HAYS, 2011 Democratisation

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10

Te death of the Democratisation of the Afterlife

Harold M Hays

So much has been written against the theory of the democ-ratisation of the afterlife that it may be deemed obsoleteEven two encyclopaedia entries have been prepared whichsurvey the major objections against it de1047297nitively declaring

that the events which it supposes did not take place1

Tisdevelopment speaks to just how acceptable its refutationshould be by now Challenges to the theory began appear-ing in earnest a decade and a half ago2 spurred on in part

1 See M Smith lsquoDemocratization of the Afterlifersquo in J Dielemanand W Wendrich (eds) UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (Los

Angele s 2009 http repositoriescdl ibo rgnelcuee1147 ac-cessed 562009) and H Willems lsquoDie Frage der sogenanntenldquoDemokratisierung des Jenseitsglaubensrdquo vom spaumlten Alten Reich biszur Zweiten Zwischenzeitrsquo to appear in J Assmann H Roeder (eds)Handbuch der altaumlgyptischen Religion (Handbuch der OrientalistikLeiden forthcoming) I heartily thank the latter for graciously provid-

ing me with a draft copy of this crucial work2 P Juumlrgens Grundlinien einer Uumlberlieferungsgeschichte der altaumlgypti-schen Sargtexte (GOumlF IV Reihe Aumlgypten 31 Wiesbaden 1995) 86D P Silverman lsquoTe Nature of Egyptian Kingshiprsquo in D OrsquoConnorand D P Silverman (eds) Ancient Egyptian Kingship (PdAuml 9 Leiden1995) 80ndash82 id lsquoCoffin exts from Bersheh Kom el Hisn andMendesrsquo in H Willems (ed) Te World of the Coffin exts (Leiden1996) 140ndash141 K Nordh Aspects of Ancient Egyptian Curses a ndBlessings (Uppsala 1996) 168ndash172 B Mathieu lsquoQue sont les extesdes Pyramidesrsquo Eacutegypte Afrique et Orient 12 (1999) 20 id lsquoLadistinction entre extes des Pyramides et extes des Sarcophages est-elle leacutegitimersquo in S Bickel B Mathieu (eds) Drsquoun monde agrave lrsquoautreextes des Pyramides et extes des Sarcophages (BdE 139 Cairo 2004)256ndash258 H Willems Les extes des Sarcophages et la deacutemocratie (Paris

2008) 131ndash228 Earlier critiques of the theory had already been madein R E Briggs lsquoExcursus VII Astronomy in the Pyramid extsrsquo inS A B Mercer Te Pyramid exts in ranslation and Commentary IV Excursuses (London 1952) 43 and J Bourriau Pharaohs and MortalsEgyptian Art in the Middle Kingdom (Cambridge 1988) 83 and cf86 On non-royal access to religious rituals and beliefs in the OldKingdom see also J Baines lsquoRestricted Knowledge Hierarchy andDecorum Modern Perceptions and Ancient Institutionsrsquo JARCE 27(1990) 11 n 60 H Altenmuumlller lsquoDer Grabherr des Alten Reiches inseinem Palast des Jenseits Bemerkungen zur sog Prunkscheintuumlr des

Alten Reichesrsquo in C Berger el-Naggar and B Mathieu (eds) Eacutetudes sur

by the discovery of religious texts from the Balat coffin ofthe official Medunefer3 datable to the reign of Pepy II4 As these have not been addressed by a proponent of theold theory it should be safe to say that current scholarly

opinion sees the theory as quite deadMy personal experience has been otherwise WhenI spoke against the democratisation theory at the OldKingdom Art and Archaeology congress in 2009 many ofthe participants seemed rather shocked and it continuesto be taken for granted elsewhere5 Te reaction which

lrsquoAncien Empire et la neacutecropole de Saqqacircra deacutedieacutees agrave Jean-Philippe Lauer I (Montpellier 1997) 16ndash17 H Altenmuumlller lsquoDer Himmelsaufstiegdes Grabherrn ndash Zu den Szenen des zSS wAD in den Graumlbern des AltenReichesrsquo SAK 30 (2002) 36 N Alexanian lsquoHimmelstreppen undHimmelsaufstieg Zur Interpretation von Ritualen auf Grabdaumlchernim Alten Reichrsquo in H Guksch E Hofmann and M Bommas (eds)

Grab und otenkult im Alten Aumlgypten (Munich 2003) 35ndash383 Juumlrgens Grundlinien 86 Silverman in OrsquoConnor and Silverman(eds) Ancient Egyptian Kingship 80 Nordh Aspects 174 and Mathieuin Bickel and Mathieu (eds) Drsquoun monde agrave lrsquoautre 254 cf D PSilverman lsquoextual Criticism in the Coffin extsrsquo in J P Allen et alReligion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt (YES 3 New Haven 1989) 36For the texts see M Valloggia Balat I Le mastaba de Medou-Nefer FascI (FIFAO 311 Cairo 1986) 75ndash76 See also L Gestermann lsquoSargtextaus Dair al-Biršā Zeugnisse eines historischen Wendepunktesrsquo inBickel and Mathieu (eds) Drsquoun monde agrave lrsquoautre 210ndash211 with n 39where the ambiguity of identi1047297cation for the extremely fragmentaryremains is highlighted Te excavations at abbet al-Guesh yielded anon-royal wooden coffin with religious texts that may turn out to bedated to the reign of Pepy I according to the presentation of V Dobrev

lsquoOld Kingdom ldquoHouses of Eternityrdquo and Late Period ldquoMastabasrdquo atabbet al-Guesh (South Saqqara)rsquo given at the congress lsquoAbusir andSaqqara in the Year 2010rsquo in Prague 20104 As there are items from his tomb naming Pepy II (Valloggia BalatI 167ndash170) A further tomb with religious texts that of Meni atDendera (D1D) is sometimes dated to the Old Kingdom and hasbeen known and usually ignored since the end of the 19th centuryFor references to the dates of the Balat coffin and D1D see JuumlrgensGrundlinien 70 n 215 As in N Picardo lsquoldquoSemantic Homiciderdquo and the So-called ReserveHeads Te Teme of Decapitation in Egyptian Funerary Religion



Harold M Hays 116

greeted my discussion and the con1047297dence with which itis still invoked are signs of what I believe to be the actualstate of affairs Tough the theory has been critiqued severaltimes there is still a large proportion of Egyptologists whomaintain it Te result in the near term will probably becognitive dissonance in the 1047297eld as the time-honoured com-

monplace staggers on despite the evidence and argumentsBut the facts have a way of prevailing in the end Te

present discussion will contribute to the inquiry on thetopic by identifying the roots of the theoryrsquos originalformulation and in this way it hopes to complement thegeneral description by Harco Willems of the socio-politicalenvironment at its academic birth6 In locating its originmy discussion will highlight its chief 1047298aw ndash that it rests uponnegative evidence ndash and argue that the history of religion inthe Old Kingdom should rather be based on the evidencethat does exist Tis point will serve as a springboard for aconsideration of two means of access to the afterlife in theOld Kingdom as expressed in non-royal and royal tombsknowledge and ritual Drawing attention to representationsof ritual found in royal and non-royal tombs I hope to showa commonality of belief and practice between king and elite

1 Te birth of the democratisation theory It is not difficult to 1047297nd an exposition of the theory Tedescription of Rosalie David should be perfectly familiarfor instance lsquoWhereas during the Old Kingdom only theking could expect to enjoy an individual immortality inDynasties 11 and 12 this was replaced with a democratisa-tion of beliefsrsquo7 Such accounts usually do not feel obligedto cite a reference in substantiation so seemingly well

understood is the theory But the story of its origins helpsclarify its actual supports and claimsMark Smith observes that the democratisation theory had

its advent as early as James Henry Breastedrsquos Development ofReligion and Tought in Ancient Egypt 8 Published in 1912four years after Kurt Sethersquos synoptic presentation of thePyramid exts began to appear9 his was the 1047297rst study tomake use of these texts in a comprehensive way It wasalso the 1047297rst to situate them within the context of alreadyknown corpora namely the Book of the Dead from theNew Kingdom and one from the Middle Kingdom thatsoon came to be called lsquoCoffin extsrsquo Breasted observed that

and Some Implications for the Old Kingdomrsquo JARCE 43 (2007)226 with references to other adherents in his n 32 and J P AllenlsquoSome Aspects of the Non-royal Afterlife in the Old Kingdomrsquo in MBaacuterta (ed) Te Old Kingdom Art and Archaeology (Prague 2006) 96 See Willems Les extes des Sarcophages 135ndash142 and Willemsin Assmann and Roeder (eds) Handbuch der altaumlgyptischen Religion7 R David Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt (London 2002) 1548 Smith in Dieleman and Wendrich (eds) UCLA Encyclopedia ofEgyptology 29 K Sethe Die altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte I (Leipzig 1908)

in the Old Kingdom the Pyramid exts lsquowere all intendedfor the kingrsquos exclusive use and as a whole contain beliefswhich apply only to the kingrsquo Te key reason for thisassessment was the lsquosigni1047297cant fact that the nobles of theage made practically no use of the Pyramid exts in theirown tombsrsquo10 But in the Middle Kingdom11 such texts

were lsquolargely appropriated by the middle and official classrsquoin a situation Breasted described as lsquothe popularization ofthe mortuary customs of the upper classesrsquo12 o label themortuary literature appearing in the Middle KingdomBreasted coined the term Coffin exts 13 chosen for thetypical medium on which mortuary texts then appeared Interms of content they were deemed by him to be similarto the Pyramid exts lsquoidentical in function but evidentlymore suited to the needs of common mortalsrsquo14 As a corol-lary to this development the non-royal dead in the MiddleKingdom received the pre1047297x lsquoOsirisrsquo to his name lsquoso thathe not only as of old entered the kingdom of Osiris [ sc thenecropolis] to enjoy the godrsquos protection and favor but henow became Osiris and was conceived as kingrsquo15

As far as the supports of the theory are concernedBreasted advanced only this the attested disparity of socialdistribution of mortuary literature between the Old andMiddle Kingdoms a similar disparity in the use of theepithet lsquoOsirisrsquo as a mark of spiritual attainment and anassumed difference in appropriateness of content betweenPyramid exts and Coffin exts Tis simple combinationconstitutes the core of the theory

It may have struck the reader that in none of the givenquotations does Breasted use the term democratization itself preferring instead lsquopopularization of the mortuary

customs of the upper classesrsquo and lsquopopularization of theold royal hereafterrsquo16 o be sure he does employ the verbdemocratize twice17 but it was up to his colleague and

10 Both quotations are from J H Breasted Development of Religionand hought in Ancient Egypt Lectures Delivered on the MorseFoundation at Union Teological Seminary (New York 1912) 99cf similarly id Te Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

A Beginning and a Program (Chicago 1922) 74 id Te OrientalInstitute (Chicago 1933) 152 id Te Dawn of Conscience (New

York 1933) 223ndash24911 Called by Breasted the lsquoFeudal Agersquo which he de1047297nes as lsquoa thou-sand years after the Old Kingdomrsquo and speci1047297cally as the lsquowelfth

Dynastyrsquo and thus the lsquoearly Feudal Agersquo with him is coeval to lsquoearlyin the welfth Dynastyrsquo namely the reign of Amenemhat I (idDevelopment 167 180 and 249 with n 1)12 ibid 272 with this and the discussion of which it is part para-phrased in id Te Dawn of Conscience 23513 id Development 273 n 114 ibid 27215 ibid 256 see also ibid 257 with these two pages paraphrasedin id Te Dawn of Conscience 22316 id Development 25717 loc cit



Te death of the Democratisation of the Afterlife 117

friend Alan H Gardiner to actually use the noun itselfHe did so in 1915 just three years after the appearance ofBreastedrsquos Development of Religion and Tought Te pointis not trivial because Gardiner actually makes no referenceto Development And through his discussion one is led to aneven older point of origin In discussing the New Kingdom

tomb of Amenemhat Gardiner remarkedTe investigations of the last few years have made it increas-ingly evident that until far down in the Old Kingdom no deadman except the Pharaoh himself was identi1047297ed with OsirishellipNaturally enough the contemporary nobles would be eager toimitate on their own behalf the splendid obsequies of theirsovereigns and the custom of doing so hesitatingly adoptedat 1047297rst seems to have become universal before the MiddleKingdom No adaptation of the ritual to the non-royal charac-ter of its new employers seems to have been made so that we1047297nd among the funeral furniture on the sarcophagi and on thetomb-walls belonging to private individuals such unsuitableobjects as the statues with kingly crowns Te identi1047297ca-

tion of all virtuous dead men with Osiris was the ultimateconsequence of this usurpation of the royal funerary ritual18

Although Gardinerrsquos presentation is quite similar toBreastedrsquos he does not cite him And although he coucheshis discussion in terms of ritual and display he supportshis exposition as follows lsquoOn the ldquodemocratizationrdquo of theold funerary literature and the like see especially SethePyramidentexte Vorwort viirsquo19 Te evidential substan-tiation for these assertions then is to be found in thedemographic distribution of mortuary texts concerningwhich one is to consult (especially) Sethe

Sethersquos Pyramidentexte is of course the same work thathad inspired Breasted and it is in Sethersquos volume that theultimate origin of the theory may be found At the placeindicated he asserts that together the texts of the 1047297ve royalpyramids transcribed in his autographed volumes constitutelsquoeine enggeschlossene Gruppersquo

And yet in the next breath he observes that texts fromlater monuments of a different kind were then being con-tinually discovered and that they contained precisely thesame material as that of the lsquotightly closed grouprsquo Howcan that be In the modern construction of a corpus out ofancient material any reasonable criterion can serve to makea division and in this manner onersquos already colossal work-load can be reduced Consider this the text of an edition

of Moby Dick from the 19th century of course has nothingto do with one published in the 20th century ndash right Tepoint is that the division is arti1047297cial Te material is realand time is natural but the division is not Insofar as theyeach have an integral identity beyond their physical mani-festations the texts of the lsquoclosed grouprsquo those of the 1047297ve

18 A H Gardiner in Nina de Garis Davies and A H Gardiner Teomb of Amenemhēt (No 82) (S 1 London 1915) 5519 loc cit n 1

kingly pyramids escape any boundary put around themTey pour out into the tombs of contemporaneous queensand 1047298ow on while maintaining their identities into theMiddle Kingdom no matter the arti1047297cial line one drawsaround them ndash and this much is already admitted in the1047297rst place by Sethe the one doing the drawing

But the division is not merely temporal According toSethe these later texts of the same sort as the lsquoclosed grouprsquobelonged

vielmehr einer weiteren Entwicklungsstufe jener altenotenliteratur an In den Pyramiden von Sakkara treten unsdie Pyramidentexte noch ihrer urspruumlnglichen Bestimmunggemaumlszlig als Koumlnigstotentexte verwendet (denn das sind sieihrem Inhalte nach urspruumlnglich ausschlieszliglich gewesen)entgegen auf den anderen [sc later ] Denkmaumllern sind sie(oder richtiger eine Auswahl bestimmter immer wiederkeh-render exte daraus) als allgemeine otentexte fuumlr jedermanngebraucht Es ist hier also wieder einmal das geschehen waswir so oft beobachten koumlnnen was einst nur dem Koumlnig

zustand haben sich allmaumlhlich die Untertanen angemaszligt Wie sie in dem bdquoGeraumltefriesldquo ihrer Saumlrge eine koumlniglicheGrabausruumlstung fuumlr sich beanspruchten haben sie sich auch diealten Koumlnigstotentexte angemaszligt und nennen sich was eigent-lich nur beim Koumlnig Sinn hatte bdquoOsirisldquo Diese Anmaszligungder Koumlnigsvorrechte ist eine charakteristische Erscheinungfuumlr die Zeit nach dem Zusammenbruch des alten Reichs dasMittelalter der aumlgyptischen Geschichte (Dyn 7 ff) In dieseZeit wird man denn wohl auch die aumlltesten Beispiele der

Anwendung der Pyramidentexte auf nichtkoumlnigliche Personenzu setzen haben Zum eil moumlgen sie den Pyramiden dersechsten Dynastie zeitlich noch ziemlich nahe stehen zum eilstammen sie auch sicher erst aus dem eigentlichen mittlerenReich (Dyn 12)20

Te central points of Breasted and Gardiner are summedup in this simple and seminal paragraph the Pyramid extswere originally for the exclusive use of the king Whenthey are later found as general mortuary texts for everyone( jedermann) it is through an appropriation (anmaszligen Anmaszligung ) of royal prerogatives (Koumlnigsvorrechte ) Tis ap-propriation included laying claim to the title lsquoOsirisrsquo whichproperly only had meaning in reference to the king ndash lsquowaseigentlich nur beim Koumlnig Sinn hattersquo In short the com-paratively narrow distribution of mortuary texts in the OldKingdom and its expansion in the Middle Kingdom arelinked with a demographic expansion of privileged access

to a dei1047297ed afterlife 2 Te birth of the term Coffin TextsTis is an important detail because Breasted Gardiner andSethe were the same three scholars who were instrumentalin the modern reception of the Old and Middle Kingdommortuary literature Te term Coffin exts was coinedby Breasted in the pages of Development of Religion and

20 Sethe Die altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte I vii-viii



Harold M Hays 118

Tought and it was together with Gardiner that he launchedthe Coffin exts Project of the University of ChicagorsquosOriental Institute After the projectrsquos initiation in 192221 and after their erstwhile partner Pierre Lacau withdrew22 Breasted asked Sethe to nominate one of his students toassume the greater burden of the publication of the Middle

Kingdom material and that was Adriaan de Buck23 As the chief datum of the theory resides in the appear-

ance of non-royal mortuary texts in the Middle Kingdomand the absence of such texts in the Old Kingdom andas these three were instrumental in crafting their modernreception I believe it is justi1047297able to say that the democ-ratisation theory is bound up with the modern conceptualdivision between the two corpora If this division restedmerely in a temporal division between two strata of asingle body of literature and a concomitant distinctionin social distribution there would surely be no troubleBut as shown above the distinction also has to do withan evaluation of the purpose and nature of content thePyramid exts are de1047297ned as exclusively for the use of theking and contain beliefs exclusively applicable to himand when they are later found in the tombs of non-royalpersons the development is characterised as an lsquousurpationrsquoand as lsquounsuitablersquo ndash notions which resonate to this day As one recent popular book has it the Pyramid exts as abody of literature were lsquointended solely for the kingrsquo andthese were lsquoadapted for the use of non-royal personsrsquo andas such are called lsquoCoffin extsrsquo24 With another popularaccount lsquothe old religious texts for the protection of theking were usurped and adapted for more widespread usersquoand the lsquorevised textsrsquo are now known as lsquoCoffin extsrsquo 25

Exclusively for the king unsuitable usurpation adapta-tion revision appropriation the practical de1047297nitions of theterms are wedded to the democratisation theory It is notonly a distinction by time Tey are de1047297ned by us today byperceived social intention and use of the literature whichthey exemplify

Breasted once asserted that Pyramid exts are to belsquosharply distinguishedrsquo from Coffin exts26 but how canthey be when they share a considerable body of mate-rial ndash over 400 texts ndash verbatim Te terms obscure anunderlying continuum between mortuary literature from

21 Breasted Te Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago ABeginning and a Program 7822 Breasted A Beginning and a Program 16123 Breasted A Beginning and a Program 162 o be clear A de Buckwas hired in 1925 speci1047297cally to replace L Bull as the assistant of

A H Gardiner24 G H James A Short History of Ancient Egypt (Baltimore 1998)59 and 6925 A J Spencer Death in Ancient Egypt (New York 1982) 14126 Breasted A Beginning and a Program 152

the two periods27 Tey create a digital (mis)representationof an analogue and largely lost reality It is no accidentthat some of the same scholars who have challenged thedemocratisation theory have done so while also challenginga conceptual division between Pyramid and Coffin exts aswith Peter Juumlrgens and Bernard Mathieu28 Contributing to

that discussion is the identi1047297cation of three kinds of generalcontinuities between Old and Middle Kingdom mortuaryliterature the verbatim transmission of texts the MiddleKingdom production of variants of Old Kingdom textsand the Middle Kingdom construction of new texts outof the Old Kingdom material29 Even when a text appearsto belong to a strictly Middle Kingdom genre points ofcontact with the Old Kingdom material can be found 30

Where precisely is the adaptation of fundamentallyinappropriate content

3 Pyramid exts as manifestation of a wider bodyof literature

From the point of view of the Middle Kingdom the non-royal display of royal iconography in text and image wasclearly acceptable But display in text and image is not thesame as use in ritual action and religious belief If in the OldKingdom the same mortuary literature was used by non-royal persons then the physical absence of mortuary textsin their tombs must instead be a sign of the constraints ofdecorum31 not lack of access to the afterlife and the textsand rituals by which it was attained

27 cf H M Hays and W Schenck lsquoIntersection of Ritual Spaceand Ritual Representation Pyramid exts in Eighteenth Dynasty

Teban ombsrsquo in P F Dorman and B M Bryan (eds) SacredSpace and Sacred Function in Ancient Tebes (SAOC 61 Chicago2007) 105 with n 91 Te terms also conceal the fact that texts ofseveral genres come under their overlapping umbrellas as observedby L Gestermann Die Uumlberlieferung ausgewaumlhlter exte altaumlgyptischerotenliteratur (lsquoSargtextersquo) in spaumltzeitlichen Grabanlagen I (AumlgAbh 68

Wiesbaden 2005) 7 and 16 with nn 21 55 and 56 and Willemsin Assmann and Roeder (eds) Handbuch der altaumlgyptischen Religion28 See already W Barta Die Bedeutung der Pyramidentexte fuumlr denverstorbenen Koumlnig (MAumlS 39 Munich 1981) 62 J P Allen lsquoFuneraryexts and Teir Meaningrsquo in S DrsquoAuria P Lacovara and C HRoehrig (eds) Mummies and Magic Te Funerary Arts of AncientEgypt (Boston 1988) 40 See Juumlrgens Grundlinien 85 where lsquokeineZaumlsurrsquo is seen between Pyramid exts and Coffin exts but lsquoDamit

soll nicht gesagt sein dass Pyramidentexte und Sargtexte schlichtbdquodasselbeldquo seinrsquo See also Mathieu in Bickel and Mathieu (eds) Drsquounmonde agrave lrsquoautre 247ndash26229 See H M Hays Te ypological Structure of the Pyramid exts andIts Continuities with Middle Kingdom Mortuary Literature (Universityof Chicago PhD dissertation 2006) 105ndash107 188ndash191 227ndash228and 290ndash29330 H M Hays lsquoTe Mutability of radition Te Old KingdomHeritage and Middle Kingdom Signi1047297cance of Coffin exts Spell343rsquo JEOL 40 (2007) 43ndash5931 cf J Baines lsquoModelling Sources Processes and Locations of




Absence of mortuary texts in Old Kingdom non-royaltombs was the core fact in the construction of the democ-ratisation theory According to it only royal persons havesuch texts in the Old Kingdom and therefore they werethe only ones who used them and had access to an afterlifeIt was precisely this point that Mathieu challenged in his

1047297rst critique of the theory As he remarked it has yet to bedemonstrated that there ever truly was a royal exclusivity inmortuary literature and the absence of texts in non-royalsepulchres would constitute but a fragile argument thatthere was32 Later he asserts lsquoQue les particuliers de lrsquoAncienEmpire ne possegravedent pas de textes funeacuteraires dans leursseacutepultures ne signi1047297e pas qursquoils nrsquoen beacuteneacute1047297ciaient pas Apregravestout nul nrsquoimagine que les souverains du Moyen Empirepar exemple ne beacuteneacute1047297ciaient pas drsquoune destineacutee glorieusedans lrsquoau-delagrave sous preacutetexte qursquoil nrsquoy a pas de textes graveacutesdans leurs pyramidesrsquo33

Indeed the absence of religious texts from royal MiddleKingdom tombs is a point left unaddressed by the theory Byits logic one should have to understand that only non-royalpersons had access to the afterlife at that time ndash an absurd-ity refutable by consultation of royal texts from outsidethe tomb though the proof (should one care to pursue it)will not come from exemplars of the mortuary literatureNo the absence of religious texts in royal tombs of theMiddle Kingdom underscores the difference between textualdisplay and religious action and belief While the contents ofdisplayed texts do offer a window into ritual and belief theactual performances and thoughts they represent are lostin time exts are not equivalent to belief and action theyoverlap them Display of texts is not the same as religious

thought and practiceNicole Alexanian has argued that changes in customs ofburial assemblages between social classes re1047298ect processesof social distinction34 From this point of view the displayof texts is in part subsumed under the heading fashionChanges in fashion play a game of equilibrium and negotia-tion where the intrinsic meaning of what is shown mattersless than the differentials and similarities of presentation35 Religious texts were not inscribed in tombs so as to displaythe keys to heaven as a proof that a certain social grouphad access to them while others did not Teir inscriptionwas motivated by the exercise of taste according to anunwritten code of practice an habitus of self-constructed

Early Mortuary extsrsquo in Bickel and Mathieu (eds) Drsquoun monde agravelrsquoautre 39 and Willems in Assmann and Roeder (eds) Handbuchder altaumlgyptischen Religion32 Mathieu Eacutegypte Afrique et Orient 12 (1999) 2033 Mathieu in Bickel and Mathieu (eds) Drsquoun monde agrave lrsquoautre 25734 N Alexanian lsquoomb and Social Status Te extual Evidencersquo inM Baacuterta (ed) Te Old Kingdom Art and Archaeology (Prague 2006)8 with n 2435 cf R Barthes Essais critiques (Paris 1964) 156

distinction36 Because the Middle Kingdom elite had resur-rected a centuries-old tradition to decorate their tombs itwas natural that the contemporaneous kings did not followsuit By not doing so they reinforced existing social distinc-tions But these choices of display are not coextensive withreligious action and belief

It cannot be the case that the surviving bodies oftexts ndash call them lsquoPyramid extsrsquo and lsquoCoffin extsrsquo ifyou will37 ndash circumscribe the entirety of Old and MiddleKingdom mortuary literature that had once existed intext action and belief As a discursive formation the OldKingdom mortuary literature extended beyond what hassurvived in pyramids of kings and queens Indeed thisbody of literature must have existed well prior to its 1047297rstattestations in monumental stone Its component membersits texts had been composed and recited long before KingUnas was born o adorn the walls of his crypt he trans-posed texts from other settings in life

Te most immediate testimony of this fact may be foundin shattered fragments of inscriptional decoration from thepyramid temple of Sahure remnants of a kind of offeringlist which is keyed in with offering ritual recitations inthe Pyramid exts Ninety offering ritual Pyramid extscorrespond point for point to the items of the canonicalype A offering list preserved in part in Sahurersquos fragmentsSuch offering lists identify a series of rites by specifying theitems to be manipulated therein ndash usually foodstuffs to bepresented ndash while the Pyramid exts counterparts providethe recitations as well as the same speci1047297cations in the sameorder38 Te fragments serve to connect Pyramid exts to

36

cf P Bourdieu Distinction A Social Critique of the Judgementof aste (trans R Nice Cambridge 1998) 466 cf also the conceptof lsquosocial marksrsquo in M Baud Famille royale et pouvoir sous lrsquoAncienEmpire eacutegyptien (BdE 126 Cairo 1999) 193ndash19437 o be precise these modern terms should make reference strictlyto texts edited as such Tus I de1047297ne Pyramid exts as lsquomortuary textsattested in the Old Kingdom and published as suchrsquo and Coffin exts as lsquomortuary texts attested in the Middle Kingdom and published inthe eight volumes of the Oriental Institutersquos Coffin exts seriesrsquo38 Willems in Assmann and Roeder (eds) Handbuch der altaumlgyp-tischen Religion Smith in Dieleman and Wendrich (eds) UCLAEncyclopedia of Egyptology 9 Hays ypological Structure 94ndash102Baines in Bickel and Mathieu (eds) Drsquoun monde agrave lrsquoautre 21 withn 29 Allen in DrsquoAuria Lacovara and Roehrig (eds) Mummies and

Magic 39 H Willems Chests of Life A Study of the ypology andConceptual Development of Middle Kingdom Standard Class Coffins (MVEOL 25 Leiden 1988) 203 W Barta Die altaumlgyptische Opferlistevon der Fruumlhzeit bis zur griechisch-roumlmischen Epoche (MAumlS 3 Berlin1963) 67 A M Blackman and M R Apted Te Rock ombs of MeirV (ASE 28 London 1953) 43 S Hassan Excavations at Gicircza VIIpart 2 (Cairo 1948) 46 77 and 157 H Junker Gicircza II (Vienna1934) 76 and 80ndash82 (and note that the distinction he attempts tomake between a royal and non-royal list through reference to regaliapresentations can be understood quite otherwise) See also the libationstand bearing P 32 discussed in J Leclant lsquoUn support drsquoautel agrave



Harold M Hays 120

Te presence of such words as mr lsquopyramidrsquo43 would seemto indicate that some texts had been composed speci1047297callyfor a royal bene1047297ciary since that architecture was distinc-tive to the highest stratum of society But equally it may beinferred by content that some Pyramid exts had not beencomposed for a royal bene1047297ciary as has been pointed out

by Edward F Wente44 For example P 467 has the deadking declaring that he has not striven withhellip the king Inthat text as written the ni-swt must be a person separatefrom the deceased Tis also is the case with P 486 inwhich the dead king declares that he is not taken away tothe king and affirms that he is unpunished UnpunishedBut the fundamental principle of sovereignty is (paradoxi-cally) to embody the law and to be exempt from it45 Ascomposed and transcribed onto the walls of the tombs ofPepy I and Pepy II these texts do not situate the deceasedin the royal social class or else they would be meaning-less Te content of these texts and others46 indicates thatmultiple social strata contributed to the production and par-ticipated in the use of the Pyramid exts Further materialseemingly composed with a particular social class in mindcould be taken up by others In the case of texts like P467 and 486 one sees the king adopting material writtenfor those of lesser social status and doing so without adap-tation ndash and yet the theory claims that the Pyramid extswere for exclusively royal use Because the larger corpusof Old Kingdom mortuary literature had also existed onwood and papyrus in point of fact one cannot know thefull extent of its distribution and use without consultationof evidence beyond mere physical possession

4 Te nature of the desired afterlife Osiris and Akh One of the elements of the democratisation theory is thatin the Old Kingdom only the king aspired to becomeOsiris as indicated by the use of that godrsquos name pre1047297xedto the kingrsquos It is certainly the case that spiritual attain-ment was expressed by identifying oneself with Osiris Inthe Pyramid exts the formulation wsir NN is abundantlyattested in texts performed by priests for the deceased47 a

5 ndash 10 September 1996 in Leipzig (BdE 127 Cairo 1999) 95101 and 10443 P 534 sect1277b P 599 sect1649c P 600 sect1653bndashc P 601 sect1661c44 E F Wente lsquoMysticism in Pharaonic Egyptrsquo JNES 41 (1982)

176 n 118 See also Smith in Dieleman and Wendrich (eds)UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 7 C Eyre Te Cannibal Hymn ACultural and Literary Study (Liverpool 2002) 66 and L Kaacutekosy lsquoTePyramid exts and Society in the Old Kingdomrsquo Annales UniversitatisScientarum Budapestinenisis de Rolando Eotvos Nominatae SectionHistorica 4 (1962) 4ndash5 and 9ndash1045 See G Agamben Homo Sacer Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford 1998) 15ndash2946 See also P 571 sect1468cndash1469a and P 726 sect2253bndashd47 Aside from the wsir NN formula see the explicit identi1047297cationsof the deceased as this god at P 258 sect308a P 259 sect312a P

an above-ground place of performance the subterraneantexts in question are copies of mortuary texts that had beenrecited as scripts in the above-ground pyramid temple Tismeans that they had been transposed from a pre-existingsetting from outside the burial chambers In their above-ground context they served as ritual scripts In the crypt

they served as decoration an efficacious arti1047297cial voice39 Tis solid connection shows that (at least) these texts hadalready existed long before being physically attested asPyramid exts and it therefore shows that the actual extentof the Old Kingdom mortuary literature goes beyond thephysical exemplars we now have

Te testimony for this body of literature from outside thecrypt appears only in remnants Te recent unprecedenteddiscovery of an inscribed fragment of a wooden chest of aqueen of Pepy I40 is a reminder of just how fragile woodand papyrus are And of course it is precisely in the formof the latter that the ritual scroll would have existed41 Te Pyramid exts constitute only a portion of the totaldiscursive formation Te existence and use of all the otherlost stone wood and papyrus exemplars (not to mentionacts of speech) only seem less real because they are nottangible today And just as one might evidentially inferthat the Middle Kingdom king had access to an afterlifeand had use of mortuary literature so is it inferable thatnon-royal persons of the Old Kingdom had access and useof the same kinds of texts as are preserved in the pyramids As we shall see

Te permeable social boundaries of the total discursivebody may be located by consideration of all the evidenceincluding statements in the Pyramid exts themselves42

libations du temple haut de Peacutepi Ierrsquo in S Israelit-Groll (ed) Studiesin Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim II (Jerusalem 1990)653ndash655 for which reference I am deeply grateful to A J Morales39 On the concept of arti1047297cial voice see J Assmann Images et ritesde la mort dans lrsquoEacutegypte ancienne lrsquoapport des liturgies funeacuteraires (Paris2000) 32 and J Assmann od und Jenseits im Alten Aumlgypten (Munich2001) 33540 See J Leclant and A Labrousse lsquoDeacutecouvertes reacutecentes de laMission archeacuteologique franccedilaise agrave Saqqacircra (campagnes 2001ndash2005)rsquoCRAIBL (2006) 108 Fig 441 See P 217 on face A of MafS Papyrus 2147 with a possibledate in the area of the sixth through eleventh dynasties C Berger-el Naggar lsquoextes des Pyramides sur papyrus dans les archives du

temple funeacuteraire de Peacutepy Ier

rsquo in S Bickel B Mathieu (eds) Drsquounmonde agrave lrsquoautre 85ndash89 with n 13 and Fig 1 On mistakes in thePyramid exts showing that they had been transcribed from hieraticand therefore from papyrus or leather master copies see Sethe Diealtaegyptischen Pyramidentexte IV (Leipzig 1922) 125ndash12742 A refutation of the idea that some Pyramid exts contain ex-plicit statements concerning the exclusion of lower classes fromthe afterlife may be found in O I Pavlova lsquoRechit in the Pyramidexts Teological Idea or Political Realityrsquo in J Assmann and EBlumenthal (eds) Literatur und Politik im pharaonischen und ptolemauml-ischen Aumlgypten Vortraumlge der agung zum Gedenken an Georges Posener




category which may therefore be called sacerdotal48 Butthe social distinction supposed by the theory is again basedon negative evidence ndash and doubly so since the combina-tion of epithet plus name is attested almost exclusively inthe Pyramid exts themselves But it is noteworthy thatoutside the royal sepulchres the formula Osiris ltnamegt is

attested in the Old Kingdom only in application to non-royal persons 49 a detail that was apparently unknown tothe three authors of the theory at the time of its craftingBased on a careful typological dating of non-royal burialchambers Edward Brovarski has shown that non-royalpersons employed the epithet Osiris as early as the middlepart of the reign of Pepy II50

Tis is about a century later than the formulationrsquos at-testation in the pyramid of Unas but there are factors thatwarrant caution in seizing upon the temporal differencein the construction of a historical picture Since the useas epithet also continued to be rare in non-royal venuesduring the First Intermediate Period one may supposewith Khaled Daoud that its display at that time might stillhave been thought provocative51 In my view this is anassessment which concerns what was 1047297tting to representIn other words it is again a question of fashion Anotherimportant factor is that the non-royal use of the epithetis ordinarily found before the Middle Kingdom in thecontext of the offering list which is a representation ofthe offering ritual52 and the ype A offering list is foundin non-royal tombs long before the 1047297rst appearance of the

437 sect793b P 468 sect895cndashd P 493 sect1059dndashe P 535 sect1282bP 600 sect1657a P 624 sect1761d P 650 sect1833a and sect1833c P

684 sect2054 P 687 sect2076c and P 690 sect2097a and sect2103cndashd Asthese passages are not susceptible to a reinterpretation of ambiguousgrammatical syntax they show that the relationship between thedeceased and the god really was one of identity (lsquoisrsquo rather than lsquoofrsquo

pace M Smith lsquoOsiris NN or Osiris of NNrsquo in B Backes I Munroand S Stoumlhr (eds) otenbuch-Forschungen Gesammelte Beitraumlge des 2Internationalen otenbuch-Symposiums Bonn 25 bis 29 September

2005 (Wiesbaden 2006) 325 ndash 337) In respect to being Osiris seealso C 42 I 178d C 227 III passim C 237 III 309bndashc C269 IV 7k C 507 VI 92b C 577 VI 193c C 599 VI 215gndashhC 666 VI 293d C 828 VII 28v q C 227 is most notable inthis regard since the title given to it in one of its exemplars is xprwm wsir lsquoBecoming Osirisrsquo Te deceased aspired to become Osiris inthe Old and Middle Kingdoms48

On this term see H M Hays lsquoOld Kingdom Sacerdotal extsrsquo JEOL 41 (2009) 4949 Nordh Aspects 16950 E Brovarski lsquoTe Late Old Kingdom at South Saqqararsquo inL Pantalacci and C Berger-el-Naggar (eds) Des Neacuteferkarecirc aux

Montouhotep ravaux archeacuteologiques en cours sur la 1047297n de la VIedynastie et la Premiegravere Peacuteriode Intermeacutediare (Lyon 2005) 6351 K A Daoud Corpus of Inscriptions of the Herakleopolitan Period

from the Memphite Necropolis ranslation Commentary and Analyses (BAR S1459 Oxford 2005) 11752 See above n 38

Pyramid exts ndash indeed even earlier than the fragments ofthis list from the pyramid temple of Sahure Te actualrecitations of the ritual naturally not shown in the offer-ing lists habitually employ the wsir ltnamegt formulationTis fact creates a quandary before the reign of Pepy IIhow was the non-royal deceased referred to in the offering

ritual Tere is no evidence to provide an answerInstead of creating history out of silences it would be

better to draw conclusions from what can be positivelyseen Te word wsir emerges some 1047297fty years before it isfound in the Pyramid exts of Unas and it does so remark-ably in a non-royal tomb As Mathieu observes53 the 1047297rstsecurely datable attestation is from the middle of the 1047297fthdynasty during the reign of Niuserre in the tomb of thenon-royal personage Ptahshepses Tere it appears in thedivine formula Htp-Di-wsir lsquothe offering which Osiris givesrsquo54 But the godrsquos entry to the divine formula ndashHtp-Di- ltgodgt ndash ispart of a wider phenomenon in the 1047297fth dynasty Whereasin the fourth dynasty only Anubis is featured in the divineformula55 in the 1047297fth multiple gods appear56 including

53 B Mathieu lsquoMais qui est donc Osiris Ou la politique sous lelinceul de la religion (Enquecirctes dans les extes des Pyramides 3)rsquoENIM 3 (2010) 77 with nn 3ndash4 where it is noted that a furtherinstance of the name may be dated even earlier On the question ofthe date of Osiris add to Mathieursquos references A Bolshakov lsquoPrincessHmt-ra(w) Te First Mention of Osirisrsquo CdE 67 (1992) 203ndash210id lsquoOsiris in the Fourth Dynasty Again Te False Door of Intj MFA31781rsquo in H Gyoumlry (ed) Meacutelanges offerts agrave Edith Varga lsquoLe lotusqui sort de terrersquo (Budapest 2001) 65ndash8054 BM EA 682 for which see G H James Hieroglyphic exts fromEgyptian Stelae etc Part I Second Edition (London 1961) 17 and pl

17 P F Dorman lsquoTe Biographical Inscription of Ptahshepses fromSaqqara A Newly Identi1047297ed Fragmentrsquo JEA 88 (2002) 95ndash110 andN C Strudwick exts from the Pyramid Age (Writings of the Ancient

World 16 Atlanta and Leiden 2005) 303ndash30555 W Barta Aufbau und Bedeutung der altaumlgyptischen Opferformel (AumlF24 Gluckstadt 1968) 8 and 225 (under lsquo Jnpw rsquo) and DuQuesneTe Jackal Divinities of Egypt I From the Archaic Period to Dynasty X (London 2005) 144 and 384ndash385 One of the earliest attestations isfrom the tomb of Metjen Berl Inschr 1105 L ( Aegyptische Inschriftenaus den Koumlniglichen Museen zu Berlin (Leipzig 1913) 86 or any of themore recent publications listed in Strudwick exts from the Pyramid

Age 451 (108)) Other secure fourth dynasty attestations includeD Dunham and W K Simpson Te Mastaba of Queen MersyankhIII G 7530ndash7540 (Giza Mastabas 1 Boston 1974) eg Figs 3b and

7 W K Simpson Te Mastabas of Kawab Khafkhufu I and II (GizaMastabas 3 Boston 1978) Figs 24ndash25 H Junker Gicircza I (Vienna1929) 1047297g 57 156 cf J G Griffiths Te Origins of Osiris and His Cult (Leiden 1980)113 and Barta Aufbau und Bedeutung der altaumlgyptischen Opferformel 15 Other gods introduced to the divine formula in the 1047297fth dynastyinclude the Western Desert (LD II 44b and LD II 81) Maat (citedin B Begelsbacher-Fischer Untersuchungen zur Goumltterwelt des AltenReiches im Spiegel der Privatgraumlber der IV und V Dynastie (Freiburg1981) 102) Geb (A Mariette Les mastabas de lrsquoancien empire (Paris1889) 186) as well as Wadyt Ptah Montu Neith Re and Hathor



Harold M Hays 122

Osiris57 and Khentimentiu lsquoForemost of the Westernersrsquo58 Tus the advent of Osiris coincides with the modi1047297cationof a traditional religious formula

Aspects of the treatment of Osiris Anubis andKhentimentiu suggest that their roles were being re1047297nedin the 1047297fth and sixth dynasties wo attestations of the

term xnti-imntiw from the Archaic Period ndash at which timeit shows its oldest writing with mn -game-board sign and jackal determinative ndash were previously understood to repre-sent an independent jackal deity59 but erence DuQuesnehas recently asserted that the jackal sign in question shouldbe read as inpw 60 Tis 1047297ts in with the historical attestationsof xnti-imntiw and inpw in connection with the offeringformula in the fourth and 1047297fth dynasties First only inpw is found in it in the fourth dynasty then xnti-imntiw as anepithet of inpw in the early 1047297fth dynasty61 and then xnti- imntiw independently in the mid- to late 1047297fth dynasty 62 Tus Khentimentiu seems 1047297rst to be an epithet or mani-festation of the god Anubis before splitting off from him

Te split seems to occur at about the time that thename of Osiris is 1047297rst attested and yet at about that sametime the newly attested god is already intimately associ-ated with Khentimentiu Te term xnti-imntiw begins tobe appended to the name Osiris as an epithet in the late1047297fth dynasty or early sixth dynasty63 and in the Middle

for references to which see DuQuesne Jackal Divinities of Egypt I145 with n 1957 For example Mariette Mastabas 149 and 259 H Mohr Te

Mastaba of Hetep-Her-Akhti (MVEOL 5 Leiden 1943) 33 M AMurray Saqqara Mastabas Part I (ERA 10 London 1905) pls 7 and

20 H Junker Gicircza VII (Vienna 1944) 1047297g 85 LD II 44b LD II65 LD II 75 LD II 89 BM 1275 for which see James Hieroglyphicexts Part I 20 and pl 21 CG 1332 CG 1424 and CG 1506for which see L Borchardt Denkmaumller des Alten Reiches (ausser denStatuen) im Museum von Kairo Nr 1295ndash1808 eil I (Berlin 1937)16 106 211 respectively and CG 1563 for which see L BorchardtDenkmaumller des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen) im Museum von KairoNr 1295ndash1808 eil II (Cairo 1964) 2658 For example Mariette Mastabas 149 and 259 BM 682 LD II 8159 W M F Petrie Abydos Part II (EEF 24 London 1903) pl 12(278) G Dreyer lsquoEin Siegel der fruumlhzeitlichen Koumlnigsnekropole von

Abydosrsquo MDAIK 43 (1987) 36 1047297g 3 and pls 4 and 5 see furtherDuQuesne Jackal Divinities of Egypt I 28 sect3160 See DuQuesne Jackal Diviniti es of Egypt I 384ndash385 sect492

However to my knowledge the epithet nb AbDw is never appliedimmediately to Anubis that role is particular to Khentimentiu andOsiris see below n 6761 For example LD II 48 lower band and LD II 101a see furthercitations in DuQuesne Jackal Divinities of Egypt I 162ndash163 sect17762 See the citations above n 58 see further citations in DuQuesne

Jackal Divinities of Egypt I 163 sect17863 In the tomb of Ptahhotep at Saqqara (LS31) see the 1047297rst citationin ibid 164ndash165 sect179 and further the sixth dynasty texts Urk I98 9 (further Strudwick exts from the Pyramid Age 459 (256))Urk I 253 14 (further ibid 458 (247)) and CG 1574 (where the

Kingdom it serves regularly as such64

Tus xnti-imntiw creates a kind of commutative bondbetween Osiris and Anubis Te transfer of the term is anindication of the close relations between Osiris and Anubisin this period65 Another is their sharing of the designationslsquoLord of the Westrsquo66 lsquoLord of Abydosrsquo67 and lsquoLord of the

Sacred Landrsquo68

In summary while in the fourth dynasty only Anubisappears in the divine formula Htp-Di- ltgodgt in the 1047297fthall three gods 1047297gure into it At that time Khentimentiualso appears as an epithet to Anubis but seems to splitaway from that god and then is joined with Osiris andthe three share further designations Te relations suggestthat these gods were not yet as differentiated as they wouldlater be Osirisrsquos sphere of signi1047297cance overlapped that of Anubis and it is in that context that he is introduced tothe divine formula

Te Pyramid exts show a slightly different story Whilethe god Osiris is attributed anthropomorphic determina-tives in non-royal 1047297fth dynasty texts (beginning with hisvery 1047297rst attestation) there is a Pyramid ext which textu-ally identi1047297es him as a jackal69 just as Anubis traditionallyand Khentimentiu originally 70 are In conformity with the

epithet has the anthropomorphic lsquoOsirianrsquo determinative) for whichsee Borchardt Denkmaumller des Alten Reiches II 5464 As in W M F Petrie ombs of the Courtiers and Oxyrhynkhos (BSA37 London 1925) pl 22 1 K Sethe Aegyptische Lesestuumlcke zumGebrauch im akademischen Unterricht (Leipzig 1928) 69 4 70 1771 2ndash5 On the god see further R Grieshammer lsquoChontamentirsquoLAuml I 964ndash96565

See citations of their immediate juxtaposition in DuQuesne JackalDivinities of Egypt I 166 sect182 and the discussion in ibid 389 sect50366 Anubis with the epithet nb imnt (i)t cited in DuQuesne JackalDivinities of Egypt I 167 sect183 Osiris with the same in S HassanExcavations at Gicircza III (Cairo 1941) 4 Mariette Mastabas 368Khentimentiu with the same ibid 23067 For wsir nb AbDw see S Hassan Excavations at Gicircza VI part 3(Cairo 1950) 209 Fig 207 and see the citation in Begelsbacher-Fischer Untersuchungen zur Goumltterwelt 125 For xnti-imntiw nbAbDw see the citations in DuQuesne Jackal Divinities of Egypt I 163sect178 this combination continues to be used in the Middle Kingdommortuary literature in C 404 V 194h and C 405 V 207i68 Tis epithet of Anubis is attributed to Osiris in CG 1424 refer-ence to which is made above n 5769

For Osiris textually identi1047297ed as a jackal see P 690 sect2108a andGriffiths Origins of Osiris 143ndash144 for his treatment of this state-ment and two others which less strongly indicate a theriomorphicform the crucial value of this statement is observed also in DuQuesne

Jackal Divinities of Egypt I 346 On the deceased in the form of a jackal generally (though not with regard to the passage just cited) seeH Roeder Mit dem Auge sehen Studien zur Semantik der Herrschaftin den oten- und Kulttexten (SAGA 16 Heidelberg 1996) 75ndash7870 J Wegner Te Mortuary Complex of Senwosret III A Studyof Middle Kingdom State Activity and the Cult of Osiris at Abydos (University of Pennsylvania PhD dissertation 1996) 43ndash44 shows




Archaic spellings Khentimentiu receives the jackal determi-native (or speci1047297cation as Anubis) in one text 71 and thereare a number of others with Archaic phonetic spellings ofhis name72 It is also noteworthy that while Khentimentiuis applied to Anubis as epithet in a number of Pyramidexts passages73 this does not occur with Osiris himself

though some passages do very strongly associate them74 Itis of further interest that Osiris does not receive the epithetlsquoLord of the Westrsquo in the Pyramid exts nor the morecommon lsquoLord of Busirisrsquo75 though outside the pyramidshe does With a rich body of comparative material dealingwith the same gods these details show a slightly differenttreatment including obsolescent representations in thePyramid exts Tis suggests that at least so far as thesegods are concerned elements of the body of literature fromwhich the Pyramid exts were drawn are older than ourearliest attested appearances of Osiris Given the fact thatthe offering list is already attested before Osiris and thatit keys in with Pyramid exts this is just what one wouldhave expected Assuming that the god existed in beliefalready prior to his 1047297rst attestation as just argued it mayperhaps be in part due to issues of decorum that his namedoes not appear before the 1047297fth dynasty ndash it was perhaps aquestion of propriety a truly sacred name

At the time when Osiris 1047297nally does enter the documen-tary record so also do predicative statements in which thenon-royal dead identify themselves as Akhs divine beings76 Tis is an important point because one of Osirisrsquos chiefidentities is as an Ax 77 Consider the following passages

P 223 sect215b-c lsquoO Osiris Ba who is among the AkhsrsquoP 305 sect472b lsquoTe ladder is built by Horus before his fatherOsiris when he goes to his Akhrsquo

P 365 sect623a lsquofor you are an Akh one whom Nut borersquoP 422 sect754c lsquoTis Akh who is in Nedit comesrsquo

that Khentimentiu is attested with lsquoldquoOsirisrdquo determinative consistingof a mummi1047297ed Upper Egyptian king wearing the White Crownand holding the crook and 1047298ailrsquo in sixth dynasty non-royal textsIt is possible that this iconography was originally appropriate toKhentimentiu rather than Osiris see the references in DuQuesne

Jackal Divinities of Egypt I 168 n 23471 P 357 sect592b (MN)72 xnti-imntiw is written with mn -gameboard sign in P 305 sect474c(W) P 357 sect595b (PM) P 371 sect650c (P) P 438 sect811a d(P) P 441 sect818b (P) P 667 sect1936f (Nt)73

P 81 sect57d P 224 sect220c P 225 sect224b P 419 sect745a P650 sect1833c and C 936 VII 138r74 P 601 sect1666a P 677 sect2021a75 Compare the later incorporation of these epithets in the MiddleKingdom mortuary literature in C 605 VI 218c (wsir nb imnt ) andC 434 V 285e (wsir nb Ddw )76 Te word Ax is already a designation of deceased persons on ArchaicPeriod seals see P Kaplony Die Inschriften der aumlgyptischen Fruumlhzeit I(AumlgAbh 8 Wiesbaden 1963) 3777 See G Englund Akh une notion religieuse dans lrsquoEacutegypte pharao-nique (Boreas 11 Uppsala 1978) 51ndash52

P 437 sect793b lsquoRaise yourself as Osiris as the Akh the sonof Geb his 1047297rst (born)rsquoP 468 sect899a lsquoLet Osiris live let the Akh who is in Nedit liversquoP 479 sect990a lsquoO Re impregnate the belly of Nut with theseed of the Akh who is in herrsquoP 553 sect1354b lsquoOsiris has given you Akh-nessrsquoP 556 sect1385c lsquofor this father of mine Osiris Pepy has trulybecome an AkhrsquoP 637 sect1804a-b lsquoBe equipped with the form of Osiris beingan Akh thereby more than the AkhsrsquoP 1005 PSSe 89ndash91 lsquoA[rise to S]eth a[s Osiris] as the

Akh the son of GebrsquoIn the Pyramid exts the word Ax is found in about 175

instances a frequency which helps make it one of the mostimportant concepts in the corpus Of special interest aredeclarations that the deceased has become an Akh in the Akhet the horizon78 Tis phraseology is a transparent refer-ence to rebirth and resurrection as the sun god in the eastIt is an expression of attainment And because Akh-hoodwas a goal sought by non-royal persons as well what is athand is not a rupture between classes but a commonalityof aspiration

5 Means of becoming an Akh ritual and knowledge What may be positively seen is that king and elite bothaspired to become an Akh Te connection is of greatvalue as these aspirations are recorded within the contextsof two different discourses ransposed from their originalcontexts the Pyramid exts were displayed in sealed-offsubterranean chambers and there they address the deceasedand speak of him in the third person Meanwhile the non-royal statements almost always appear in above-ground

accessible areas79

and they are spoken by the deceasedhimself in addressing a human audience Te Pyramid extsare texts designed to bring about a particular state and itis in a ritual context that they make reference to being an Akh Te non-royal texts designate the dead as an Akhbut they are not themselves the instruments of achieving it

Nevertheless the non-royal texts do refer to the meansby which this state is attained ritual and knowledge80

78 P 217 sect152d P 264 sect350c P 357 sect585a P 364 sect621bP 368 sect636c P 487 sect1046b P 532 sect1261b P 664B sect1887b79 E Edel Untersuchungen zur Phraseologie der aumlgyptischen Inschriftendes Alten Reiches (MDAIK 13 Berlin 1944) 30 (sect 5 24) Te excep-

tions are Bebi and Kaiherptah presented below Te unusual locationof Kaiherptahrsquos statements is remarked upon by H Junker Gicircza VIII (Vienna 1947) 119 and his evaluation is applicable to Bebi also lsquoDie

Anbringung des extes in der Sargkammer ist sehr befremdlich undkann wohl nur auf eine Gedankenlosigkeit zuruumlckgefuumlhrt werden Ergehoumlrt zu den Anreden an die Besucher des Grabes hellip und sollte alsovon diesen gelesen werden Keineswegs aber gehoumlren solche exte indie unzugaumlnglichen unterirdischen Raumlume da sie dort ihren Zweckganz verfehlten auf Grabraumluber wollte man gewiszlig keinen Eindruckmachenrsquo80 On these statements see Edel Untersuchungen zur Phraseologie



Harold M Hays 124

a Knowledge of that by which one becomes an Akh (rxAx ny )

i 81 (1047297fth dynasty second half Saqqara)

I know everything by which an Akh becomes an Akh who ispassed to the necropolis [I know everything by which he isequipped with the great god] I know everything by which heascends to the great god

Hezi 82 (eti Saqqara)

I am an Akh more skilful than any Akh I am an Akh moreequipped than any Akh I know everything skilful by whichan excellent Akh becomes skilful and by which an Akh whois in the necropolis becomes an Akh

Merefnebef 83 (UserkarePepy I Saqqara)

And I know everything by which an Akh who is passed tothe necropolis as one venerated of the great god by the kingbecomes an Akh And I know everything by which he ascendsto the great god

Nekhbu84 (Pepy I Giza)

I am a skilful Akh I know everything by which one is an Akhin the necropolis

Ibi 85 (Pepy II Deir el-Gabrawi)

I am a skilful equipped Akh I know every secret magic ofthe Residence every secret by [which] one becomes an Akh[in] the necropolis

Idu Seneni 86 (Pepy II or later El-Qasr wa es-Saiyad)

25 H Junker Pyramidenzeit Das Wesen der altaumlgyptischen Religion (Zurich 1949) 92 Englund Akh 128 E Edel lsquoInschrift des Jzj aus Saqqararsquo ZAumlS 106 (1979) 113 R J Demareacutee Te Ax iqr n Ra -stelae On Ancestor Worship in Ancient Egypt (Leiden 1983) 193 and210 Baines JARCE 26 (1990) 11ndash12 Silverman in OrsquoConnor andSilverman (eds) Ancient Egyptian Kingship 81 Nordh Aspects 171N Kloth Die (auto-)biographischen Inschriften des aumlgyptischen AltenReiches Untersuchungen zu Phraseologie und Entwicklung (SAK Beiheft8 Hamburg 2002) 116ndash119 Smith in Dieleman and Wendrich(eds) UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 3 For similar examples seeE Doret Te Narrative Verbal System of Old and Middle Egyptian (Geneva 1986) 102ndash103 with nn 1294 and 130081 Edel Untersuchungen zur Phraseologie 66ndash6782 D P Silverman lsquoTe Treat-Formula and Biographical ext in

the omb of Hezi at Saqqararsquo JARCE 37 (2000) 5 Fig 4b83 K Myśliwiec et al Te omb of Merefnebef (Saqqara I Warsaw2004) 73ndash74 and pl 3384 Urk I 218 4ndash685 Norman de Garis Davies Te Rock ombs of Deir el Gebrawi I(ASE 11 London 1902) pl 23 For the improved reading of thetext see Edel Untersuchungen zur Phraseologie 23 and correct thereading and translation of N Kanawati Deir elndashGebrawi II TeSouthern Cliff (ACER 25 Oxford 2007) 54 and pl 54 accordingly86 E Edel Hieroglyphische Inschriften des Alten Reiches (Opladen1981) Fig 4

I am a [skilful] and efficacious Akh I know every secret ofhieroglyphs by which one becomes an Akh in the necropolis

jetu I 87 (late sixth dynasty Giza)

[I am] a skilful lector priest who knows his utterance and Iknow all the skilful magic by which he becomes an Akh in

the necropolisShenrsquoay88 (late sixth dynasty Abydos)

I know all the magic by which one becomes an Akh in thenecropolis

Bebi 89 (sixth dynasty or later Giza)

I know everything by which one becomes an Akh in thenecropolis

b Performance of ritual by which one becomes an Akh(iri ixt Axt ny )

i (1047297fth dynasty second half Saqqara)

Every worthy ritual by which one becomes an Akh has beenperformed for me that which is to be done for a skilful oneamong the Akhs by the service of the lector priest I am initi-ated [to every worthy rite by which one becomes an Akh]

Nimarsquoatre 90 (1047297fth dynasty second half Saqqara)

One whom the king loves is the lector priest who will enter thistomb of mine to perform ritual according to the secret writingof the craft of the lector priest Te king commanded thatevery ritual (by) which one becomes an Akh be done for me

Kaikherptah 91 (Izezi or later Giza)

One whom the king and Anubis loves is the lector priest whowill perform for me the rite by which an Akh becomes an Akhaccording to that secret writing of the craft of the lector priest

Nihetepptah 92 (Izezi or later Saqqara)

Every worthy ritual (by) which one becomes an Akh has beendone for me

87 W K Simpson Mastabas of the Western Cemetery Part I (GizaMastabas 4 Boston 1980) Fig 1588 H Frankfort lsquoTe Cemeteries of Abydos Work of the Season1925ndash26rsquo JEA 14 (1928) pl 20389 J Capart Chambre funeacuteraire de la Sixiegraveme Dynastie aux Museacutees

Royaux du Cinquantenaire (Brussels 1906) pl 590 S Hassan Excavations at Gicircza II (Cairo 1936) Fig 231 According to Edel Untersuchungen zur Phraseologie 26 the instru-mental ny is omitted from the formula91 Junker Gicircza VIII Fig 56 On the signi1047297cance of this statementsee further DuQuesne lsquoldquoEffective in Heaven and on EarthrdquoInterpreting Egyptian Religious Practice for Both Worldsrsquo in J

Assmann and M Bommas (eds) Aumlgyptische Mysterien (Munich2002) 3892 A Badawy Te omb of Nyhetep-Ptah at Giza and the omb oflsquoAnkhmrsquoahor at Saqqara (Berkeley 1978) 7 Fig 13 and pl 13




Ankhmahor 93 (eti Saqqara)

[O lector priest] who will enter this tomb of mine in orderto do the Akh ritual according to that secret writing of thecraft of the lector priest his name and recite forme the equipped sAxw

Mereruka94

(eti Saqqara) As reconstructed this text matches that of i given above


And all the Akh and worthy rituals have been performed forme ndash Wenis-ankh is his great name96 ndash [which are done for theone skilful among] the Akhs by the service of a skilful lectorpriest who really truly knows the rituals And I am initiatedto the secrets of the great god

Shenrsquoay 97 (late sixth dynasty Abydos)

Every ritual by which one becomes an Akh has been per-formed for me

Claims of being an Akh by knowledge and ritual beginto appear toward the end of the 1047297fth dynasty and continuethrough the sixth Usually the two phrases occur separatelyTey are optionally included rhetorical 1047298ourishes notcomponents essential to tomb decor In many cases thestatements are presented as part of a threat as with Shenrsquoaywho says to visitors to his tomb

As for anyone who will take anything of mine by force I willbe judged with them in the necropolis by the great god whenthey are in the West and they will be poorly remembered inthe necropolis for I am a skilful Akh I know all the magic bywhich one becomes an Akh in the necropolis and every ritual

by which one becomes an Akh has been performed for meIn order to make the threat persuasive the deceased

claims to be an Akh o support that claim the deceasedindicates that two ways by which that state is attained havebeen achieved by him One becomes an Akh by knowledgeof arcana and by the performance of ritual

What is the nature of this knowledge Idu claims to bean Akh by lsquoknowing every secret of hieroglyphsrsquo and simi-larly Ibi whose status as an Akh is due to his knowledge oflsquothe secret magic of the Residencersquo the capital itself It isnot a question of drawing a parallel between two differentforms of knowledge court secrets on the one hand andnon-royal knowledge for the afterworld on the other It is

93 Urk I 202 15ndash18 or any of the more recent publications of thismonument listed in Strudwick exts from the Pyramid Age 455 (196)94 See Edel Untersuchungen zur Phraseologie 59ndash61 66ndash67 andTe Sakkarah Expedition Te Mastaba of Mereruka Part II (Chicago1938) pl 21395 Myśliwiec et al Te omb of Merefnebef 72ndash73 and pl 3396 Tis statement is an interpolation (loc cit n 38)97 Frankfort JEA 14 (1928) pl 203

to know the sacred arcana of the royal circle itself it is toknow hieroglyphic texts 98

Te phraseology is subject to substantial embroidery aswith the claims of i

[for I am a skilful Akh] every worthy ritual(by) which one becomes an Akh has been performed for me hellipI am initiated [to every worthy rite by which one becomesan Akh] I know everything by which an Akh becomes an

Akh who is passed to the necropolis [I know everything bywhich he is equipped with the great god] I know everythingby which he ascends to the great god I know everything bywhich he is worthy with the god

He mentions the routes of ritual and knowledge andexpands the basic formulae Te rituals have been per-formed i knows everything needed to become an Akhand he knows how to ascend to the great god Te laststatement offers a palpable link to an inscription to whichDavid P Silverman and others have drawn attention99

Te owner of the inscription Sabni is an Akh because ofhis knowledge of a text of ascending He says lsquoI know theutterance of ascending to the great god lord of the skyrsquo100 Te fusion of Akh knowledge ascent and sky make thepassage unequivocal the deceased claims to know a text bywhich one can literally get into heaven

As Mathieu has pointed out101 the kind of text men-tioned by Sabni is semantically parallel to one mentionedin the Pyramid exts Priests in the process of purifyingthe deceased are said to perform for him the lsquothe utteranceof ascent for Pepy for life and dominion that Pepy mightascend to the skyrsquo (P 254 sect281b ) Te passage makes itclear that the performance of such a text is a means of get-

ting to the sky In another Pyramid ext the goal is also thesky and it is reached through knowledge of texts and magic

May you stride the sky at your striding and travel the Northand the South in your travelling As for the one who trulyknows it this utterance of Re and performs it this magic ofHarakhti he will be one known of Re he will be a companion

of Harakhti Neferkare knows it this utterance of Re withNeferkare performing this magic of Harakhti Neferkare is oneknown of Re and Neferkare is a companion of Harakhti withthe hand of Neferkare grasped at the sky among the Followersof Re (P 456 sect854ndash856)

Te asseveration is generic the one with access to thesky is the one who has technical knowledge It is not theking alone nor one who has physical possession of a text

98 cf Smith in Dieleman and Wendrich (eds) UCLA Encyclopediaof Egyptology 799 Juumlrgens Grundlinien 86 Silverman in OrsquoConnor and Silverman(eds) Ancient Egyptian Kingship 81ndash82 Nordh Aspects 171 andMathieu in Bickel and Mathieu (eds) Drsquoun monde agrave lrsquoautre 257100 L Habachi Sixteen Studies on Lower Nubia (Cairo 1981) 21 Fig 5101 Mathieu in Bickel and Mathieu (eds) Drsquoun monde agrave lrsquoautre 257



Harold M Hays 126

in his tomb it is not social stature which opens the earthand it is not a physical text Knowledge was the conditionof access Hence yet another Pyramid exts passage declareslsquoHe has opened the earth through what he knowsrsquo (P 254sect281b) Te hieroglyphs of the Pyramid exts represent theobject of knowledge which is deployed in ritual to escapefrom the tomb and ascend to the sky

Te Pyramid exts also speak of the efficacy of ritual inattaining the desired afterlife state It is brought about bythe performance of ritual as in P 77 In it a priest ad-dresses oil while applying it to the deceased telling it thatit is the means by which one becomes an Akh

O oil oil where were you O that which is in the brow ofHorus where were you In ltthe browgt of Horus you were inthe brow of Unas do I put you that you give pleasure to himthrough your in1047298uence that you make him an Akh throughyour in1047298uence (P 77 sect52)

Te deceased is frequently informed that what is im-portant is the ritualised vocal performance of priests lsquoTeland speaks the doors of Aker open to you the doors ofGeb spread open to you and you go forth at the voice of Anubis when he as Toth makes you an Akhrsquo (P 437sect796)102 Because priests speak in the role of gods they areable to make the deceased into an Akh103 Te commondenominator to the application of oil and vocal performance

102 Similarly P 483 P 610 P 666 and P 734103 H M Hays lsquoBetween Identity and Agency in Ancient EgyptianRitualrsquo in R Nyord and A Kyoslashlby (eds) Being in Ancient EgyptToughts on Agency Materiality and Cognition (Oxford 2009) 26ndash30

is recitation for even the application of oil is accompaniedby words It is the power of the word to attribute meaningthat makes the physical deed sacred and efficacious104 Testate of being an Akh is induced by ritual

In the non-royal texts the knowledge and rituals bywhich one becomes an Akh are not given they are onlylaid claim to Te Pyramid exts on the other handconstitute these very things Te non-royal deceased laysclaim to knowledge and ritual as supports to exhortationsto the living as when backing up a threat or encouragingthe performance of ritual for him He does not presentthis knowledge or the ritual scripts as the Pyramid extsdo but this is because of a difference in the nature of thetwo discourses And yet despite fundamental differences indiscursive structure both indicate a harmony of means andend between king and courtier

6 sAxw Pyramid exts and pictorial representationsof mortuary service 105

Given the fact that both forms of discourse express a

104 For the concept of sakramentale Ausdeutung see J AssmannlsquoDie Verborgenheit des Mythos in Aumlgyptenrsquo GM 25 (1977) 15ndash25id lsquoSemiosis and Interpretation in Ancient Egyptian Ritualrsquo inS Biderman and B-A Scharfstein (eds) Interpretation in Religion (Leiden 1992) 87ndash89 and 105ndash106 and id lsquoAltaumlgyptischeKultkommentarersquo in J Assmann and B Gladigow (eds) ext undKommentar Archaumlologie der literarischen Kommunikation IV (Munich1995) 97ndash99105 Te following discussion is based on my presentation lsquoRepresen-tations of Mortuary Ritual from the Old to the New Kingdomsrsquo

Fig 1 Ritualists under Offering List after Harpur and Scremin Ptahhotep 365





Harold M Hays 128

Kingdom and that is the purpose of the Pyramid extsNon-royal persons claimed to attain this status by ritual andknowledge and that is what the Pyramid exts embodyNon-royal persons are represented as the object of the of-fering ritual and it is keyed in with ninety Pyramid extsTe captions accompanying representations of mortuary

ritual for non-royal persons state that they are being madeinto an Akh or that sAxw are being performed for them andthe term sAxw is a title for texts of the mortuary literatureincluding Pyramid exts Tese are continuities of religiousbelief and practice

Continuities in representation of mortuary cult for bothroyal and non-royal dead extend from the Old Kingdom tothe New Kingdom and beyond Since the beginning of the1047297fth dynasty mortuary service representations contain threestereotyped elements ritualists offering list and deceasedat offering table111 Most remarkable about this pattern isthat surviving fragments of decoration from the sanctuariesof pyramid temples contain precisely these components Atthe right of Fig 2 the deceased Pepy II is shown seatedat the offering table the offering list in front of him andritualists next to that112 Tey do for the king the same kindsof things as are done for the non-royal Ptahhotep and fordozens of other members of the elite Te same gestures

111 cf Barta Die altaumlgyptische Opferliste 7112 On this scene see further G Lapp Die Opferformel des AltenReiches (Mainz am Rhein 1986) 186

Fig 2 Mortuary Service for Pepy II G Jeacutequier Le monument funeacuteraire de Pepi II II (Cairo 1938) pl61

Fig 3 Nascent ype A Offering List Simpson Kawab KhafkhufuI and II Fig 32




the same ritual poses ndash all pictorially amplifying the mean-ing of the offering list Te actions ritually done for theking are the same as the actions ritually done for the elite

And these are traditional acts After the Old Kingdomthe king is the bene1047297ciary of the same activities as forQueen Hatshepsut in the eighteenth dynasty temple at

Deir el-Bahari113 Tere the ritualists are integrated into ascene that was already stereotypical for centuries and in hercase the representation is even more forthright utterancesfound in the Pyramid exts are integrated into the offer-ing list and combined with utterances found in the Coffinexts A contemporary of Queen Hatshepsut is the officialPuyemre He displays essentially the same stereotypicalscene down to the overt inclusion of texts114 Deceased atoffering table offering list and ritualists are the standardelements of mortuary service representations in the MiddleKingdom as well as in the tomb of Amenemhat an officialcontemporary with Senwosret I115 From the offering chapelof his kingrsquos pyramid temple precisely the same sort ofrepresentation may be reconstructed including the threestereotypical elements116 Returning to the Old Kingdombefore Pepy II one 1047297nds fragments of the offering list

with Sahure and other 1047297fth dynasty kings117 But Sahurersquosfragments are not the earliest elements of this kind of listTey appear in canonical composition and order already atthe very beginning of the 1047297fth dynasty in the tomb of thenon-royal person Debeheni118 His is the earliest attested

113 E Naville Te emple of Deir el Bahri Part IV (EEF 19 London1900) pl 110114 Norman de Garis Davies Te omb of Puyemrecirc at Tebes II

(RPMS 3 New York 1923) pls 49ndash50115 P E Newberry Beni Hasan Part I (ASE 5 London 1893) pl17 On Middle and New Kingdom scenes of mortuary service see

J Spiegel lsquoDie Entwicklung der Opferszenen in den TebanischenGraumlbernrsquo MDAIK 14 (1956) 190ndash207116 Di Arnold Te Pyramid of Senwosret I (PMMA 22 New York1988) pl 56117 See the references given above in n 38118 See Lapp Opferformel 147 Fig 26 (lt LD II pl 35) andor SHassan Excavations at Gicircza IV 1932ndash1933 (Cairo 1943) 176 1047297g122 Te correct date of Debehenirsquos tomb is lsquoend of fourth dynastyto early 1047297fth dynastyrsquo the reasons are given in Barta Die altaumlgyptischeOpferliste 47 Kloth Die (auto-)biographischen Inschriften 38ndash39 at-tempted to push Debehenirsquos date to the middle of the 1047297fth dynasty in

saying lsquoDie Inschrift berichtet von der Errichtung des Grabes durchMykerinos und folglich wurde auch der (auto-)biographische extselbst an das Ende der 4 Dyn datiert Mehrere Argumente sprechen

jedoch fuumlr eine Datierung nicht vor die Mitte der 5 Dynrsquo But to beprecise only one of the points thereafter advanced by her can speakfor such a date And it does so weakly since it is merely involves thecomparative dating of a type of decoration found in Debehenirsquos tombObserving that scenes from the lsquoButic burialrsquo occur in DebeheniKloth asserts that they are not attested before the second half of the1047297fth dynasty But that is only true if Debehenirsquos decoration was notexecuted before this time In other words the dating of the advent of

ype A offering list with ninety matches to the offeringritual Pyramid exts of the pyramid of Unas But precur-sors to this list appear already in the middle of the fourthdynasty when nearly all of the elements of offering listsfrom the tomb of Khafkhufu are found to match those ofDebehenirsquos canonical form though not yet in canonical

order (Fig 3)Scholars including Hermann Junker Winfried Barta and

James P Allen have noticed the interlocking connectionsbetween the canonical offering list and the offering ritualPyramid exts and have concluded that the latter give therecitations for the rites speci1047297ed in the former119 And as

a type of decoration is dependent on the date of the tombs bearingit not the reverse119 See above n 38

Fig 4 Bank1047297eld Stele Authorrsquos drawing after Gardiner JEA 4(1917) pl 55



Harold M Hays 130

this offering list is 1047297rst attested in the tomb of the non-royalpersonage Debeheni at the beginning of the 1047297fth dynastyand unmistakable elements of it are already found in anon-royal tomb securely dated to the reign of Khufu 120 it is crucial to observe that it begins to emerge over twocenturies before Unas When did lsquodemocratisationrsquo take

place If there ever was such a thing it must have takenplace as early as Khufursquos time

In fact the elements of the stereotyped scenes of mortu-ary service already begin to appear as early as the seconddynasty with one of the earliest representations of thelsquoSpeisetischszenersquo (Fig 4) A stele once in the Bank1047297eldMuseum121 now lost shows a kingrsquos daughter122 seated atan offering table and above her appear perhaps the earliestattestations of the Egyptian rites of censing and libating

urning the clock back even further one may discern inthe foetal posture of the buried non-royal dead indications

120 For the date see Simpson Te Mastabas of Kawab Khafkhufu Iand II 9 with n 2121 For this object see A H Gardiner lsquoAn Archaic Funerary Stelersquo

JEA 4 (1917) 256ndash260 According to the personal communicationof Richard Macfarlane Collections Manager Bank1047297eld Museumon 13 April 2010 it is now lost o its bibliography in PM VIIIpart 3 1ndash2 (803-002-400) add H G Fischer Egyptian Studies IIIVaria Nova (New York 1996) 112ndash113 W A Ward lsquoNotes onEgyptian Group-Writingrsquo JNES 16 (1957) 198 W Helck lsquoZu dentheophoren Eigennamen des Alten Reichesrsquo ZAumlS 79 (1954) 27 n 3Reisner in Studies Presented to F Ll Griffith 328 A Scharff lsquoEinearchaische Grabplatte des Berliner Museums und die Entwicklungder Grabplatten im fruumlhen Alten Reichrsquo in Studies Presented to F LlGriffith 355 Junker Gicircza I 27 and A Rusch lsquoDie Entwicklung

der Grabsteinformen im Alten Reichrsquo ZAumlS 58 (1923) 104 Gardiner JEA 4 (1917) dates the Bank1047297eld Stele to the second dynasty andis almost universally followed in this regard Exceptionally the steleis dated to the second or early third dynasty as by W S Smith AHistory of Egyptian Sculpture and Painting in the Old Kingdom (New

York 1978) 139 and 142ndash143 and Rusch ZAumlS 58 (1923) 104 n7 or even more exceptionally to the third or early fourth dynastyby G A Reisner lsquoTe Position of Early Grave Stelaersquo in StudiesPresented to F Ll Griffith (London 1932) 328 Te drawing of Fig5 is my tracing of Gardinerrsquos photograph collated against a morerecent photo kindly provided by Mr Macfarlane and collated againstdrawings of Fischer Egyptian Studies III 113 Fig 2a and S HassanExcavations at Gicircza V (Cairo 1944) 87 Fig 13 Fischerrsquos drawingcertainly and Hassanrsquos probably were made from Gardinerrsquos photo

without reference to the original122 According to Kaplony Inschriften der aumlgyptischen Fruumlhzeit I 602the ownerrsquos name is xww-iAxti but the traces of the attacked birdrsquoshead better suit a rxit -bird rather than an Ax On the other hand heoffers parallels to suggest that the name of the mother and not theowner is mri(t)-nt-ptH (or -Htp as the case may be)

of a belief in the afterlife in the 1047297rst dynasty As ChristianaKoumlhler supposes the posture suggests an intent to be rebornfrom the womb of the grave123 ndash just as is found in themuch later written sources of the Pyramid exts when thedeceased is reborn from the sky-goddess who is embodiedin the tomb124

7 Conclusion

According to the written sources access to a beati1047297ed after-life was not dependent on the possession of texts on onersquostomb walls It was dependent on knowledge and ritualboth of which in the Egyptian world are epitomised inthe language of recitation Access to a desirable afterworld

was dependent on these two features and therefore it wasnecessarily linked to education and economic power bothof which were conditioned by the kingrsquos mighty command

Te Pyramid exts are a profoundly important mani-festation of a wider body of mortuary literature thattranscended the bounds of what has survived exts ofthis literature were also copied on perishable furniture andpapyri virtually all of which are lost More than one socialstratum contributed textual content to the Old Kingdommortuary literature Among the Pyramid exts there weresurely texts originally composed for non-royal personsTeir inclusion in the Pyramid exts indicates that socialcategories of origin were not restrictive but that texts weretransported across social boundaries by adoption

As is vividly brought home by the shared manner ofpictorially representing the same stereotypical scenes ofmortuary service there was a common fund of rites equallyvalid for king and elite and there is concrete evidence of

their use for non-royal persons already in the fourth dynasty Along with this the fact that non-royal persons label certainkinds of texts as sAxw in the Middle Kingdom gives onetangible basis to propose that the sAxw shown performedin Old Kingdom elite tombs were precisely texts from themortuary literature of which the Pyramid exts formed partTese same rites were those that made the deceased into an

Akh Upon their performance and through their knowledgethe dead were supposed to attain to an exalted state

Not so the theory of the democratisation of the afterlife

123 E C Koumlhler lsquoUrsprung einer langen radition Grab und oten-kult in der Fruumlhzeitrsquo in Guksch Hofmann and Bommas (eds) Grabund otenkult 16124 H M Hays lsquoUnreading the Pyramidsrsquo BIFAO 109 (2009) 197





Harold M Hays 116

greeted my discussion and the con1047297dence with which itis still invoked are signs of what I believe to be the actualstate of affairs Tough the theory has been critiqued severaltimes there is still a large proportion of Egyptologists whomaintain it Te result in the near term will probably becognitive dissonance in the 1047297eld as the time-honoured com-

monplace staggers on despite the evidence and argumentsBut the facts have a way of prevailing in the end Te

present discussion will contribute to the inquiry on thetopic by identifying the roots of the theoryrsquos originalformulation and in this way it hopes to complement thegeneral description by Harco Willems of the socio-politicalenvironment at its academic birth6 In locating its originmy discussion will highlight its chief 1047298aw ndash that it rests uponnegative evidence ndash and argue that the history of religion inthe Old Kingdom should rather be based on the evidencethat does exist Tis point will serve as a springboard for aconsideration of two means of access to the afterlife in theOld Kingdom as expressed in non-royal and royal tombsknowledge and ritual Drawing attention to representationsof ritual found in royal and non-royal tombs I hope to showa commonality of belief and practice between king and elite

1 Te birth of the democratisation theory It is not difficult to 1047297nd an exposition of the theory Tedescription of Rosalie David should be perfectly familiarfor instance lsquoWhereas during the Old Kingdom only theking could expect to enjoy an individual immortality inDynasties 11 and 12 this was replaced with a democratisa-tion of beliefsrsquo7 Such accounts usually do not feel obligedto cite a reference in substantiation so seemingly well

understood is the theory But the story of its origins helpsclarify its actual supports and claimsMark Smith observes that the democratisation theory had

its advent as early as James Henry Breastedrsquos Development ofReligion and Tought in Ancient Egypt 8 Published in 1912four years after Kurt Sethersquos synoptic presentation of thePyramid exts began to appear9 his was the 1047297rst study tomake use of these texts in a comprehensive way It wasalso the 1047297rst to situate them within the context of alreadyknown corpora namely the Book of the Dead from theNew Kingdom and one from the Middle Kingdom thatsoon came to be called lsquoCoffin extsrsquo Breasted observed that

and Some Implications for the Old Kingdomrsquo JARCE 43 (2007)226 with references to other adherents in his n 32 and J P AllenlsquoSome Aspects of the Non-royal Afterlife in the Old Kingdomrsquo in MBaacuterta (ed) Te Old Kingdom Art and Archaeology (Prague 2006) 96 See Willems Les extes des Sarcophages 135ndash142 and Willemsin Assmann and Roeder (eds) Handbuch der altaumlgyptischen Religion7 R David Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt (London 2002) 1548 Smith in Dieleman and Wendrich (eds) UCLA Encyclopedia ofEgyptology 29 K Sethe Die altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte I (Leipzig 1908)

in the Old Kingdom the Pyramid exts lsquowere all intendedfor the kingrsquos exclusive use and as a whole contain beliefswhich apply only to the kingrsquo Te key reason for thisassessment was the lsquosigni1047297cant fact that the nobles of theage made practically no use of the Pyramid exts in theirown tombsrsquo10 But in the Middle Kingdom11 such texts

were lsquolargely appropriated by the middle and official classrsquoin a situation Breasted described as lsquothe popularization ofthe mortuary customs of the upper classesrsquo12 o label themortuary literature appearing in the Middle KingdomBreasted coined the term Coffin exts 13 chosen for thetypical medium on which mortuary texts then appeared Interms of content they were deemed by him to be similarto the Pyramid exts lsquoidentical in function but evidentlymore suited to the needs of common mortalsrsquo14 As a corol-lary to this development the non-royal dead in the MiddleKingdom received the pre1047297x lsquoOsirisrsquo to his name lsquoso thathe not only as of old entered the kingdom of Osiris [ sc thenecropolis] to enjoy the godrsquos protection and favor but henow became Osiris and was conceived as kingrsquo15

As far as the supports of the theory are concernedBreasted advanced only this the attested disparity of socialdistribution of mortuary literature between the Old andMiddle Kingdoms a similar disparity in the use of theepithet lsquoOsirisrsquo as a mark of spiritual attainment and anassumed difference in appropriateness of content betweenPyramid exts and Coffin exts Tis simple combinationconstitutes the core of the theory

It may have struck the reader that in none of the givenquotations does Breasted use the term democratization itself preferring instead lsquopopularization of the mortuary

customs of the upper classesrsquo and lsquopopularization of theold royal hereafterrsquo16 o be sure he does employ the verbdemocratize twice17 but it was up to his colleague and

10 Both quotations are from J H Breasted Development of Religionand hought in Ancient Egypt Lectures Delivered on the MorseFoundation at Union Teological Seminary (New York 1912) 99cf similarly id Te Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

A Beginning and a Program (Chicago 1922) 74 id Te OrientalInstitute (Chicago 1933) 152 id Te Dawn of Conscience (New

York 1933) 223ndash24911 Called by Breasted the lsquoFeudal Agersquo which he de1047297nes as lsquoa thou-sand years after the Old Kingdomrsquo and speci1047297cally as the lsquowelfth

Dynastyrsquo and thus the lsquoearly Feudal Agersquo with him is coeval to lsquoearlyin the welfth Dynastyrsquo namely the reign of Amenemhat I (idDevelopment 167 180 and 249 with n 1)12 ibid 272 with this and the discussion of which it is part para-phrased in id Te Dawn of Conscience 23513 id Development 273 n 114 ibid 27215 ibid 256 see also ibid 257 with these two pages paraphrasedin id Te Dawn of Conscience 22316 id Development 25717 loc cit






















Harold M Hays 118




























36





Harold M Hays 120




































Harold M Hays 122













Sacred Landrsquo68






















accessible areas79








Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion
































Harold M Hays 118




























36





Harold M Hays 120




































Harold M Hays 122













Sacred Landrsquo68






















accessible areas79








Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion













Harold M Hays 118




























36





Harold M Hays 120




































Harold M Hays 122













Sacred Landrsquo68






















accessible areas79








Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion






















36





Harold M Hays 120




































Harold M Hays 122













Sacred Landrsquo68






















accessible areas79








Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion













Harold M Hays 120




































Harold M Hays 122













Sacred Landrsquo68






















accessible areas79








Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion


































Harold M Hays 122













Sacred Landrsquo68






















accessible areas79








Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion













Harold M Hays 122













Sacred Landrsquo68






















accessible areas79








Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion


























accessible areas79








Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion













Harold M Hays 124







































Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion
















Mereruka94


























Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion













Harold M Hays 126
















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion















Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion













Harold M Hays 128


























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion






























Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion













Harold M Hays 130











7 Conclusion













Documents

HAYS, 2011 Democratisation