The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts

The Pyramid Texts are the oldest body of extant literature from ancient Egypt. First carved on the walls of the burial chambers in the pyramids of kings and queens of the Old Kingdom, they provide the earliest comprehensive view of the way in which the ancient Egyptians understood the structure of the universe, the role of the gods, and the fate of human beings after death. Their importance lies in their antiquity and in their endurance throughout the entire intellectual history of ancient Egypt. This volume contains the complete translation of the Pyramid Texts, including new texts recently discovered and published. It incorporates full restorations and readings indicated by post-Old Kingdom copies of the texts and is the first translation that presents the texts in the order in which they were meant to be read in each of the original sources.

The Egyptian pyramid texts, which are the basis of this work, were collected and inscribed on the walls of five royal pyramids at Sakkareh between the years 2350 and 2175 B.C. The present work is the first English translation with commentary.

The ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts form the oldest body of religious texts in the world. This book weds traditional philology to linguistic anthropology to associate them with two spheres of ritual action, mortuary cult and personal preparation for the afterlife.

A radical reinterpretation of the Pyramid Texts as shamanic mystical wisdom rather than funerary rituals • Reveals the mystical nature of Egyptian civilization denied by orthodox Egyptologists • Examines the similarity between the pharaoh’s afterlife voyage and shamanic journeying • Shows shamanism to be the foundation of the Egyptian mystical tradition To the Greek philosophers and other peoples of the ancient world, Egypt was regarded as the home of a profound mystical wisdom. While there are many today who still share that view, the consensus of most Egyptologists is that no evidence exists that Egypt possessed any mystical tradition whatsoever. Jeremy Naydler’s radical reinterpretation of the Pyramid Texts--the earliest body of religious literature to have survived from ancient Egypt--places these documents into the ritual context in which they belong. Until now, the Pyramid Texts have been viewed primarily as royal funerary texts that were used in the liturgy of the dead pharaoh or to aid him in his afterlife journey. This emphasis on funerary interpretation has served only to externalize what were actually experiences of the living, not the dead, king. In order to understand the character and significance of the extreme psychological states the pharaoh experienced--states often involving perilous encounters with alternate realities--we need to approach them as spiritual and religious phenomena that reveal the extraordinary possibilities of human consciousness. It is the shamanic spiritual tradition, argues Naydler, that is the undercurrent of the Pyramid Texts and that holds the key to understanding both the true nature of these experiences and the basis of ancient Egyptian mysticism.

A Grammar of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts is designed as a six-volume study of the earliest comprehensive corpus of ancient Egyptian texts, inscribed in the pyramids of five pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2325–2150 BC) and several of their queens. The first volume, devoted to the earliest corpus, that of Unis, is based on a database that allows for detailed analysis of the orthography of the texts and every aspect of their grammar; it includes a complete hieroglyphic lexicon of the texts and a consecutive transcription and translation on facing pages. The grammatical analysis incorporates both the most recent advances in the understanding of Egyptian grammar and a few new interpretations published here for the first time.

The Pyramid Texts, which were carved on the walls of the pyramids of the kings of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties to guide the dead king through the Netherworld and protect his welfare there, constitute the oldest corpus of religious and funerary texts and, as such are, of fundamental importance for the students of Egyptian religion. This translation, completed in 1969 by a leading authority on these texts, is one of the most accessible, scholarly and complete available, and this reprint should be useful not only to Egyptologists but also to those interested in the history of religion and the occult.

A Grammar of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts is designed as a six-volume study of the earliest comprehensive corpus of ancient Egyptian texts, inscribed in the pyramids of five pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2325-2150 BC) and several of their queens. The first volume, devoted to the earliest corpus, that of Unis, is based on a database that allows for detailed analysis of the orthography of the texts and every aspect of their grammar; it includes a complete hieroglyphic lexicon of the texts and a consecutive transcription and translation on facing pages. The grammatical analysis incorporates both the most recent advances in the understanding of Egyptian grammar and a few new interpretations published here for the first time.

A stunning and original interpretation of an ancient system of poetic, religious, and philosophical thought Buried in the Egyptian desert some four thousand years ago, the Pyramid Texts are among the world’s oldest poetry. Yet ever since the discovery of these hieroglyphs in 1881, they have been misconstrued by Western Egyptologists as a garbled collection of primitive myths and incantations, relegating to obscurity their radiant fusion of philosophy, scientific inquiry, and religion. Now, in a seminal work, the classicist and linguist Susan Brind Morrow has recast the Pyramid Texts as a coherent work of art, arguing that they should be recognized as a formative event in the evolution of human thought. In The Dawning Moon of the Mind she explains how to read hieroglyphs, contextualizes their evocative imagery, and interprets the entire poem. The result is a magisterial religious and philosophical text revealing a profound consciousness of the world with astonishing parallels to Judeo-Christian culture, Buddhism, and Tantra. More than twenty years in the making, The Dawning Moon of the Mind is a monumental achievement that locates one of the origins of poetic thought in Western culture. Almost before science, art, and written language, these texts set forth the relationship between time and eternity, life and death, history and ideas. In The Dawning Moon of the Mindthey emerge in their original luminosity and intelligence alongside a persuasive argument for their central importance to the history of language.