Pyramid Texts
He chose a site in South Saqqara, a hill that had been mapped by the Prussian Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius in 1842, for his first archaeological dig.
There, Maspero found the ruins of a large structure, which he concluded must be the pyramid of Pepi I of the Sixth Dynasty.
During the excavations he was able to gain access to the subterranean rooms, and discovered that the walls of the structure were covered in hieroglyphic text.
[10] In it, Maspero discovered the same hieroglyphic text on the walls he had found in Pepi I's pyramid,[11] and the mummy of a man in the sarcophagus of the burial chamber.
[12][13][14] This time, he visited Mariette personally, who again rejected the findings, saying on his deathbed that "[i]n thirty years of Egyptian excavations I have never seen a pyramid whose underground rooms had hieroglyphs written on their walls.
"[10] Throughout 1881, Maspero continued to direct investigations of other sites in Saqqara, and more texts were found in each of the pyramids of Unas, Teti, and Pepi II.
[10] Maspero began publishing his findings in the Recueil des Travaux from 1882 and continued to be involved until 1886 in the excavations of the pyramid in which the texts had been found.
[15] Maspero published the first corpora of the text in 1894 in French under the title Les inscriptions des pyramides de Saqqarah.
Debris was cleared away from the pyramid, while research continued under the direction of Audran Labrousse [fr].
[23] The sacerdotal texts are ritual in nature, and were conducted by the lector priest addressing the deceased in the second person.
[29] The provisioning texts deal with the deceased taking command of his own food-supply, and demanding nourishment from the gods.
[30][31] The transition texts – otherwise known as the Sakhu or Glorifications[28] – are predominantly about the transformation of the deceased into an Akh,[28] and their ascent, mirroring the motion of the gods, into the sky.
[28] Apotropaic texts consist of short protective spells for warding off threats to the body and tomb.
[33][34][28] Due to the archaic style of writing, these texts are considered to be the oldest,[28] and are the most difficult to interpret.
[clarification needed] They contained many verbs such as "fly" and "leap", depicting the actions taken by the pharaohs to get to the afterlife.
[35] The spells delineate all of the ways the pharaoh could travel, including the use of ramps, stairs, ladders and, most importantly, flying.
[37] Many of the texts include accomplishments of the pharaoh as well as the things they did for the Egyptian people during the time of their rule.
These texts were used to both guide the pharaohs to the afterlife, but also to inform and assure the living that the soul made it to its final destination.
[48][49] The entry led into a downward sloping corridor, followed by a 'corridor-chamber' with three granite portcullises that guarded the entrance into the horizontal passage.
[49] With the exception of the walls immediately surrounding the sarcophagus, which were lined with alabaster and painted to resemble reed mats with a wood-frame enclosure, the remaining walls of the antechamber, burial chamber, and a section of the horizontal passage were covered with vertical columns of hieroglyphs that make up the Pyramid Texts.
This ceremony involved the Kher-Heb (the chief lector priest), along with assistants, opening the eyes and mouth of the dead while reciting prayers and spells.
[63] The Egyptian pyramids are made up of various corridors, tunnels, and rooms, each of which have differing significance and use during the burial and ritual processes.
[60] Texts were written and recited by priests in a very particular order, often starting in the Valley Temple and finishing in the Coffin or Pyramid Room.
Take your bread that rots not, your beer that sours not, Stand at the gates that bar the common people!
The hidden ones worship you, The great ones surround you, The watchers wait on you, Barley is threshed for you, Emmer is reaped for you, Your monthly feasts are made with it, Your half-month feasts are made with it, As ordered done for you by Geb, your father, Rise up, O Teti, you shall not die!
Utterances 273 and 274 are sometimes known as the "Cannibal Hymn", because it seems to be describing the king hunting and eating parts of the gods:[6] however, as Renouf pointed out when it was first published: As has been observed, the spell is echoing how the Goddess Nut (as the Sky) causing the stars to disappear at dawn is likened to a sow eating her offspring[68] so also is the King as the dawn sun.
Appearing first in the Pyramid of Unas at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, the Cannibal Hymn preserves an early royal butchery ritual in which the deceased king – assisted by the god Shezmu – slaughters, cooks and eats the gods as sacrificial bulls, thereby incorporating in himself their divine powers in order that he might negotiate his passage into the Afterlife and guarantee his transformation as a celestial divinity ruling in the heavens.
The style and format of the Cannibal Hymn are characteristic of the oral-recitational poetry of pharaonic Egypt, marked by allusive metaphor and the exploitation of wordplay and homophony in its verbal recreation of a butchery ritual.Apart from the burial of Unas, only the Pyramid of Teti displays the Cannibal Hymn.
