Tutanchamuns Ruder. Über die Bewegungskraft der Materie im Alten Ägypten

This article outlines a theory of the ancient Egyptian tomb as a material vessel of the pharao’s afterlife. With closed cavities, openings, and deliberately chosen contents, the tombs were highly ingenious, multi-layered models intended to explore the unknown: what happens after death. A close look at eleven types of steering oars discovered in the burial chamber of Tut.Ankh.Amen’s tomb identifies them as intermediate objects that connect the funerary texts inscribed on the pharaoh’s golden shrines and the realm of material things, illuminating ancient Egyptian expectations of the afterlife.

From Thebes to Piramesse — and Back: On the Text History of Supplementary Chapter 166 of the Book of the Dead

The colophon of BD supplementary chapter 166 states that the text had been found at the neck of Ramses II’s mummy. Dahms, Pehal, and Willems had argued in JEA 100 (2014) that the original document had not formed part of the original tomb equipment of Ramses II, but had been added in the course of the Twenty-First Dynasty after the tomb robberies in the Valley of the Kings. In 2016, J. Quack raised fundamental criticism against this interpretation, arguing that the text dates to the early Ramesside Period and had probably been applied in Piramesse to the mummy of Ramses II. The present article offers a critical reassessment of Quack’s paper. The linguistic register of funerary texts, the development of the negative aorist, and contextual indications strengthen the idea that the text was written in Thebes in the Twenty-First Dynasty in the social context of the Amun priesthood.

Acerca de existir y no-existir en la Duat. Inventario para un estudio ontológico de los textos funerarios de las tumbas reales del Valle de los Reyes = About Exist and Non-exist in the Duat. Inventory for an Ontological Study of the Funerary Texts of the Royal Tombs of the Valley of the Kings

El plan de trabajo del presente estudio pretende abordar cuestiones vinculadas a los dos contextos antagónicos que permean la vinculación entre Ra y Osiris, pero sobre todo el primero, y los habitantes de la Duat; esto es, existir y no-existir como realidades continuadas desde el Más Acá al Más Allá. Asimismo, la capacidad de existir/devenir de aquellos dioses también será cotejada y tenida en cuenta.Serán estudiados los textos funerarios más representativos de lo que llamamos «dialéctica de la regeneración en el Reino Nuevo» –el Libro del Amduat, el Libro de las Cavernas, el Libro de las Puertas y el Libro de la Tierra–, pertenecientes a tumbas reales, y que explícitamente plantean la antinomia existir/no-existir. A tales efectos, nos centraremos por ello en las alusiones que en los textos se traducen como existir-existencia/no existir-inexistencia, -xpr, tmw jw.tjw, n xpr-, entre otros.Es la dialéctica inherente a la Duat la que provoca que, subsumidos en esta ecuación configurativa existencia/inexistencia, asistamos a procesos de segregación, parcialización, incompletud, disolución ontológicas, entre otros, corolarios todos de la dinámica y diversidad de la Duat.Abstract The aim of this study is intended to address issues related to the two antagonistic contexts that permeate the link between Re and Osiris, but especially the first, and the inhabitants of the Duat; that is, existing and non-existing as continued realities from here to the hereafter. Also, the ability of existing / becoming of those gods will be also collated and taken into account. Will be studied the most representative funerary texts of what we call «dialectic of regeneration in the New Kingdom» –the Book of Amduat– the Book of Caverns, the Book of Gates, and the Book of the Earth-, belonging to Royal Tombs, which explicitly raised the discrepancy exist/non-exist. For such purposes, we will focus therefore on allusion that the texts are translated as exist-existence/non exist-inexistence -xpr, jw.tjw, xpr tmw-, among others.It is the dialectic inherent to Duat, which causes that, subsumed in this existence/non-existence configurative equation, we will see processes of segregation, polarization, incompleteness, ontological dissolution, among others, all corollaries of the dynamics and diversity of Duat.

Some Notes Concerning the Texts on the Two Brothers’ Coffins in Context

This paper discusses the so-called ornamental use of texts on the late Middle Kingdom coffins belonging to Nakht-ankh and Khnum-nakht, the famous “Two Brothers”. The texts include heavily shortened versions of Pyramid- and Coffin Texts spells that the copyists apparently did not attempt to include in their entirety. Yet they can be seen to have made a number of conscious editorial decisions and selected the texts from a small closed set of spells, suggesting that their intent was not merely decorative. It is argued that the ornamental use of funerary texts represents a local religious tradition where the excerpts served as tokens and magical substitutes for the larger compositions from which they derive.

The Ritual of the Hours of the Day on the inner vault of the qrsw-coffin of Nes(pa)qashuty from Deir el-Bahari

In 1932–1933, a shaft tomb with several funerary ensembles of a family of Late Period priests of Montu was found on the Upper Terrace of the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. Among them was the Qrsw-coffin of Nes(pa)qashuty, which is the first coffin to date containing a version of the Rituals of the Hours of the Day and the Night with excerpts from the daily hymns to the sun-god on the inner vault of the lid. The texts for the Ritual of the Hours of the Day, written in cursive hieroglyphs, are here represented as standard hieroglyphs, with destroyed or illegible parts supplemented, followed by comments and translations. The coffin contains three hymns unknown from other sources. Finally, there are some remarks on the transmission of this important text in general and on the series of private funerary texts divided into 24 hours and representing their corresponding deities.