation, the physical
> demarcations between the two is quite obvious.

I agree with the "magical compensation" theory, but as I have pointed out, it was Djedkare-Isesi who followed Niuserre.

It was Priskin who proposed that Djedkare-Isesi compensated for the lack of a sun temple by incorporating a 3:4:5 triangle in his pyramid design. In Priskin's theory, this triangle had great significance in the solar cult on account of its perimeter adding to 12, the supreme solar number. (There are 12 months in the year and 12 hours in the day as well as the night.) Rossi is of the opinion that the height of 100 cubits and semibase of 75 cubits for Djedkare's and the Sixth Dynasty pyramids is proof enough that the Egyptians knew the geometric properties of the 3:4:5 triangle. In fact knowledge of the geometric properties goes back to Khufu at the latest. The dimensions of Khufu's Mortuary temple are 75c x 100c, an obvious 3 x 4 rectangle, while the King's Chamber contains a 3 x 4 rectangle or 3:4:5 triangles across one of the the diagonals of the chamber.

Now, Unas built his pyramid after Djedkare-Isesi, but his pyramid had a different slope of 3:2 (56* 19'). This is an unusual seked of 2/3 cubit, but it hides a 3 x 4 rectangle. Unas' base is 110 cubits and its height is 82 .5 cubits, in the required 4:3 ratio. Although the area of a 3 x 4 rectangle is 12, the solar number, the pyramid's design represents a shift away from the 3:4:5 triangle as such, which presumably has more magical solar power than the 3 x 4 rectangle. The pyramid texts thereby give compensation for the loss of magical solar power given by the 4:3 slope.

> And it is also worth mentioning that at this same
> point in time, AFTER Unas, each subsequent Old
> Kingdom Royal pyramid throughout the sixth dynasty
> was standardized; they were all modeled on the
> same plan and they all had texts.

Yes, and this standardized model was based on the 3:4:5 triangle. So these Sixth Dynasty pyramids had the magical power of both the pyramid texts and the 3:4:5 triangle.

> Best Regards,
>
> B.A. Hokom

Kanga (Lee McGiffen)