cladking Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Pyramid Texts
> have to be dissected carefully because they are
> obviously written over a long period of time, but
> far more important are the actual meanings and
> translations.

FWIW, the total time period the Pyramid Texts were mainly used is only about 150-200 years (Hornung 1999: 1). Considering their function (that is, the texts were meant for royal use only), the later "democratisation of the afterlife," beginning in the First Intermediate Period weakened and altered their use, where nobles sometimes used a spell here and there on the walls of their tombs on within their coffins. By the Middle Kingdom, the pyramids of that period were undecorated, and so when Senwosret's mastaba at Lisht used the Pyramid Texts, it was simply a direct copy of the Unas' texts.

Portions of the PT can be found in the Coffin Texts and even within the New Kingdom funerary rituals and texts such as the Opening of the Mouth and the elite Book of the Dead (Allen 2005:1). But the meaning and use of these texts changed from their original focus, to fit in with altered religious beliefs over the millennia.

> What was true at one time might
> have been much less true at another and what is
> translated incorrectly can rend the meaning far
> asunder.

This, to me, makes no sense. Explain.

Reference:

Allen, J. P. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Writings from the Ancient World. T. J. Lewis. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Hornung, E. 1999. The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. D. Lorton, transl. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom