Download or read book Crowns in Egyptian Funerary Literature written by Katja Goebs and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new approach to analysing the image of ancient Egyptian kings and gods. The author studies textual evidence rather than the often stereotyped iconography, focusing on mentions of the king's White and Red Crowns and demonstrating that they possess a wide-ranging symbolism that transcends the terrestrial sphere to encompass the divine and the cosmos, death and rebirth. In funerary texts of the Old and Middle Kingdoms (ca. 2300-1700 BC), crowns play a part in the deceased king's ascent to the sky and transfiguration, enabling him to assume the form and powers of a celestial god. Crowns express such attributes as the legitimate rule of gods or of the deceased, as well as radiance; they are also metaphors for cosmic events. Personified as goddesses, they are the deceased's mothers and nurses. These symbolic functions are integrated into richly metaphorical texts that combine the explicit with the allusive and the concrete with the evanescent. The book discusses occurrences of the White, Red, and Double Crowns in the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, as well as other selected examples. A major section reinterprets the famous Cannibal Spell as a description of sunrise that fits seamlessly with the themes of other texts. This study will be of great interest not just to Egyptologists but also for the parallels it offers for styles of royal and divine symbolism that are found in many civilisations.
Download or read book Concepts in Middle Kingdom Funerary Culture written by Rune Nyord and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concepts in Middle Kingdom Funerary Culture presents a collection of archaeological and philological papers discussing how ancient Egyptians thought, and modern scholars may think, about Egyptian funerary practices of the early 2nd millennium BCE.
Download or read book Handbook of Egyptian Mythology written by Geraldine Pinch and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-09-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning ancient Egyptian culture (ca. 3200 B.C.E. to C.E. 400), the Handbook of Egyptian Mythology is the only complete survey of Egyptian mythology of its kind available in English. In this comprehensive introduction to Egyptian mythology, author Geraldine Pinch shows how the mythology of Ancient Egypt must be pieced together from a variety of written and visual sources. Relationships between deities changed, and the Egyptian myths were never gathered by priests into an "authorized version." Handbook of Egyptian Mythology provides a brief discussion about the nature of myths; the concept of time in Egyptian mythology; a historical overview of the sources of Egyptian myth; and a dictionary of deities, themes, and concepts, which concentrates on the prominent gods and goddesses in Egyptian myth. The book also includes references to general works on Egyptian culture, religion, and myth; translations of ancient texts; and a selection of literature influenced by Egyptian myth.
Download or read book Egyptian Mythology written by Geraldine Pinch and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning ancient Egyptian culture--from 3200 BC to AD 400--Pinch opens a door to this hidden world and casts light on the nature of myths and how they relate to the evolution of Egyptian culture. She includes a timeline covering the seven stages in the mythical history of Egypt and outlining the major events of each stage. A substantial A to Z section covers the principal themes and concepts of Egyptian mythology as well as the most important deities, demons, and other characters. This is an ideal introduction for students interested in learning about Egyptian myths, and the culture that created them.
Download or read book All Things Ancient Egypt 2 volumes written by Lisa K. Sabbahy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by specialists in the field of Egyptology, this book is a readable introduction to ancient Egypt, covering all anticipated subjects and stressing the monuments and material culture of this remarkable ancient civilization. The rich natural resources of ancient Egypt provided a wealth of raw material for its structures, sculptures, and art, while its geographic isolation helped to ensure the survival of its rich culture for centuries. While other references focus on the people and battles central to Egyptian history, this reference explores the material culture and social institutions of ancient Egypt. The book focuses on pharaonic Egypt, covering the period from roughly 5000 BCE to the beginning of the Greco-Roman Period in 320 BCE. At the front of the work, a timeline provides a quick look at the major events in Egyptian history, and an introduction surveys ancient Egypt's physical geography and history. Alphabetically arranged reference entries written by expert contributors then provide fundamental information about the buildings, jewelry, social practices, and other topics related to the material culture and institutions that made up the Egyptian world. Excerpts from primary source historical documents provide evidence for what we know about ancient Egyptian culture, and suggestions for further reading direct users to additional sources of information.
Download or read book The Ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books written by John Coleman Darnell and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2018-11-07 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first, complete English translation of the ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books The ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books, important compositions that decorated the New Kingdom royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, present humanity's oldest surviving attempts to provide a scientific map of the unseen realms beyond the visible cosmos and contain imagery and annotations that represent ancient Egyptian speculation (essentially philosophical and theological) about the events of the solar journey through the twelve hours of the night. The Netherworld Books describe one of the central mysteries of Egyptian religious belief—the union of the solar god Re with the underworldly god Osiris—and provide information on aspects of Egyptian theology and cosmography not present in the now more widely read Book of the Dead. Numerous illustrations provide overview images and individual scenes from each Netherworld Book, emphasizing the unity of text and image within the compositions. The major texts translated include the Book of Adoring Re in the West (the Litany of Re), the Book of the Hidden Chamber (Amduat), the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Books of the Creation of the Solar Disk, and the Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity. Features: Accessible presentations of the main concepts of the Netherworld Books and the chief features of each text Notes and commentary address major theological themes within the texts as well as lexicographic and/or grammatical issues An overview of later uses of these compositions during the first millennium BCE
Download or read book Book of the Dead written by Foy Scalf and published by Oriental Institute Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover how the ancient Egyptians controlled their immortal destiny! This book, edited by Foy Scalf, explores what the Book of the Dead was believed to do, how it worked, how it was made, and what happened to it.
Download or read book The Image of God in the Garden of Eden written by Catherine L. McDowell and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-09-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catherine McDowell presents a detailed and insightful analysis of the creation of adam in Gen 2:5–3:24 in light of the Mesopotamian mīs pî pīt pî (“washing of the mouth, opening of the mouth”) and the Egyptian wpt-r (opening of the mouth) rituals for the creation of a divine image. Parallels between the mouth washing and opening rituals and the Eden story suggest that the biblical author was comparing and contrasting human creation with the ritual creation, animation, and installation of a cult statue in order to redefine ṣelem ʾelohîm as a human being—the living likeness of God tending and serving in the sacred garden. McDowell also considers the explicit image and likeness language in Gen 1:26–27. Drawing from biblical and extrabiblical texts, she demonstrates that ṣelem and demût define the divine-human relationship, first and foremost, in terms of kinship. To be created in the image and likeness of Elohim was to be, metaphorically speaking, God’s royal sons and daughters. While these royal qualities are explicit in Gen 1, McDowell persuasively argues that kinship is the primary metaphor Gen 1 uses to define humanity and its relationship to God. Further, she discusses critical issues, noting the problems inherent in the traditional views on the dating and authorship of Gen 1–3, and the relationship between the two creation accounts. Through a careful study of the tôledôt in Genesis, she demonstrates that Gen 2:4 serves as both a hinge and a “telescope”: the creation of humanity in Gen 2:5–3:24 should be understood as a detailed account of the events of Day 6 in Gen 1. When Gen 1–3 are read together, as the final redactor intended, these texts redefine the divine-human relationship using three significant and theologically laden categories: kinship, kingship, and cult. Thus, they provide an important lens through which to view the relationship between God and humanity as presented in the rest of the Bible.
Download or read book The Coffin of Heqata written by Harco Willems and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 1996 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coffin published in this book represents a type that had some popularity in southern Upper Egypt in the early Middle Kingdom, but which, despite its extraordinary decoration had not attracted attention so far. The most striking feature of the decoration is that the object friezes - the pictorial rendering of ritual implements usually found on coffin interiors of the period - also include complete ritual scenes, some of which are attested only here. Apart from this, the decoration includes an extensive selection of the religious texts know as the Coffin Texts. The author first studies the archaeological context and dating of the coffin and attempts a reconstruction of the construction procedures from his technical description of the monument. The detailed account of the decoration in the rest of the book interprets the ritual iconography and offers fresh translations and interpretations of the Coffin Texts. A methodological innovation is that he regards the scenes and texts not as individual decoration elements, but as components of an integral composition. The background of this composition is argued to be a view of life in the hereafter in which the deceased is involved in an unending cycle of ritual action which reflects the funerary rituals that were actually performed on earth. On the one hand, these netherworldly rituals aim at bringing the deceased to new life by mummification, on the other the newly regenerated deceased partakes in embalming rituals for gods representing his dead father (Osiris or Atum). These gods, in their turn, effectuate the deceased's regeneration. The entire process results in a cycle of resuscitation in which the afterlife of the deceased and of the 'father gods' are interdependent. The sociological bias of this interpretation, with its emphasis on kinship relations, differs significantly from earlier attempts to explain Egyptian funerary religion.
Download or read book The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Moon Coffin Texts Spells 154 160 written by Gyula Priskin and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes that Coffin Texts spells 154–160, recorded at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, form the oldest composition about the moon in ancient Egypt and, indeed, the world. Based on a new translation, the detailed analysis of these spells reveals that they provide a chronologically ordered account of the phenomena of a lunar month.
Download or read book A Journey through the Beyond written by Silvia Zago and published by Lockwood Press. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers the first comprehensive overview of the evolution over time of a foundational concept of the Egyptian afterlife beliefs, the Duat, or netherworld. The Duat is a complicated, multifaceted notion, which was never canonized into a single version of the beyond, but offered instead a variety of alternatives attempting to describe the metaphysical realms beyond the visible world, and beyond life. Theological speculations gave rise to a rich textual and visual repertoire, which underwent a process of evolution over thousands of years, during which newer ideas and images were constantly introduced. Through the analysis of royal and non-royal funerary texts from the late Old Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom, this book traces the development of the conceptualization of the notion of Duat, outlining what it encompassed and where it was imagined to be located. In addition to the translation and discussion of the most significant passages of the texts analyzed, each chapter also provides an overview of the individual compositions and of the relevant theological, cosmological, and astronomical notions complementing the conceptual framework, of which the Duat formed but a part. Additionally, discussions of concurrent changes in Egyptian culture, society, and ideology are included in order to clarify the context in which afterlife beliefs and related texts evolved. An analysis of the correlation between funerary compositions and their material supports complements the study, emphasizing the Egyptians' belief in a magical synergy between texts, images, and their contexts in the activation of a suitable, effective afterlife for the recipients of the texts.
Download or read book Studies in Ancient Egyptian Funerary Literature written by Susanne Bickel and published by Orientalia Lovaniensia Analect. This book was released on 2017 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Egyptian funerary literature encompasses a complex, dynamic, and open group of texts and images selected to be deposited in mortuary settings. Despite this shared final purpose, they derive from a variety of spheres of origin (ritual, apotropaic, medical, legal) and can be concurrently used in different contexts. They further exhibit a semantic density and were transmitted across the centuries, and subjected to modifications as they were incorporated into new social, religious, or functional environments. With a wide chronological spectrum of topics addressed, the manifold approaches collected here aim to challenge traditional conceptions and procedures of analysis and to introduce new sets of ideas.
Download or read book Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt written by John Baines and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-05-17 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A generously illustrated selection of John Baines's influential writings on two core areas of ancient Egyptian civilization: the role of writing, which was very different in antiquity from what is familiar in the modern world, and the importance of visual culture. These questions are explored through a number of case studies. The volume assembles articles that were scattered in publications in a variety of disciplines, making available key contributions on core problems of theory, comparison, and analysis in the study of many civilizations and offering important points of departure for further research. Three wholly new essays are included, and the overall approach is an interdisciplinary one, synthesizing insights from archaeology, anthropology, and art history as well as Egyptology.
Download or read book A Commemoration Ritual for Senwosret I written by Christina Geisen and published by Yale Egyptology. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Commemoration Ritual for Senwosret I, better known under the term Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus, is a document that was found in a late Middle Kingdom tomb in the Ramesseum necropolis, together with other manuscripts and artifacts, all primarily magico-medical in function. The present study discusses the occupation of the tomb owner based on an analysis of this exceptional find in its entirety. The main core of the book is dedicated, however, to the Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus. It examines the fabrication of the manuscript and its present condition. An updated translation and a grammatical analysis of the text are provided and a discussion of the relationship of myth and ritual as well as of the dramatic aspect of the ritual is included. Based on the analysis of the content, the participants in the ritual, the representation of the king in the vignettes, and relying on the comparison between the rites occurring in this document and those included in other royal and statue rituals attested from ancient Egypt, it can be shown that the text features a ritual that was held in commemoration of the deceased king Senwosret I. The book also includes photographs of the manuscript as well as digital drawings of the papyrus.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Pharaonic Egypt written by Richard Bussmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Richard Bussmann presents a fresh overview of ancient Egyptian society and culture in the age of the pyramids. He addresses key themes in the comparative research of early complex societies, including urbanism, funerary culture, temple ritual, kingship, and the state, and explores how ideas and practices were exchanged between ruling elites and local communities in provincial Egypt. Unlike other studies of ancient Egypt, this book adopts an anthropological approach that places people at the centre of the analysis. Bussmann covers a range of important themes in cross-cultural debates, such as materiality, gender, non-elite culture, and the body. He also offers new perspectives on social diversity and cultural cohesion, based on recent discoveries. His study vividly illustrates how our understanding of ancient Egyptian society benefits from the application of theoretical concepts in archaeology and anthropology to the interpretation of the evidence.
Download or read book Early Northwest Semitic Serpent Spells in the Pyramid Texts written by Richard C. Steiner and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword / by Robert K. Ritner -- Introduction -- R'r-R?', the Two-Headed mother snake -- The Semitic spells and their Egyptian context -- Old Egyptian phonology -- Conclusions.
Download or read book The Egyptian World written by Toby Wilkinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-09-18 with total page 589 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Egyptian World provides an authoritative exploration of Ancient Egyptian civilization. The volume covers seven broad themes, with each section allowing specialists to focus on a particular topic.
