Pyramid Texts (Astronomical)

Definition

The Pyramid Texts are the oldest known body of Egyptian religious writing, carved on the inner walls of royal pyramids from the end of the 5th Dynasty (Wenis, around 2320 BCE) through the 6th Dynasty — Pepi I, Merenre, Pepi II — and into the queens' pyramids. There are about seven hundred and fifty "Utterances," arranging the pharaoh's journey and rebirth after death. They are full of sky and cosmos: Atum the creator god, Nut as the arch of the sky, Sah (Orion), Sopdet (Sirius), the Imperishable Stars (jxmw-skjw), and the iron gates of the starry heaven.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat the Pyramid Texts as the foundational record of Old Kingdom sky-religion — the seedbed from which every later Egyptian doctrine joining the heavens to religion descends. Belmonte and Lull point to Utterances PT 302, PT 441, and PT 520 as the canonical statements of the Imperishable-Stars doctrine. The corpus also supplies the Sah-Sopdet "astral parents" framework — the dead king reborn as the Morning Star — and Krauss's reading of the "channel of Kha" as the ecliptic.

In Practice

Astrologers and historians of astronomy turn to the Pyramid Texts for the earliest surviving statement of the stellar afterlife — the idea that the dead king joins the stars — for the identification of the never-setting circumpolar stars as the immortals, and for the picture of Sopdet (Sirius) as cosmic mother that anchors the Sothic cycle and the Egyptian civil calendar. The corpus is the main source for Old Kingdom decan cosmology, later expanded in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts and the New Kingdom astronomical ceilings, and it supplies the native Egyptian background against which the decan-and-zodiac blend of the Dendera Zodiac is read.

Historical Origin

The earliest inscribed copies appear in the pyramid of Wenis (Unas) at Saqqara at the close of the 5th Dynasty, around 2320 BCE; later copies expand the corpus through the 6th Dynasty pyramids of Pepi I, Merenre, and Pepi II, and into the queens' pyramids of Neith and Iput II. The standard modern editions are R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford, 1969 — a copyrighted modern English translation), and James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (SBL, 2005; 2nd ed. 2015 — copyrighted). The 1874 Renouf English translation is in the public domain.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading