The Mortuary Papyrus Of Padikakem

This new study is the first translation of the papyrus of Padikakem, with an extensive commentary. The complete early Ptolemaic manuscript from the Walters Art Museum contains two uncommon texts in hieratic. The initial text, a Ritual of Introducing the Multitude on the Last Day of Tekh, is identified as a temple liturgy by its rubric title, while its themes recall love poetry and the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys. The second text, a rarely attested Book III of glorification spells (sakhw) has an exclusively mortuary character. The spells of this section largely originate in the Pyramid Texts and include specific instructions for recitation by the lector priest. The two texts are established as a coherent composition that belongs to the Greco-Roman tradition of merging Egyptian funerary practices with temple liturgies. The diverse sources and themes of the texts shed light on the evolution of Osirian and mortuary theologies from the Old Kingdom onwards. The study also thoroughly examines the development of grammar and paleography among the parallels.

"Among the broad spectrum of ancient Egyptian religious literature, the Book of the Dead is the most representative of the mortuary religion and of the magical and ritual practices belonging to it. Moreover, its rich corpus of texts and images provides unique information on the scribal practices, mortuary traditions, myths, and priestly rituals in ancient Egypt from the 2nd Millennium BCE to the Roman Period. "Book of the Dead" is the conventional name given by Egyptologists to a collection of magical compositions called in ancient Egyptian "Book for coming forth by day". This title refers to the main wish of the deceased, who wished to be able to leave his tomb and move freely between this world and the next. Each Book of the Dead manuscript is unique, although we know of the existence of workshops where the papyri were bought and therefore a few common stylistic features can be recognized according to different regional traditions of writing and manufacture. The spells also present many and various parallels with other magical and ritual texts attested in temples, on magical objects, and amulets, showing that the mortuary literature had in fact a strong link with the daily religious life and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. This Handbook is the first guide to all the aspects and topics of research both in relation to the Book of the Dead itself and to broader research on ancient Egyptian religion and magic"--

This new study offers a comprehensive examination of a unique manuscript, a Late Period hieratic papyrus in the Brooklyn Museum. This document comprises a compilation of seventeen individual prophylactic texts whose anatomical focus is the ear. Many of the texts specifically state that they are intended for the protection of the ears of a king named Psamtik, a historical figure who ruled Egypt in the seventh century BCE. The fact that this papyrus was created to serve a sole purpose and function, the protection of the ear, distinguishes it noticeably from earlier Egyptian medical and magical texts that are largely encyclopedic and were intended to serve a broad range of purposes. The present study contains an introduction and full translation with extensive philological and textual commentary, as the texts of this papyrus are rich in mythological allusions. The commentaries are largely based on comparison with contemporary and older Egyptian texts that, although not direct parallels as there are none, serve nonetheless as a rich resource for comparative analysis that has led to a more informed reading of this important document.

Coping with Obscurity publishes the papers discussed at the Brown University Workshop on Earlier Egyptian grammar in March, 2013. The workshop united ten scholars of differing viewpoints dealing with the central question of how to judge and interpret the grammatical value of the written evidence preserved in texts of the Old and Middle Kingdoms (ca. 2350-1650 BC). The nine papers in the volume present orthographic, lexical, morphological, and syntactic approaches to the data and represent a significant step toward a new, pluralistic understanding of Earlier Egyptian grammar.

Illuminating Osiris comprises twenty-seven articles by students, friends, and colleagues in honor of Mark Smith, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. Smith is especially renowned as a Demoticist and specialist in ancient Egyptian religion. His numerous Demotic text editions and translations of Egyptian funerary and religious compositions have been enormously influential in the field. The contributions in Illuminating Osiris naturally reflect Smith's particular interests in the religion and literature of Graeco-Roman period Egypt, dealing with cult, rituals, astronomy, and divination, among other subjects. The book includes many editions or reeditions of texts written in Demotic, Hieratic, and Ptolemaic Hieroglyphs. It is profusely illustrated and supplied with detailed indices.

Ritual, magic, liturgy, and theurgy were central features of Gnosticism, and yet Gnostic practices remain understudied. This anthology is meant to fill in this gap and address more fully what the ancient Gnostics were doing. While previously we have studied the Gnostics as intellectuals in pursuit of metaphysical knowledge, the essays in this book attempt to understand the Gnostics as ecstatics striving after religious experience, as prophets seeking revelation, as mystics questing after the ultimate God, as healers attempting to care for the sick and diseased. These essays demonstrate that the Gnostics were not necessarily trendy intellectuals seeking epistomological certainities. They were after religious experiences that relied on practices. The book is organized comparatively in a history-of-religions approach with sections devoted to Initiatory, Recurrent, Therapeutic, Ecstatic, and Philosophic Practices. This book celebrates the brilliant career of Birger A. Pearson.

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.

The term ‘canonicity’ implies the recognition that the domain of literature and of the library is also a cultural and political one, related to various forms of identity formation, maintenance, and change. Scribes and benefactors ‘create’ canon in as much as they teach, analyze, preserve, prom¬ulgate and change ‘canonical’ texts according to prevailing norms. From early on, texts from the written traditions of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were accumulated, codified, and to some extent canonized, as various collections developed mainly in the environment of the temple and the palace. These written traditions represent sets of formal and informal cultures that all speak in their own ways of canonicity, normativity, and other forms of cultural expertise. Some forms of literature were used not only in scholarly contexts, but also in political ones, and they served purposes of identity formation. This volume addresses the interrelations between various forms of ‘canon’ and identity formation in different time periods, genres, regions, and contexts, as well as the application of contemporary conceptions of ‘canon’ to ancient texts.