I think your missing an important context cladking, as you inferred earlier, most of Unas' PT's are significantly older ritual incantations that were etched inside his pyramid tomb walls... you have to consider the earliest context of the king as Horus * Dynasty 0 and Dynasty 1. Horus was a stellar God (R. Kraus 2010), but there was a young Horus and an Old Horus... the old Horus was Venus when visible above the eastern horizon at night and the young Horus was the morning star (Venus) ...Orion clears a path... So, early incantations or perhaps even early writing identified the king as the incarnation or personification of the God Horus, the God of Nehken.

Towards the end of the 1st Dynasty Horus (stellar) became subservient to Re (solar), before this occurred Kings were idolized and viewed as warrior kings, human sacrifices were the norm for royal mortuary cults, but the second ruler of the 2nd Dynasty - Nebre (weneg), reversed it all. Horus names continued to be given to kings throughout Egypt's history, but after the 1st Dynasty the God Horus was a lessor god to Re (Kraus 2010, Kahl 2007), and of course by the 4th dynasty Horus' role in the after life was shifting once more towards Osiris and Kings were now seen as the living incarnation of Re. It's because of the latter that I don't believe pyramids of the 4th dynasty were built as stellar mortuary cults, the mortuary cult was solar. Nehken (Horus) was eclipsed by Heliopolis (Atum-Re).

side note; Horus is a name still given to new borns, makes it among the oldest names still in use, some 5,000 years later.

Regards,

B.A.Hokom



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2023 12:26AM by Pistol.