Coffin Texts

Middle Kingdom coffins with their extensive programmes of decoration and inscription constitute a rich source for studying Egyptian mortuary conceptions. Over the last decades this material has been the subject of a number of detailed studies, including two typological studies (Willems 1988; Lapp 1993) and a number of monographic case studies of individual coffins (Willems 1996; Meyer-Dietrich 2001, 2006). This surge of interest has gone a long way towards elucidating the religious, and especially ritual, context of the coffins. Nonetheless, certain significant questions are still left open, so that for instance the exact relationship between coffin and ritual is understood rather differently by the two authors of the coffin cases studies cited. Similarly an object such as a coffin is open to a number of different understandings (e.g. as medium for image and writing, as space, as house, as inherently connected to – or even notionally part of – the dead body), some of which are still deserving of further exploration. This paper takes up some of the open questions and seeks to address them from a number of different perspectives, complementing traditional philological and iconographical approaches with ontological and material culture perspectives drawn from archaeology and anthropology.

The ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts form a corpus of ritual spells written on the inside of coffins from the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000-1650 BCE). The spells are part of a long Egyptian tradition of equipping the dead with ritual texts ensuring the transition from the state of a living human being to that of a deceased ancestor.

The Coffin Texts provide a rich material for studying ancient Egyptian conceptions of the body by providing insights into the underlying structure of the body as a whole and the proper function of individual parts of the body as seen by the ancient Egyptians.

Drawing on cognitive linguistics and phenomenological anthropology, Breathing Flesh presents an analysis of the conceptualisation of the human body and its individual parts in the Coffin Texts. Also discussed are the ritual conceptualisation and use of powerful substances such as ‘magic’, and the role of fertility and procreation in ancient Egyptian mortuary conceptions.

Introduction, table of contents and errata are available from Museum Tusculanum Press: http://www.mtp.hum.ku.dk/details.asp?eln=202870


Reviews
• PalArch: http://www.palarch.nl/wp-content/moje_j_2010_review_of_nyord_r_2009_breathing_flesh_carsten_niebuhr_institute.pdf
• The History Association: http://www.history.org.uk/resources/general_resource_3410_73.html
• Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 106 (2011), pp. 80-83: http://www.oldenbourg-link.com/toc/olzg/106/2"
• Lingua Aegyptia 19 (2011), pp. 375-386
• Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 101 (2011), pp. 501-506: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/volltexte/2016/2874
• Bibliotheca Orientalis 71/3-4 (2014), coll. 403-406: http://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=article&id=3062121&journal_code=BIOR

A recent review in this journal of my book Breathing Flesh provides the point of departure for a discussion of the possibility of approaching questions of conceptions of the body in ancient Egypt
drawing on conceptual frameworks derived from outside the field of Egyptology. Along the way, this contribution also touches upon broader questions of the ideal nature of constructive scholarly debate, especially when dealing with attempts to offer new interdisciplinary perspectives on heavily entrenched traditional Egyptological positions.

ABSTRACT: This lecture covers the First Intermediate Period (FIP), spanning Dynasties (7)/8 through early/mid-11 (ca. 2,200-2,040 BCE), but includes periodic discussion regarding the late Old Kingdom leading up to this period and the Middle Kingdom emerging from it.  The lecture begins with a summary of what we know about the decline of, albeit continuity of the (increasingly nominal) Memphite royal rule in, Egypt’s early First Intermediate Period (Dyns. 7-8), which can be considered part of the late Old Kingdom (e.g., King Ibi/Aba).  It proceeds with the transition from Dyn. 8-9 (including the nomarch Ankhtifi [southern Egypt]), and continues with the rise and establishment of the Herakleopolitan (northern kingdom) and Theban (southern kingdom), incorporating a summary of historical events, art, architecture, material culture, and other aspects (e.g., King Khui; Nomarch Intef; Montuhotep I [the founder]; Kings Intef I-III; Montuhotep II).  The lecture then furnishes selected selected contemporary (FIP) texts --and some later, early, key Middle Kingdom (propagandistic) texts-- to illustrate some trends and characteristics attested and alleged during this period (sometimes called a "Dark Age").  It gives an initial introduction to the roots and rise of the Osiris cult (at Abydos), the deity Osiris, and his nature and changing roles in the FIP through Middle Kingdom (and later).  In the concluding section, the lecture covers the main characteristics of mortuary customs and practices during the First Intermediate Period (and into the Middle Kingdom), including (1) regional variance in burials (e.g., furnishings and decoration), (2) a few known royal tomb forms (e.g., saff/row tombs; small pyramids), selected poor to elite tombs (e.g., pit graves; rock-cut; mastaba tombs), a rise in rural burial wealth (e.g., Qau-Mostagedda cemetery), regional art (e.g., new/different and poor to good quality tomb decoration; an emerging Theban art style), false door stelae and offering slabs, different scenes with tomb owners (e.g., banquet scene; couples; other), coffins, the Coffin Texts (including roots in the Pyramid Texts and new spells), and guide maps (to the afterlife), cartonnage mummy masks (new), human-headed canopic jars, ka-spirit statues and statuettes, amulets, jewelry, seals, soul houses, models (including illustrations of diverse types: FIP-Dyn.12), and paddle dolls.  The lecture concludes with a series of summary slides.  UPDATED: 28 March, 2023, adding bibliography, some new text, revised/edited text, and some re-formatting.

John H. Taylor, The British Museum, "Evidence for social patterning in the Theban coffins of Dinasty 25"

"As coffins can be assigned to particular periods and regions with increasing confidence, it becomes easier to examine not only diachronic changes, but also contemporaneous variation and to search for meaningful patterns therein. A person’s social status was strongly reflected in their funerary provision, and in the Third Intermediate Period, when private tombs were rarely conspicuous [...]"

Numerous royal and private tombs from all periods of ancient Egypt, complete with funerary equipment and inscriptions, give us access to what the Egyptians thought about the hereafter and how these thoughts changed over time. The present paper comments specifically on the "resurrection" of the god Osiris (which serves as a model for all human beings), the notion of the judgement of the dead, and the complexities of afterlife topography.

Concerning Ha, God of the Western Desert, one may pose the question, what kind of relationship he might have had with the territory associated with him, and how did this relationship influence the travelling attitudes of Egyptians at the time?
Investigating published graffiti from the Western Desert and the venerated deities of the oases situated there, one finds no references to Ha earlier than the Saite Period. Namely, Ha appears quite late in the textual citations of the region he personifies. Furthermore, this late appearance concurs with the first comments on his cult. The lack of sources referring to Ha probably not only suggests that the perception of deities of abstract conceptions differed from that of the gods possessing cultic veneration, but also indicates that Ha can hardly be associated with real, physical travel. Nevertheless, the god of the Western Desert very much gives the impression of being involved in a metaphysical journey throughout the desert of the afterlife.
I intend to ascertain the essential differences in the attitude of the ancient Egyptian traveller towards the deities while traversing the two realms. This new approach offers a deeper understanding regarding the nature of the god Ha.

In this remarkable PhD Thesis, published as a book by BAR [Maravelia 2006], as it was written by a Scholar who
combines both astronomical and Egyptological studies, the evolution of astronomical thought, as well as various astronomical
and cosmovisional ideas in pharaonic Egypt (c. 2800–1200 BC) were adequately examined, after the most important
religious texts (primarily Pyramid Texts (PT)1 and Coffin Texts (CT)2, and secondarily Book of the Dead (BD)). More specifically, the author examined the astronomical conceptions of the ancient Egyptians concerning the stars, the Sun, the Moon and the planets, as they are revealed in these funerary texts. Maravelia compared them to similar astronomical notions found in the Orphic Hymns; and finally, she compared them (mutatis mutandis)
with the necessary epistemological prudence to the modern scientific astronomical and cosmological conceptions. It is to be noted that the
author’s comparative study of the astronomical ideas of the Egyptians and the Orphics is complete, while her analysis of the Egyptian sources
is not exhaustive, because other researchers had already worked on this domain with considerable success; nevertheless, a statistical analysis
and a global comparative study of the corpora of PT and CT were presented in her book for the first time. The textual study of the Orphic
Hymns and the funerary texts of the Egyptians was conducted within the interdisciplinary framework of both Egyptology and Archaeoastronomy.
It showed that similar methods of textual analysis are very effective for dating ancient texts on the basis of their astronomical elements; it also offered much valuable information on the forma mentis and the astronomical ideas of the Egyptians of Antiquity.

This paper traces the use of a number of Egyptian terms expressing the concepts of "Kingship", "Rule", and "Monarchy" in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts, with a view to homing in on questions such as the appropriateness of current translations, the royal or non-royal origin of the texts, the much-discussed concept of "democratization" in the use of Egyptian funerary texts, and the role of mythical metaphor in expressing afterlife conceptions and beliefs.

The notion of Duat plays a major role in ancient Egyptian funerary beliefs. Yet, a single definition of this notion is impossible to achieve, as it underwent a process of evolution over thousands of years without ever designating just one unambiguous place at a time. In this context, an approach based on cognitive linguistics and on the significance of the determinatives accompanying the word Duat can be exploited to shed more light on this elusive concept. The focus will be here on the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts as well as the intermediary phase of transmission of the funerary literature during the period between the end of the Old Kingdom and the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/zaes-2018-0018

JARCE 51 (2015), 93-122

During recent University of Pennsylvania excavations in the tomb of Woseribre Senebkay at South Abydos, we discovered that the burial chamber incorporated a number of limestone blocks deriving from earlier monuments. Three of these inscribed blocks in particular still retain the images and offering texts belonging to a small group of high officials, including the Overseer of Fields, Dedtu. Analysis of the texts upon the blocks demonstrates that the named individuals probably all belonged to the same family, and that their careers spanned the mid-Thirteenth Dynasty. This paper examines the texts and images upon the reused blocks from the tomb of Senebkay in detail, along with other contemporary evidence, in order to ascertain the identities of the people pictured upon them, where the reused blocks originally came from, and of what types of buildings they may once have been part.

Among the transformation spells in the Coffin Texts, where the deceased is transformed into various mythological beings, is a smaller group dealing specifically with becoming the “scribe” (sš) or “archivist” (ı͗ry-mḏ3t) of various gods with the largest number of spells being connected to the goddess Hathor. Drawing on a particularly rich collection of such spells on a coffin in Basel not previously translated as well as similar texts published in de Buck’s Coffin Texts edition, this chapter examines the characteristic blend of ritual, mythological and ontological themes found in the texts, in order to elucidate the conceptual background of the notion of divine scribes. Translations of the spells for becoming a scribe of the gods and a typeset version of some of the ‘new’ spells are found in the appendices.

Spells 154‒160 of the Coffin Texts have long been known to form a unified composition since most of them promise the knowledge of sacred localities. The main purpose of these spells is, however, not to draw up a mental map of places of ritual import but to describe a more tangible yet still grandiose journey, the wanderings of the moon across time and space. After the introduction (spell 154) which explains the origins of the month, the separate texts represent the successive stages of the monthly cycle: the period of invisibility (spell 155), waxing (spell 156), events around the full moon (spell 157), waning (spell 158), the arrival of the last crescent to the eastern horizon (spell 159), and again the conjunction of the sun and the moon when a solar eclipse can occur (spell 160). The references to the moon in the texts are sometimes straightforward, while to grasp the lunar content of other passages a greater understanding of ancient Egyptian astronomical concepts is required. The spells present a hitherto unsuspected coherent account of lunar phenomena and can appropriately be dubbed the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Moon.

This paper aims at the exploration of the ritual dimension in the Pyramid Texts, the earliest instance known to humankind of substantial religious literature. The variegated nature of the textual constituents in the corpus has prevented Egyptologists from understanding in depth the complexities of the collection
and the original contexts in which these texts (rites) first emerged. The implementation of ritual theory to the corpus, particularly the syntax ritual approach, provides the scholars with an outstanding frame of analysis and interpretation of the corpus, its structure, and function. With the corpus anchored to the rules of ritual syntax, it is possible to expose its multiple layers of meaning for the deceased’s resurrection and salvation.

Este trabajo pretende explorar la dimensión ritual en los Textos de las Pirámides, el corpus de literatura religiosa extensa más antiguo de la humanidad. La naturaleza variada de sus componentes textuales ha impedido que los egiptólogos comprendan en profundidad las complejidades de la colección y los contextos
originales en los que estos textos (ritos) aparecieron. La aplicación de la teoría del ritual, principalmente la aproximación de la sintaxis ritual, ofrece a los investigadores un marco excelente de análisis e interpretación del corpus, su estructura y función. Sujeto a las reglas de la sintaxis ritual es posible exponer los múltiples niveles de significado en el corpus para la resurrección y salvación del difunto.

RASHED, The Four  Primeval Elements of Creation according to the Philosophy of Hermopolis. A new Interpretation of their Origin”, in D. Minacci and St. Quirke(eds.), Company of images: modelling the ancient Egyptian imaginary. World of the Middle Kingdom (2000-1500 BC), OLA 262 (2017), 377-394.
This is the final approval of the article, for citations, please check the OLA 262 printed version.

For the full article please contact the author.

This paper presents a new interpretation of the ritual of finger-numbering, described in three spells of the Coffin Texts. Explicative images of the count are proposed on the basis of two different descriptions of this test of competence, which the deceased must accomplish to obtain the ferryboat for the eastern sky. The ritual is based on two strictly connected symbolic meanings: one related to the injured eye of Horus; the other to its healing and fullness. Rhymes, puns, parallels, and a final picture puzzle, constitute layers of meaning to be unfolded.

A cluster of 37 tests largely employed to determine verbal Aktionsart is described, in order to provide a corpus-based approach with instruments of analysis. These tests are illustrated with 56 examples of several Ancient Egyptian verbs, different in Aktionsart, which occur in an extensive textual corpus, the Coffin Texts, dating back to circa 2000-1500 BCE. A systematic application of these tests upon the verb prj ‘go out, go up’, one of the most frequent in that corpus, is also proposed in order to display the relevant results of this analysis (22 examples are adduced for this verb). Finally, equivalence between the Egyptological transliteration and the IPA encoding, as well as a collection of the main literature relevant to these tests, are given in two appendices.

Beyond the verb classes usually admitted in the Egyptological literature (transitive verbs, quality verbs, motion verbs and other intransitive verbs) this study postulates two “transversal” types following criteria of valency and Aktionsart: the unlimited and the limited verbs.

ABSTRACT: This lecture aims at providing an overview of mortuary practices, customs, and beliefs during the Middle Kingdom, with a main focus on middle class to especially upper class tombs.  The lecture begins by providing a brief overview on the various basic types of Middle Kingdom elite tombs, such as mastaba tombs and rock-cut mastabas in flat areas and desert plateau tops, rock-cut tombs in the Nile Valley, and some group burial complexes on mound tops in the delta.  The lecture continues by furnishing an example of tomb chapels, their architectural components, fittings, decoration, decorative placement, various components, genres, and their significance and meaning, using the Dynasty 12 tomb of the nomarch (governor) Khnumhotep II as the main example, but adding further illustrations of ka-spirit statues, offering tables, and the Ancient Egyptian (biased) scribal views on various professions and industries in the Satire of Trades.  The last part of the lecture looks at burial chambers and their fittings, including sarcophagi, box coffins (including different styles, decoration and inscriptions, Coffin Texts, guide maps to the afterlife, etc.), anthropoid coffins, face masks, mummies, canopic jars and chests, funerary jewellery (i.e., with protective/ritual amulets), shabti figurines, statuettes, furnishings, adornment (non-ritual jewellery), cosmetic kits, games, professional and personal items (e.g., musical instruments; tool kits; hunting equipment; weaponry), models (e.g., weaponry; housing [i.e., soul houses; house model]; food; offering tables; Abydos pilgrimage boat [with a reference to tomb chapel decoration]).  The lecture ends with a series of summary text slides. UPDATED: 15 April 2023: Adding more slides/images, editing/revising, re-formatting, and adding in a section on poorer burials (Thebes; Qau; Abydos; Buhen), plus a selected bibliography at the end.

This paper comes from a project dealing with classification in Egyptian funerary texts. Three examples are studied, with a common-point justifying their choice: they are toponyms. More, they all are connected to the Osirian myth, namely the death and post mortem regeneration of the god.
The major aim was to analyse the various writings of these names, with a focus on their classifiers and the information they give about their place in the Egyptian mind. Because of the jointly presence of “earthly” and “celestial” classifiers, it was particularly interesting to study the excerpts where they appear in order to understand what could have been the reasons that led scribes to classify this way the considered toponyms.
The results show that toponyms were treated as common names and could be accompanied by a range of classifiers including these places in several realms at the same time, both in the sky and under it, in everyday life as well as in hereafter.
This study is important for me because it is one of my first (and main) publications after Ph.D. defense. More, its topic and conclusions are fully inscribed in the specialities I’m interested in: philology and classifier studies.

ABSTRACT: This lecture examines mid-late Dynasty 11, starting with Montuhotep II, the conflict with the rival northern kingdom (the Herakleopolitans), and reunification.  The lecture poses and attempts to address various questions: Why did the Theban kingdom feel the need to reunite all of Egypt? (i.e., a return to glory days of ED-OK Egypt? Ancestral linkage to OK? Abydos?); How did the Theban kingdom (i.e., Montuhotep II) reunify all Egypt? ca.2040 BC?; What territories did the northern enemy kingdom control? Middle Egypt only?; What evidence is used to recreate this process of re-unification? Texts? Archaeology?; Having re-unified all Egypt, what else did Montuhotep II do, if at all, to recreate/draw upon the “Old Kingdom”?; (i.e., subduing frontier peoples; grand building projects; adopting Old Kingdom art forms); How did Montuhotep II reward his followers? loyal officials within Southern Egypt?; How did Montuhotep II treat the defeated enemy ruler(s) & northern governors?; What evidence do we have for preferential treatment of Southern Egyptians?; What major innovation occurs regarding Montuhotep II’s mortuary complex? (i.e., How is it similar to and dissimilar to Old Kingdom pyramid complexes?); What evidence do we have for the last rulers of Dynasty 11? Montuhotep III-IV?; How does Dynasty 11 end? Why does it disintegrate? No heir? Civil war? Etc.; What important data can we glean from the surviving Middle Kingdom literary sources? (i.e., Using diverse textual sources appropriately as “historical sources”).  The Heqanakht papers/letters provide a reference to famine and cannibalism (to the south of Thebes), and also daily life intrigues, household administration, and farming practices in southern Egypt. The lecture also provides an example of some Coffin texts using the tomb of Nakht-Ankh, and summarizes important pieces of Middle Kingdom literature, with a focus on two pieces for student reading (e.g., Tale of the Eloquent Peasant [i.e., regional trade; justice; law]; Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor [sailing; Red Sea; Punt]). UPDATED: April 7, 2023: This lecture was edited, reformatted in some areas, and had a few new slides added (especially in a selected bibliography at the end).

La función performativa de los Textos de las Pirámides ha sido señalada en numerosos trabajos que tratan del papel ritual y mágico de este corpus para beneficio del difunto y su travesía al Más Allá. Sin embargo, no existen estudios sobre la naturaleza ilocucionaria de los textos que componen el corpus, de su lenguaje y de las transformaciones que experimenta en los diversos contextos socio-culturales del Reino Antiguo y el Reino Medio. En esta contribución examino este corpus a la luz de diversas teorías lingüísticas sobre la performatividad, la estructura y la semántica de los rituales. Asimismo, se hace hincapié en la emergencia de un corpus de estas características en el antiguo Egipto como resultado de un proceso de entextualización de materiales orales previos.

The second issue of the journal of the Egyptian Museum in Turin,
Rivista del Museo Egizio 2 (2018), is now online at
<https://rivista.museoegizio.it/>
with the following contributions:

- T. Christiansen, “Two Titles for the Book of the Dead (P. Turin Cat.
1828/1–2)”

- K. Gabler and D. Soliman “P. Turin Provv. 3581: An Eighteenth Dynasty
Letter from the Valley of the Queens in Context”

- A.-K. Gill, “It Looks Like a Hypocephalus, but It Is Not: Some
Extraordinary Papyrus Fragments in the Museo Egizio (Provv. 6133)”

- T. Montonati, “Two Ancient Egyptian Models in the Historical
Photographic Archive of the Museo Egizio, Turin”

- S. Töpfer, “The Turin Papyrus Online Platform (TPOP): An Introduction”

Los Hnsktyw son unos espíritus con el cabello trenzado que habitan en el cielo según los Textos de las Pirámides y los Textos de los Ataúdes. Son una de las designaciones de los Hijos de Horus y sus funciones siempre van a estar relacionadas con los difuntos, ayudándolos a alcanzar las Estrellas Imperecederas que se sitúan en el lado oriental del cielo, llevando ante ellos la barca celestial hasta llegar a convertirse en los guardianes de los vasos canopos. El presente trabajo realizará un estudio morfológico y textual de estos personajes para conocerlos mejor.

En los textos mortuorios del antiguo Egipto, el difunto toma la forma de distintas entidades (animales, plantas y otros elementos de la naturaleza, y también dioses) para superar peligros en el más allá. En la fórmula 49 de los Textos de los Ataúdes, adopta la sorprendente forma de una pulga. Hasta la fecha, sólo conocemos copia de esta fórmula en seis ataúdes procedentes de Barsha, la necrópolis de la antigua Hermópolis. Sin olvidar la dificultad de comprensión que plantean estos textos, la fórmula 49 de los Textos de los Ataúdes parece indicar que el difunto, identificado con Osiris, se convierte en pulga para escapar de unos enemigos que lo atacan durante la noche.

"Part II of a paper discussing the written forms of II.red in Coffin Texts adduced by Wolfgang Schenkel in support of his hypothesis of two morphologically distinct forms of the sDm.n=f. Also examined are the case of ult.n non-II.red, which had only a secondary role in Schenkel’s original proposal, and the case of the high-frequency verb wnn, which is special. The conclusion is that none of these written forms supports the hypothesis of two distinct forms of the sDm.n=f, just as none contradicts it.

In the course of the argument, various issues of  broader interest are touched upon: the representation of verbal morphology in writing, the assignment of individual verbs to inflectional classes (notably ngigi/ngg “cackle,” originally a N-stem based on an onomatopoietic segment), a possible phenomenon of samdhi in some constructions of wnn, and aspects of the dynamics of textual variation in Coffin Texts (notably the extraordinarily complex case afforded by CT I 73c-74f; Spell 24)."

Rethinking the Visual Aesthetics of Ancient Egyptian Writing (UCL Institute of Archaeology and University of California, Berkeley, 18–20 November 2021)

This paper outlines how the Coffin Text composition commonly known as the Book of Two Ways employs visual elements and procedures that straddle the graphic categories of 'writing' and 'picturing'. Composite figures, which amalgamate two or more images to form new, independent forms, serve as case studies. Such figures are usually treated as ‘hieroglyphic’ assemblages from whose elements chiefly symbolic 'meanings' may be extracted. Such iconographic approaches, dominant in Egyptology, do not fully account for context-specific factors that govern the design of composite figures, which could serve functions apart from expressing meanings. Notable is their ontological dimension, specifically their capacity for enacting or manifesting agentive subjects within ritual settings. A focus on meaning may also explain why examples of composite figures in the hieroglyphic script have received only limited treatment, ranging from brief descriptive works to analyses of specific formal types.

Certain figural representations in the Book of Two Ways arguably borrowed images more common in writing, while others may reconfigure groups of script elements as single, non-linguistic pictures while employing similar graphic syntax. Yet other figures are constituted by writing that is organized and calibrated in ways that allow texts, rather than signs, to function as pictures. These phenomena may arise from the status of the Book of Two Ways as a compilation of originally oral utterances, whose visual representation acquired more strongly illustrative components over time. They problematize the traditional dichotomy between writing and image, but in ways that provoke reassessment of their parameters as graphic marking practices—to borrow the terminology of James Elkins—rather than suggesting that the categorical distinction should be rejected.

Publication of the Middle Kingdom red granite sarcophagus in Florence, Egyptian Museum inv. n. 2181, belonging to Amenemhet-seneb (ex coll. Anastasi). The owner, a royal architect, shows a series of interesting and 'archaizing' titles. Main text: 'pyramidion spell'. The cartouches of Senwosret II are incised on the sarcophagus, but it looks like a 'true copy' of the anonymous one found inside the Dahshour pyramid of Amenemhet III.
(§ 2 by Sergio Bosticco; tavv. 3-8: drawings by Grazia Ugolini, SBAT)