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Volume 16 issue 3 December 2015

ANCIENT EGYPT explores the WORLD WIDE WEB ...

UNAS AND THE PYRAMID TEXTS

This month NETFISHING continues its look at the history of Egypt by seeing what the World Wide Web has to say about King Unas and the advent of the ‘Pyramid Texts’.

King UNAS, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, is credited with ruling for thirty years in the Turin Canon and thirty-three by Manetho. His reign is not well recorded, but we do know he had two Queens, Chenut and Nebet, and that a number of viziers served him. He constructed his pyramid at Saqqara, in the shadow of Djoser’s famous Step Pyramid and so he appears to have wanted to be buried near to his illustrious predecessor. His pyramid, ‘Beautiful are the places of Unas’ has been much damaged and was actually repaired in the New Kingdom by prince Khaemwaset, a son of Rameses II. Khaemwaset left an inscription recording his work on the outer casing of the pyramid, some of which still exists today.

Although the pyramid is not inspiring from the outside, inside it contains the earliest known example of the Pyramid Texts, evidence that religious beliefs were changing and that the king was looking for new methods to ensure his immortality. Interestingly, two ‘solar boats’ were cut into the bedrock near to the pyramid’s causeway, so the king appears to be ‘hedging his bets’ regarding his afterlife, preserving existing traditions whilst placing a greater emphasis on religious beliefs and magic. Refer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unas

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Unas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Unas

http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/Unas.html

https://egyptsites.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/pyramid-and-mortuary-temple-of-unas/

http://www.phouka.com/pharaoh/pharaoh/dynasties/dyn05/09unas.html

THE PYRAMID TEXTS

The religious texts which first appear in the pyramid of king Unas, referred to today as the Pyramid Texts, are to be found in only nine pyramids of the Old Kingdom. They were carved in the burial chambers of king Unas at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, and then in the pyramids of the kings of the Sixth Dynasty, Teti, Pepy I, Merenra, and Pepy II. In addition, copies of the texts are inscribed in the three pyramids of the wives of king Pepy II; Queens Udjebten, Iput and Neit and a crude example of the texts is also to be found in the pyramid of king Ibi, an early king of the Seventh Dynasty.

When they are studied, it is clear that, although the texts were first inscribed in the tomb of King Unas at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, this is not the date when they were actually composed; many of the texts seem to predate the Fifth Dynasty and some may even have their origins as far back as the Predynastic Period (prior to 3100 BC), possibly preserved in an oral tradition before the advent of writing. The texts themselves form the earliest large corpus of religious beliefs, but are concerned only with the afterlife of the king himself and do not mention the afterlife of more lowly Egyptian citizens.

The texts, inscribed in vertical columns on the internal walls of the pyramid, were written to enable the king to reach his afterlife, join the gods and exist for all eternity with everything he could wish for. No one pyramid contains every spell, however, and many of the spells are repeated from tomb to tomb; on average, most pyramids have only around two hundred spells inscribed on their internal walls, but when these are added together there exists a corpus of some 759 different spells which give a remarkable insight into the royal funerary beliefs of the time.

The texts consist of four main elements:

1. Offerings of food and drink and other goods to maintain the spirit of the king in the afterlife.

2. A ‘Stellar Cycle’ – elements from an early period when the king was believed to spend his celestial afterlife among the Northern circumpolar stars of the night-time sky. These ‘imperishable stars’, as they are termed, always remain visible above the horizon.

3. A ‘Solar Cycle’ – a major part of the texts, where the king joins the Heliopolitan sun-god Ra to spend an afterlife associated with the sun and its daily passage across the daytime sky.

4. An ‘Osirian Cycle’ – a later inclusion, where the king becomes identified with the chthonic ‘god of the dead’ Osiris and his associated myths.

The cult of Osiris offered an alternative afterlife for the king and this god’s increasing prominence at the end of the Old Kingdom is reflected in the texts.

Quite why, at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, Unas decided to have religious texts inscribed on the internal walls of his pyramid is a matter for much conjecture, but it seems that less reliance was placed on the idea of having a huge pyramid to ensure his afterlife, and instead a greater emphasis was placed on religious ritual and the role performed by the priesthood. The idea certainly found favour with the later kings of the Sixth Dynasty. Written in stone, the magical texts would perform their task for all eternity and ensure the afterlife of the king. Refer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Texts

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/pyramidtext.htm

http://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/translation.html

http://www.crystalinks.com/pyramidtext.html

http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/pyramidtext.html

Victor Blunden

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