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Introduction A. Articulation of the Problem Beginning About Two INTRODUCTION To indicate what is at stake, we can ask one simple question as an example: limited to the text alone and without a guiding set of directions, how would we read Joyce’s Ulysses if it were not entitled Ulysses? Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, p. 2 A. Articulation of the Problem Beginning about two centuries before the end of ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom, hieroglyphic religious texts were inscribed upon the interior walls of the pyramid tombs of kings and queens. The first king whose subterranean crypt was decorated in this way was named Unas, and his last year of reign was about 2345 bce. His pyramid complex and those of his successors were built in the great necropolis of Saqqara, which had been the favored place for royal burials already for three centuries. Egypt’s capital, Memphis, sat below the desert necropolis on the Nile, where the narrow Nile Valley opened up to the broad expanses of the Delta, Lower Egypt. The texts were symbolically connected with the afterlife state of the tomb’s occupant. The expectation was that he would become an Akh, a transfigured ‘spirit,’ and the texts celebrated the present and future achievement of that condition. The corpus consists of just over nine hundred compositions of varying lengths. None of the pyramids contains all of them, and no two pyramids preserve exactly the same texts.1 Today commonly called ‘Pyramid Texts’ after the title of Kurt Sethe’s edition of texts in the kingly pyramids,2 this corpus is the oldest substantial body of religious texts from ancient Egypt,3 and in the world. The practice inaugurated by Unas was carried forward by four of his immediate successors. The last set of texts from the earliest phase of the tradition is attested at the splendid pyramid complex of King Pepi II, who died around 2184. So all told that earliest phase lasted some 160 years. The historical meaning of the Pyramid Texts must concern their relationship to what came after. These texts, first appearing in the Old Kingdom, would fitfully resurface in later tombs and on papyri over the course of the next two millennia. The last attestations are from Roman times,4 with their disappearance more or less contemporary with the adoption of Christianity. The hallmark of this long-lived tradition is the Book of the Dead from the New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1069 bce). Often more descriptive of a type of text than a specific kind 1 For example, the pyramid of Unas, the first, contains about two hundred and thirty texts, whereas the pyra- mid of Pepi II, the last in the uninterrupted tradition, has about six hundred and seventy-five. Most of Unas’s texts appear again in the pyramid of Pepi II, but sixty-four of them do not. 2 Sethe 1908–1922 is the foundational text edition, and see his p. v, for the appellation. For a comprehensive bibliography of publications of Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts since then, see J. Allen 2005, pp. 419–420, and add Berger-el Naggar and Fraisse 2008, pp. 1–27, Mathieu 2005, pp. 129–138, and idem 2008, pp. 281–291. 3 There are older religious texts from ancient Egypt, beginning with fragmentary temple blocks from Helio- polis dated to Djoser (see Kahl et al. 1995, p. 116 [ Ne/He/4] = Urk I 154, 2–8), and there is a fragmentary Thirteenth Dynasty papyrus (pRamesseum E) bearing what, according to the report of Gardiner 1955, p. 17, Jaroslav erný believed might be the text to a funeral ritual dating back to Third Dynasty. But neither of these documents represents a collection of texts. 4 It appears that the custom of supplying the dead with mortuary texts ended in the late Second or early Third Century ce; see Coenen 2001, p. 71. 2 introduction of document, ‘Book of the Dead’ is the term for the sorts of mortuary5 literature found on certain papyri from that time, typically found buried with the mummy. Less than 200 texts belong to the New Kingdom stage. Some of the New Kingdom texts have no known, verbatim antecedents, a few can be traced back to the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts, and some can be traced back to texts first emerging in the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2055–1650).6 Most mortuary texts from then are attested on coffins, and for this reason the texts new to the period are referred to as ‘Coffin Texts.’7 The evidently newer texts were combined with over 400 Pyramid Texts to make a total repertoire of about 1,600 mortuary texts for the middle phase of the tradition. The Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts constitute their hereditary precursor.8 The transmission of Pyramid Texts alongside Coffin Texts in the Middle Kingdom9 shows their affinity; they belong to a body of discourse the texts of which were often put in proximity to the corpse. Of about one hundred seventy-seven Middle Kingdom sources indexed by Leonard Lesko,10 12% bear only Pyramid Texts, 49% bear only Coffin Texts, and 39% have both. Transcending the bounds of any single source, the Pyramid Texts are the primordial ancestor of the ancient Egyptian mortuary literature tradition: the end of the Old Kingdom saw the tradition’s genesis. Viewing the mortuary literature tradition in terms of growth conditions the questions asked about it. To situate the Pyramid Texts within the history of the tradition, the similarities and differences with the later material must be determined. To do that, it is necessary to know the salient attributes of the texts from each stage. The notion of regularities of attributes involves the idea of types. Cross-referenced against time, knowledge of types is necessary to configure the Pyramid Texts in terms of what comes after the Old Kingdom. But to see how they were produced—the meaning of their origin as such—then their local context of production must be also known, and that means their roles in society. The problems of typology and role are, in effect, parallel to those tackled by form-critical approaches to biblical literature, whereby texts are classified according to style and content and seen to have occupied various settings in life (Sitze im Leben).11 But the character of the Egyptian material is quite different, and form criticism has itself been an object of critique.12 For instance, one dimension left out of Hermann Gunkel’s seminal form-critical research in the Psalter was the study of the arrangement of texts.13 As to the Egyptian material, exami- nation of their arrangement is crucial—not merely in determining editorial principles, but 5 The present work distinguishes between funerary, “objects, texts, and practices relating to the funeral per- formed on the day of burial,” and mortuary, “objects, texts, and practices relating to the dead.” Compare the similar distinction made by Assmann 1990, pp. 1–2 n. 2; Willems 2001, p. 254; and Pardee 2002, pp. 4 and 8 with n. 5 (the last in respect to Ugaritic texts). By this distinction, the funerary is a subset of the mortuary. 6 On the relationship and transition between the New and Middle Kingdom stages of mortuary literature, see Hays and Schenck 2007, p. 105; Gestermann 2006, pp. 107–110 and 112; Grajetzki 2006, pp. 212–214; Lapp 1997, p. 56; Parkinson and Quirke 1992, pp. 47–48; and Lapp 1986a, pp. 144–145. 7 On the origin of this term, see Hays 2011, pp. 116–118. 8 It had once been held that Pyramid Texts were to be sharply distinguished from mortuary texts from the Middle Kingdom, the Coffin Texts; see seminally Breasted 1933, p. 152, and similarly M. Smith 2009a, Willems 1988, p. 248, and Barguet 1986, pp. 18–19. However, the affinities between the two stages are now more often acknowledged; see Willems, f.c.; J. Allen 2005, p. 1; idem 1988a, p. 40; Hays 2004, p. 200 with n. 178; Mathieu 2004, pp. 247–262; Jürgens 1995, p. 85; Bickel 1994, p. 12; Assmann 2001b, p. 334. 9 Many of the Middle Kingdom exemplars of Pyramid Texts are published in J. Allen 2006. 10 The following percentages were calculated from the data itemized by Lesko 1979. 11 For an exposition of the form-critical method, see Koch 1969, pp. 5, 16, and 27. For its original expression, see Gunkel 1928–1933, esp. §1, 8. 12 For recent criticism of Gunkel’s methodology, see Campbell 2003, pp. 15–23, where, however, he goes on to argue for the validity of its reformed and contemporary descendant. 13 See G. Wilson 1985, p. 2, with further references at Gillingham 1994, pp. 233–237..
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