Egyptian funerary texts

[dtango]

We do not find any religious texts until the pyramid of last king of the 5th Dynasty, Unas. In spite of what the Egyptologists claim therefore, all of the prior pharaohs of Egypt, including Djoser, Sneferu, Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure did not seem to have any magical incantations guiding them to the "afterlife."

So when this idea popped into Egyptian consciousness is open to speculation but it seems very odd that the majority of the Old Kingdom did not act on it.

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You are quite right!
As regards the idea of soul there is evidence that it appeared at about 2400 BCE.
Thank God(!!), there are the Pyramid Texts. In there the term “ba”, traditionally translated as “soul,” occurs 59 times out of which only in two passages (definitively, with no doubt at all, in just one) the term occurs with the meaning of “soul.”

The “ba,” being a supervisor, is reported to be “above” the man undergoing judgment thus guarantying protection.
After judgment, when the man is considered a god he is also promoted to a “ba” (in various passages it is said to the man: “you are now a ba”, “you became a ba”) and so… the power of the “ba” is “all around him.”
The last stage of evolution that brought the “ba” from “around” to “inside” of the man was recorded for the first time in approximately 2300 BCE in the Pyramid of Pepi I.

Translation by Raymond Faulkner”:

O King, go, that you may be a spirit and have power as a god,
As the successor of Osiris;
You have your soul within you.

Translation by James Allen:

Ho, Pepi! You have gone that you may become akh and take control as a god,
as Osiris’s replacement.
You have your ba within you.

All 59 passages I have collected and presented in a study which unfortunately is in Greek. However, both the translations of Faulkner and Allen are cited in English and so much the hieroglyphic text as the transliteration are there and if you want to have an idea this link will take you directly to the pdf file. The first passage, of the Pyramid of Unas, appears on page 10.