Egyptian funerary texts

[dtango]

It's an endless loop...lol.

More of an endless poop. It's the human centipyramid.

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I am disappointed!
I was expecting you to say that all this information you had from your classes at the university.

More to the point, though, I seem to recall that the earliest attribution of a real afterlife was only to the pharaoh who became one of the stars.

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It all seems complicated because we do not respect the texts as we should.
The texts written in the Pyramids are not the work of the priesthood (the funerary texts in general were not inspired by the priests, or some theologians or philosophers), the texts were not composed for the first time there, into the chambers and corridors of the Pyramids. They are edited copies of some archaic originals on which the oral tradition was recorded.
The Pyramid texts, apart from the Cannibal Hymn, are much softer than the Coffin Texts that followed because they were prepared for the king and it should not be advertised that the king too was considered a subhuman creature before judgment.

The stars you are mentioning are priestly additions. They present the king to ascend to the sky by walking on paths of light but they also threaten with hunger any god who will refuse to set the ladder in order for the king to climb to the heavens (the ladder by which the gods ascended originally).

My point, I guess, is that it is not a static concept. It evolved....much as all religions evolve... but Egypt did so over a very long period of time. The best you can probably do is take a snapshot of what they believed in any given era and look for ancestors and descendants of that belief.

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I quite agree and I do have a snapshot for you of the era of the Pyramid Texts.
It is the very interesting and very revealing story of a single word.
The word is “qbHw” and it means “ The land of cool waters”. It is the land where the gods live because in a passage we read “Oh you god who live in qbHw”.

The word consists of the four phonograms qbHw which are followed by four determinative signs: A water pot with water running from it, three zigzag lines (the sign for water), a bird that lives in rivers and lakes and an ideogram depicting sandy hill-country over edge of green cultivation.

When it was said that the gods ascended to the skies, the name of their home place was still known to the people as “qbHw.” The priests removed the last sign, that of the sandy hills, and substituted it with the sign for the sky!!
Clever guys, no?

What happens today?
Faulkner translates “qbHw” as “Firmament” and Allen as “Cool Waters.”!!

The scholars, dear friends Shell-B, Rhythm and Epimethean, do not know what the funerary texts are about.

[Epimethean]

"The scholars, dear friends Shell-B, Rhythm and Epimethean, do not know what the funerary texts are about."

And you, sir, do not know what temporal context is.

[Minimalist]

It all seems complicated because we do not respect the texts as we should.

That might be simply because our readings of them are uncertain.

The texts written in the Pyramids are not the work of the priesthood (the funerary texts in general were not inspired by the priests, or some theologians or philosophers), the texts were not composed for the first time there, into the chambers and corridors of the Pyramids. They are edited copies of some archaic originals on which the oral tradition was recorded.

That's speculation, though. For all we know these things existed from the pre-dynastic days as oral traditions that were maintained by the priest class as a sort of sacred knowledge before they were written down. There are other examples of this in history. The Zoroastrian Avesta dates from the Sassanid period but we know that Cyrus and his gang were Zoroastrians centuries earlier. Even the so-called Old Testament does not exist in written form prior to the Greek Septuagint. Priests have a vested interest in keeping sacred knowledge "secret." Helps them maintain their power over the dolts.

The "Mystery Cults" of the first century AD were also not dependent on "scriptures" but rather on knowledge transmitted from masters to apprentices.

We're unlikely to ever really know what happened in the pre and early dynastic periods in Egypt.

[dtango]

And you, sir, do not know what temporal context is.

I would have expected you to say that this and that conclusion in my theory contradict the principle, if a principle it is, of the temporal context. It is not only temporal context that I do not know of. There are lot of other things that I am unaware of.
Some of the translations of the passages from the Yasnas that follow are quite unacceptable, if not silly. Can you tell me whether ignorance of temporal context is involved?

There are other examples of this in history. The Zoroastrian Avesta dates from the Sassanid period but we know that Cyrus and his gang were Zoroastrians centuries earlier.

I am working on an article about the “Great Mother” and there I came across the term “cow” as it occurs in avestan yasnas.
“Cow” and more often “Wild Cow” is the name of the woman who, according to the archaic texts, gave birth to humans and thus the term means “Mother.”
(The “Bull” was the erotic partner of the Mother for at that time the women were producing offspring only by means of the sexual act. Bull, of course, means god and the horns of the bull are the symbol of the god).

The treatment of the term “cow” by some translators suffices to explain the reason for our understanding of the ancient people being so pure. How can we learn about them when we trust the translators who render useless their writings ?

Yasna 29.1

29.1 The cow's soul (geus uruua) lamented to you, [the gods]: "For whom did you create me? Who fashioned me? Cruelty, oppression, bloodlust, rage, and violence have fettered me,[And] there is no herdsman for me other than you. Therefore, you must all show me [the way to] good pastures."

geus = noun genitive, singular feminine (nominative: gao = cow)
uruua = noun nominative, singular masculine (uruuan = soul, self )

29.1 Unto you wailed the Ox-soul, "For whom did ye fashion me?

29.1 Unto you (O Ahura and Asha!) the Soul of the Kine (our sacred herds and folk) cried aloud: For whom did ye create me, and by whom did ye fashion me?

Yasna 29.5

29.5 [Zarathustra: And] so, then, do we two -- my soul and the fertile cow's (geusca. aziia) -- devote ourselves with zeal, with hands stretched out to the Lord, So [that] we may dispose the Wise One to [answer our] inquiries. Is there no prospect for the cattle-breeder living justly among the Possessors of the Lie?"

geus–ca, ca = conjunction “and”
aziia = adjective, genitive singular feminine ( azi = fertile)

29.5 (The Ox-Creator) "To Ahura with outspread hands we twain would pray, my soul and that of the pregnant cow, so that we twain urge Mazda with entreaties.

29.5 Therefore it is that we both, my soul and (the soul) of the mother Kine, (are) making our supplications for the two worlds to Ahura, and with hands stretched out in entreaty,

What do you think?

[Minimalist]

Two things:

1. The use of herding type analogies is not ( or should not ) be a surprise. The steppes gave rise to herding cultures and the Iranians were one of them. Even in the OT story of Cain and Abel we see the early conflict between herders and farmers reflected when 'god' graciously accepts Abel's animal sacrifice and tells Cain to go fuck himself. The murderous Cain whacks his holy brother and is sent to live in (gasp) a city!
The imagery of the story is pretty clear to any except die hard fundie morons who think this shit is real.

2- You raise a good point about the possible use of idiomatic expressions. Without a real context of the language how would we know how to interpret the words? In English when we read the term "beating around the bush" we know that it means to equivocate but try to put yourself in the position of a translator who has never seen the phrase before and comes across it. It might be a tad confusing!

[dtango]

You raise a good point about the possible use of idiomatic expressions. Without a real context of the language how would we know how to interpret the words? In English when we read the term "beating around the bush" we know that it means to equivocate but try to put yourself in the position of a translator who has never seen the phrase before and comes across it. It might be a tad confusing!

Ιdiomatic axpressions do present a problem but they cannot harm an entire text.
Key words translated faulty can do real harm.
Especially with the term “cow” I know cases where there is no excuse for the translator.

In the epic of Gilgamesh Enkidu addresses Gilgamesh and says the following:

Translated by Alexander Heidel

31. “As one unique (among men) thy mother,
32. The wild cow of the encloses
33. Ninsunna.
34. Did bear thee”

Translated by E.A.Speiser

31. “As one alone thy mother
32. Bore thee,
33. The wild cow of the steer-folds
34. Ninsunna! (II, vi, )

Gilgamesh is god by two thirds and therefore his mother has nothing to do with steer-folds though she has to do with enclosures (The Mother-wombs who were producing gods, semi-gods and men were kept in enclosures).

And then, the “Shepherds” are the gods. Shepherds of people are meant, not shepherds of sheep.
Gilgamesh is half-god, he is called Shepherd of the town of Uruk, and he is the “Bull” of his flock because he is raping all the women of the city (as instructed by the gods)!

“Bull”, “Cow”, “Calf”, “Shepherd”, “Ram” are names used as titles or epithets of people and should be used in the translations only if the reader has been informed in advance of their meaning, but as you see above even Speiser is reluctant to make the correction (steer-folds I understand that have to do only with animals. Am I right?)

In the Egyptian texts there are two kinds of “Wild Cows.” One is the natural mother (human) and the other is the foster mother (goddess). The word “smAt,” meaning “Wild Cow,” when refers to the human one is determined by the ideogram of the cow and sometimes is followed by the word “Hmt” meaning “woman” (Wild Cow woman) but when the divine mother is meant the determinative of the cow is followed by the determinative for the god.

Still, the translators cannot bring themselves to translate “smAt Hmt” as “Wild cow woman.” The best they can do is “Female Wild Cow”. You understand that in this way is no wonder that the texts are not so popular.

[dtango]

This post is a tribute to HouseofCantor’s appreciation of Set.

Plutarch in his “On Isis and Osiris” writes in section 371B:

And the name "Set," by which they call Typhon, (“Tbn”) denotes this: it means "the overmastering" and "overpowering," and it means in very many instances "turning back," and again "overpassing." Some say that one of the companions of Typhon was Bebon (“bibi”), but Manetho says that Bebon was still another name by which Typhon was called. The name signifies "restraint" or "hindrance," as much as to say that, when things are going along in a proper way and making rapid progress towards the right end, the power of Typhon obstructs them.

The opening passage of Chapter 93 of the Book of the Dead apart from being unique in the information it conveys, reveals the identity of Bebon and, as a consequence, the identity of Set. The text is found in the Papyrus of Any.

Said Any: “O phallus of Re, this which turned aside and destroyed the abnormalities responsible for the features of the primitive ones which were created by Bebon in the course of millions of years.”

Set is responsible for the creation of the primitives (in the course of millions of years!) whose abnormalities the pure and perfect god Ra came to correct by means of his phallus!!

Of course, the above translation cannot be found among the translations approved by the …Academia, for this reason I am supplying below the transliteration of the hieroglyphic text with all the necessary information regarding those words that the translators failed to translate correctly.

The symbol of Set is an unnatural animal that never existed:



The Egyptologist Maria Carmela Betró writes:

The name of the god whom the Egyptians associated with confusion and cosmic and social disorder is often expressed by the hieroglyph of a god with a human body and an animal’s head. This is the famous animal of Seth, itself a writing of the name, about whose zoological identity many theories have been put forward: ass, antelope, giraffe, okapi, and so on. It seems more probable that the animal is chimerical, a member of the fabled desert fauna.
The zoomorphic variant is encountered frequently as determinative to a broad series of words, all connected to the idea of suffering, violence, and perturbation, including the atmospheric: even the words for tempest, rare occurrences in the stable Egyptian climate, carry this determinative.

There is one more unnatural creature present in the hieroglyphic signs. It is the lapwing bird, the symbol of the plebs, of the lower class common people, which is sometimes depicted with its wings twisted round one another. The common people are regarded primitive and for this reason unnatural. The companions or confederates or accomplishes of Set are the ones found to be subhuman creatures at their judgment, deemed animals and killed.

A passage in the same papyrus (of Any) that belongs to the 18th Chapter of the Book of the Dead reads:

When the confederates of Set come and change their forms into animals, they are slain in the presence of these gods as they are being smitten down and their blood flows among them. These things are caused by the judges who are in the city of Busiris.

Here follows the transliteration of the passage regarding the… omnipotent phallus of Ra

“j”… O
“Hnnw”…phallus
“nwy”…this
“n”… of
“ra”…Ra
“nwd”…turned aside
“Hdi”…destroyed
“=f”…he
“Xnnw”…abnormalities. (In Faulkner’s dictionary this word is rendered as “tumult”, “uproar”, in the German dictionary is found as “troublemaker”, “quarrelsome” and when determined by the animal of Set as “disturbance”, “disruption”, “disorder”, “revolt”, “rebellion”)
“xpr”…created
“xt”…traits, features (this word is translated as “things”, “matters”, “affairs” but also –possibly originally- means “traits”, “features” because there are: traits negative, xt Dwt, which the gods do not like, xt m nw bwt nTrw, traits that the gods detest, xt n xftyw nw nb r Dr traits of the enemies of the Lord of All, xt it =f wsir, traits of his father Osiris. What gods detest in those they kill it is not their things, matters or affairs but their features, their bodily traits).
”nnw”…primitive, primordial (this word is determined by an ideogram depicting a tired, slothful man and thus it is translated as “weary”, “tired”, “exhausted”, "inert," but according to the Myth of Creation “nnw” are called the people who were first created.
The Lord of All says:“Ts =j im =sn m nw m nnw”, I created (brought together) those in there in the primordial waters as nnw)
”m”… during
“HH”…thousand [of years]
”m” …by
”bibi”…Bebon

At the time of W.Budge the lexicography was poor but, as you will realize, if the meanings of certain words are changed his rendering can be fully accepted. It is a word for word translation:

“Hail phallus of Re advancing he destroyeth opposition (Xnnw). Come into existence things (xt) inert (nnw) during millions of years from the god Baba.

R.O.Faulkner’s translation / interpretation reads:

“O you phallus of Re, this which is injured by uproar, whose inertness came into being through Babai”

The above …interpretation appears in Faulkner’s translation of the “Book of the Dead” which bears the signature of the University of Texas, published in cooperation with British Museum Press.

A beautiful Anglo American blunder!

[Epimethean]

Syncretism, be our savior!

Conflation our king!

You are using Plutarch as a source for myth-blending? Holy shit. Score one for mystery religion loving, immortal soul positing fabricators of connections between things. Plutarch is your man!

[The Grand Nudger]

1. The use of herding type analogies is not ( or should not ) be a surprise. The steppes gave rise to herding cultures and the Iranians were one of them. Even in the OT story of Cain and Abel we see the early conflict between herders and farmers reflected when 'god' graciously accepts Abel's animal sacrifice and tells Cain to go fuck himself. The murderous Cain whacks his holy brother and is sent to live in (gasp) a city!

That's actually one of my favorite biblical narratives. Some interpretations of the names Cain and Abel actually amount to "Farmer" and "Shepherd" literally. Making the narrative less a veiled metaphor and more an overt op-ed piece.

"God likes our way of life, and finds the city dwellers to be lacking." That's a notion that survives to this very day, though amusingly it's the farmers vs the city dwellers now, as the two have diverged and mobile herds are a thing of the past.

My favorite part of that narrative though is Cains response when asked where his brother was "Am I my brothers keeper?". Well, how should he know where his brother was? His brother was not present and no one had ever died at this point (according to the narrative). He wasn't being evasive, he was being honest..lol. This narrative has so much to say about how the culture viewed it's surroundings, itself, and others. Until someone decides to take it literally, then it's just a story. Which is honestly a shame, in my opinion.

[Epimethean]

Ah, ah, ah. Shepherd, cow, man, hamburger.