Hi Chris,

Thanks for your research on this – much appreciated. I hadn’t been aware of Shmakov’s comments before.

This little excursion into “itn” has been enlightening. There are evidently many levels to this question – starting with the observation that it seems it wasn’t until the MK that concern with the “disk” truly came to the fore, as evidenced by its fairly extensive referencing in the CT’s and lack of same in the PT’s. The P 356 example you have pointed to would appear to be the only such PT usage.

When “itn” or “iTn” is referenced as simply the ‘solar’ “disk”, it is almost entirely in the context of this or that entity described as being “within” the “disk”. In addition, when the word is spelled “iTn” and appears as an adjunct part of a place name or name of a god, it will just about always appear without the N5 determinative – see, for example, CT Spells 164, 173, 463, 545, 696, 1012, and 1029. Done as a “false archaism”, no doubt, as you point out, but to me this still begs the question of why the N5 glyph was left out in the archaic texts – such as is the case in P 356 Col. 58. True, determinatives were not regularly used at all times, nor by all scribes, but the abbreviated word “Tn” with the N5 determinative was used in Col. 55 of this same P 356 text – where it is translated by Allen as “Sun”. He translates this passage section, “rowing the Sun in the Dayboat…”. My point with this follows along the lines of Faulkner, who comments on the “obscure” meaning of “iTn” in CT Sp 463, where this word forms a part of the name “iTn-wr”. This is apparently a similar context to that of Col. 58 of P 356, which phrase Allen translates as “great disk”. (The word “wr” is here spelled by glyph G36 only, there is no D21 glyph, which is curiously contrary to how it is spelled elsewhere on this same antechamber south wall.)

My further point being that at this earlier time in which the PT’s were written, exactly what concept “iTn” in “iTn-wr” may have been referring to is not completely clear. I find the lack of the N5 determinative in this word to perhaps be instructive – akin, in a way, to the “dog that barked in the night”. As I have said before, I view many of these texts to have largely circumpolar meanings, meanings which were veiled in the metaphoric language (poetry?) of the time. I find it clear that P 356 falls into this category, even given the many lacunae.

I come to this conclusion from the findings that P 356 makes reference to "Mskhnt" (or Mskhtyw?), to the Imperishable Stars, to the Field of Offerings, to the Enneads, to the “god’s sedan chair”, to Pepi being on his “path”, to the Council awaiting Pepi’s arrival, etc. All of these speak circumpolar context as loudly as they can using the vernacular found throughout these texts. This would then strongly imply that "iTn-wr” is here also a factor that is to be understood within the context of a circumpolar location. It would therefore appear to be a reference to a ring or “disk” situated about the celestial north pole – with the north pole at the time located very near to the star Thuban (Alpha Draconis). This could explain why the N5 determinative was used in Col. 55, where the “iTn” term allows for a duality of meaning (ie, solar and polar), while it was not used in Col. 58 - where its meaning was more specifically tied to only a polar context. This “ring”, I would then suppose, referred to the circuit made by a specific star or asterism as it revolved about the pole both during the night, and during the year.

There also appears to be a marked similarity of symbolism between the P 356 text and the various “itnws” spells of the CT’s – refer to the list of spells I gave a few paragraphs above. In the section of P 356 under discussion, we see references to “hair” and to Hathor – and this is just as is seen in the “itnws” spells. And in both cases, these being in the context of the King’s having arrived at the polar region. “Pepi has parted the two locks of hair and joined together the two parts of hair”, this from Allen’s P 356 translation. In the next line Allen has, “This Pepi shall establish your ornament on the sun’s brow”, and in a footnote Allen clarifies that the “your” refers to a female goddess, although he doesn’t say which goddess this may be. I think it likely, if not certain, that the usage here of the F13 “horns” glyph for “parted” (as in “separated”) and also its usage for the word “brow”, was no doubt intended to immediately conjure up the image of Hathor in the minds of those involved with this liturgy. A similar juxtaposition occurs in Utt 335 §546: “..those who see me adorned with my fillet from the brow (“wpt” – spelled with F13) of Re! My kilt which is on me is Hathor…”. Or perhaps even more directly, from Utt. 405 §705: “For I am that eye of yours which is on the horns (“wpt”) of Hathor”.

This connection is further enhanced by the usage of the word “XkrT”, which Allen translates as “ornament”. The word can also mean “female hairdresser”, thus providing a play on words that broadens the associations of the text, this type of punning being a literary device constantly at play in the PT’s.

Regarding the point that you made concerning CT Spell 335 Bk IV, §293c, where you said, “itn (is) written (here) with X1 (=t) but no N5 sun det. (Refer to) T1Be, outer coffin of mnTw-Htp from Thebes”. This sole occurrence seems to me to be a case of the exception proving the rule. Of all the instances in the CT’s where the term “itn” (or “iTn”) is standing alone and referring to simply a “disk”, this may be the only time when the N5 determinative was not used by the scribe. It would seem that it was the archaicized “iTn” usages that were regularly written without the solar determinative. In the PT’s, the name of “Re” is at times written with the N5 determinative, and at times written without. I must say that I do not see any clear correlation here to what N5 usage seems to be a more primarily solar context as opposed to what usage seems to be a more primarily polar context. One possible explanation for this could be that they saw the circumpolar manifestation of Re as being located either precisely at, or extremely near to, the pole itself – meaning that the use or non-use of the N5 determinative was seen as equally appropriate, and therefore as equally discretionary.

For those who may not already be aware of the following online locations, de Buck’s transcriptions of the Coffin Texts can be found here: [ancientworldonline.blogspot.com], and Faulkner’s Coffin Text translations can be found online via this link: [archive.org] Leclant’s transcriptions are not yet available online. J.P. Allen’s translation of the Pyramid Texts used to be available online, but I couldn’t find it just now. Perhaps someone else has an URL for it.




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2018 09:03AM by L Cooper.