With the 4th dynasty we have an inflated number of monuments, chiefly sepulchral, which give details as to the Egyptian priestly system and the funeral ceremonies which the priests perfonned. The inscriptions upon the earlier monuments prove that some of the priestly officials were still relatives of the royal family, and the tomb of feudal lords, scribblers, and others, record a number of their official titles, together with the names of some of their religious festivals. The subsequent gain in the number of the monuments during this period may be due to the natural development of the religion of the time, but it is very probable that the greater security of life and holding which had been assured by the vigorous wars of Seneferu, the firs king of this dynasty, about B.C. 3766, encouraged men to incur greater write off, and to build larger and better abodes for the dead, and to fete the full ritual at the established festivals. In this dynasty the royal dead were honoured with offensive monuments of a greater size and richness than had ever before been studied, and the chapels affiliated to the pyramids were served by courses of priests whose sole duties lay in in celebrating the services. The fashion of building a pyramid rather of the rectangular Aat-roofed mastaba for a royal tomb was revived by Seneferu, who visited his pyramid Kha, and his example was followed by his immediate successors, Khufu (Cheops), Khafre (Chephren), Menkaure (Mycerinus), and others.
In the reign of Mycerinus some essential work seems to have been under taken in connector with certain sections of the text of the Book of the Dead, for the titles of Chapters XXXB. and CXLVIII. state that these reports were found inscribed upon "a block of iron(?) of the south in letters of real lapis-lazuli under the feet of the stateliness of the god in the time of the King it of the North and South Menkaure, by the royal son Herutataf, victorious." That a new impulse should be given to religious observances, and that the revision of been sacred texts should take place in the reign of Mycerinus, was only to be expected if Greek tradition may be believed, for both Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus symbolise him as a just king, and one who was upset to efface from the psyches of the people the memory of the alleged cruelty of his predecessor by re-opening the temples and by letting every man celebrate his own sacrifices and dispatch his own religious duties. His pyramid is the one now known as the "third pyramid of Giza," under which he was sank in a chamber vertically below the apex and 60 feet below the level oi the ground. Whether the pyramid was finished or not when the king died, his body was sure laid in it, and notwithstanding all the efforts made by the Muhainmadan rulers of Egypt to destroy it at the end of the 12th century of our era, it has was to yield up important facts for the history of the Book of the Dead.
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In the reign of Mycerinus some essential work seems to have been under taken in connector with certain sections of the text of the Book of the Dead, for the titles of Chapters XXXB. and CXLVIII. state that these reports were found inscribed upon "a block of iron(?) of the south in letters of real lapis-lazuli under the feet of the stateliness of the god in the time of the King it of the North and South Menkaure, by the royal son Herutataf, victorious." That a new impulse should be given to religious observances, and that the revision of been sacred texts should take place in the reign of Mycerinus, was only to be expected if Greek tradition may be believed, for both Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus symbolise him as a just king, and one who was upset to efface from the psyches of the people the memory of the alleged cruelty of his predecessor by re-opening the temples and by letting every man celebrate his own sacrifices and dispatch his own religious duties. His pyramid is the one now known as the "third pyramid of Giza," under which he was sank in a chamber vertically below the apex and 60 feet below the level oi the ground. Whether the pyramid was finished or not when the king died, his body was sure laid in it, and notwithstanding all the efforts made by the Muhainmadan rulers of Egypt to destroy it at the end of the 12th century of our era, it has was to yield up important facts for the history of the Book of the Dead.
Related Posts:
- What is the Book of the Dead?
- The History of the Book of The Dead
- The Book of The Dead in the First Dynasty
- The Book of The Dead in the Second Dynasty