The Book of The Dead in the Fifth Dynasty

In the 5th dynasty we have - in an raised number of mastabas and other monuments - evidence of the extension of religious ceremonies, including the solemnization of funeral rites, but a text fonning the Book of the Dead as a whole does not occur until the rule of Unas (B.C. 3333), the last king of the dynasty, who according to the Turin papyrus dominated 30 years. This monarch built on the plain of Saqqara a stone pyramid about sixty-two feet high, each side measurement about two hundred feet at the base. In the time of Perring and Vyse it was involved by heaps of grown stone and rubbish, the result of recurring attempts to open it, and with the casing stones, which consisted of little limestone from the quarries of Tura. In February, 1881, M. Maspero began to have the pyramid, and soon after he won in making an entrance into the innennost chambers, the walls of which were extended with hieroglyphic inscriptions, didst in perpendicular lines and painted in green. The condition of the home showed that at some time or other thieves had already won in making an entrance, for the address of the black basalt sarcophagus of Unas had beer turned off and moved good the door of the sarcophagus chamber, the pavement stones had been pulled in the vain set about to find buried treasure, the mummy had been broken to pieces, and nothing remained of it take out the right arm, a tibia, and some fragments of the skull and body. The inscriptions which addressed certain walls and corridors in the tomb were later published by M. Maspero. The appearing of the text of Unas marks an era in the history of the Book of the Dead, and its rendering must be seen as one of the greatest victories of Egyptological decipherment, for the want of detenninatives in many places in the text, and the archaic spelling of numerous of the words and passages represented difficulties which were not easily overcome. Here, for the first time, it was established that the Book of the Dead was no compilation of a comparatively late period in the history of Egyptian civilization, but a work belonging to a very remote antiquity; and it followed naturally that texts which were then known, and which were thought to be themselves direct ancient texts, raised to be only versions which had passed through two or more successive rescripts.

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
• The Book of The Dead in the Fourth Dynasty

The Book of The Dead in the Fourth Dynasty

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.

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

The Book of The Dead in the Second Dynasty

Running from the region of native Egyptian tradition, we touch finn ground with the prove derived from the memorials of the 2nd dynasty. A bas-relief continued at Aix in Provence remarks Aasen and Ankef, two of the priests of Sent or Senta, the fifth king of the 2nd dynasty, about B.C. 4000, and a stele at Oxford and other in the Egyptian Museum at Giza record the name of a third priest, Shera or Sheri, a "royal relative" On the stella at Oxford we have represented the broken and his wife seated, one on each side of an altar, which is addressed with funeral offerings of pious relatives; above, in right lines of hieroglyphics in relief, are the names of the objects offered, and below is an inscription which reads, "thousands of loaves of bread, thousands of vessels of ale, thousands of linen gannents, thousands of shifts of wearing clothes, and thousands of oxen." Now from this monument i is noted that already in the 2nd dynasty a priesthood gone in Egypt which numbered among its members congeneric of the royal family, and that a spiritual system which established as a duty the admitting of meat and drink offerings for the dead was also in engaged operation. The offering of specific objects goes far to prove the existence of a ritual or service wherein their import would be indicated; the conjunction of these words and the prayer for "thousands of loaves of bread, thousands of vessels of ale," etc., with the predict, "Anpu-khent-Amenta shall give thee thy thousands of loaves of bread, thy thousands of vessels of ale, thy thousands of vessels of balms, thy thousands of changes of clothes, thy thousands of oxen, and thy thousands of bullocks, enables us to recognise that ritual in the text inscribed upon the pyramid of Teta in the Vth dynasty, fron which the above promise is taken. Thus the traditional demonstrate of the text on the coffin of Menthu-hetep and the view on the memorial of Shera support one another, and in concert they prove beyond a question that a fonn of the Book of the Dead was in use leastways in the period of the earliest dynasties, and that rank ceremonies related there with were duly perfonned.
 
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 First Dynasty

The oldest form or edition of the Book of the Dead as we have got it supplies no information some as to the period when it was compiled, but a copy of the conventional text inscribed upon a coffin oi Menthu-hetep, a queen of the 11th dynasty,about B.C. 2500, made by the late Sir J. G. Wilkinson, informs us that the chapter which, reported to the arrangement of Lepsius, bears the number LXIV.,  was broken in the reign of Hesep-ti,the 5th king of the 1st dynasty, about B.C. 4266. On this coffin are two re-create of the chapter, the one instantly following the other. In the rubric to the first the name of the king during whose reign the chapter is said to have been "found" is given as Menthu-hetep, which, as Goodwin first pointed out,is a mistake for Men-kau-Ra, the fourth king of the 4th dynasty, about B.C. 3633, but in the rubric to the second the kings name is given as Hesep-ti. Thus it comes out that in the period of the 11th dynasty it was considered that the chapter might instead be as old as the time of the 1st dynasty. Further, it is given to Hesep-ti in papyri of the 21st dynasty, a period when certain attention was paid to the history of the Book of the Dead; and it thus comes out that the Egyptians of the Middle Empire considered the chapter to date from the more such.

The gloss on the coffin of Queen Menthu-hetep, which imputes the chapter to Hesep-ti, states that "this chapter was found in the foundations beneath the lzennu boat by the foreman of the builders in the time o the king of the North and South, Hesep-ti, triumphant", the Nebseni papyrus says that this chapter wa; discovered in the city of Khemennu (Hermopolis) on a block of ironstone  written in letters of lapis-lazuli, deep the feet of the god"; and the Turin papyrus (26th dynasty or later) adds that the name of the viewfinder was Heru-ta-ta-f, the son of Khufu or Cheops, the second king of the IVth dynasty, about B.C. 3733, who was at the time making a tour of inspection of the temples. Birch and Naville view the chapter one of the oldest in the Book of the Dead; the fonner basing his view on the rubric and the latter upon the prove derived from the messages and character of the text, but Maspero, while taking the great age of the chapter, does not attach any very great importance to the rubric as fixing any take date for its composition. Of Herutataf the finder of the block of stone, we know from later texts that he was taken to be a leamed man, and that his language was only with difficultness to be understood, and we also know the prominent part which he took as a recognized man of letters in bringing back the court of his father Khufu the sage Tetteta. It is then not improbable that Herutatafs character for learning may have advised the connection of his name with the chapter, and perchance as its literary reviser, at all cases as early as the period of the Middle Empire tradition related him with it.


Related Posts:

What is the Book of the Dead?
The History of the Book of The Dead