Download or read book The Osireion at Abydos Classic Reprint written by Margaret A. Murray and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Osireion at Abydos In the winter of 1901-02 Mr. St. G. Caulfeild undertook the further examination of the temple of Sety at Abydos. Our work there resulted in finding the temenos wall, and showing the connection between the planning of that temple and the Royal Tombs of the early kings on the desert behind it. These results, and his careful study of the plan of the temple appeared in the last volume of the Research Account. But he also made other discoveries, which have been followed up during the next winter by Miss Murray, with the results here issued in this volume. When Mr. Caulfeild began to excavate, I noticed some thick masses of crude brick, and suggested that they might be mastabas. He cleared along them and found that they formed a continuous wall, which we then identified as the temenos wall of the temple. I observed that parallel with this there was a slight long hollow on the surface, and proposed that he should clear it out. Some time after, on looking at the site, I was told the men had found desert a few feet down. This seemed strange, and on looking at it I saw that there was only blown sand. So they were told to go deeper. Again, after some time, on going there again, the same story of desert at the bottom was repeated; only this time about fifteen feet down. On examining it I found blown sand. So a third time they were told to go down, and soon after they struck some great blocks of limestone. The final result was that we found the pavement of the hall was forty-one feet under the surface; a depth filled up with some Roman rubbish and much blown sand over it. After the excavations by Miss Murray and my wife, we realized that these great stones which we first found were the remains of the doorway to a limestone chamber near the north-west corner of the temenos, which had been entirely carried away for lime burning in Roman times. From the place of this doorway Mr. Caulfeild carried on excavations, continually expecting to come to an end of the entrance passage to the south, and find a door of approach to the subterranean constructions; but after continuing for a couple of hundred feet this seemed as far off as ever; and the season being at an end nothing more was done. Miss Murray, then, entered on the work, with the certainty of a long inscribed passage to be cleared and copied, and its terminations to be found. Various attempts were made to settle the beginning of it by surface workings, tracing the filling of made earth which lay over it. And these resulted in showing that it turned at right angles, and led up towards the back doorway of the temple. But it could not be found at its beginning owing to the immense rubbish heaps thrown out in Mariette's clearing of the temple halls. The work was therefore concentrated on a point where the filling seemed to be undisturbed over the construction, hoping to find there the roof intact, and so enter an unbroken part of the passages. But on descending we found that the filling in had only been left because there was no roof under it there; and the whole of the ancient roofing had been removed, so far as we were able to ascertain, excepting one cracked lintel. Thus, nothing short of removing the whole forty feet of stuff over the whole construction can ever clear it. This season only sufficed for the trial working, and clearing the great hall, one chamber, and part of a passage. To do the whole clearance is beyond the slight resources of the Egyptian Research Account; and it is much to be hoped that the Department of Antiquities will undertake to open and maintain this unique hypogeum of Osiris as a part of the great temple which is one of the main attractions of Egypt. It was most fortunate that we had the knowledge of Miss Murray and the artistic copying of Miss Hansard available for such a work, which required long and tedious facsimiles to be prepared, with due attention to the inscriptions. The elaborate stu...

Download or read book The Excavation of the Osireion at Abydos written by and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Osireion at Abydos written by Margaret Alice Murray and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 The Temple of Ramesses II in Abydos written by Ogden Goelet and published by Lockwood Press. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the enormous monuments throughout Egypt and Nubia that Ramesses II (the Great; ca. 1279-1212 BCE) left behind, his temple at Abydos, built early in his reign, stands as one of his most elegant, with its simple architectural layout and dramatic and graceful painted relief scenes. Though best known for its dramatic reliefs depicting the battle of Kadesh, the temple also offers a wealth of information about religious and social life in ancient Egypt. It reflects, for example, the strenuous efforts of the early Ramessides to reestablish the Osiris cult in Egypt-and particularly at Abydos-in the aftermath of the Amarna period. Building on the comprehensive photographic and epigraphic documentation of the temple presented in The Temple of Ramesses II at Abydos volumes 1 (Wall Scenes) and 2 (Pillars, Niches, and Miscellanea), volume 3 (Architectural and Inscriptional Features) offers a detailed analysis of the overall architectural layout and decorative program of the temple and its symbolism. This discussion approaches the religious history of the site through its archaeology, its inscriptions-both planned and secondary (graffiti)-and its situation in the complex religious landscape of Abydos. Of particular interest are the temple's role as a staging point for the great Osiris Festival and its procession, among the most important of all ritual events in the Egyptian religious calendar during the Ramesside period; the promotion of an active, unbound form of Osiris; and the evidence for important cult activities that took place on the rooftop of the temple, the presence of which is documented today by the staircase that accessed it from Court B.

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 Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East Egypt Rome and Greece written by Annette Imhausen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medicine, astronomy, dealing with numbers - even the cultures of the "pre-modern" world offer a rich spectrum of scientific texts. But how are they best translated? Is it sufficient to translate the sources into modern scientific language, and thereby, above all, to identify their deficits? Or would it be better to adopt the perspective of the sources themselves, strange as they are, only for them not to be properly understood by modern readers? Renowned representatives of various disciplines and traditions present a controversial and constructive discussion of these problems.

Download or read book The Journal of Hellenic Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Decoding the Osirian Myth written by Panagiota Sarischouli and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-09-23 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earliest written references to the Osirian myth-complex appeared already in the Pyramid Text spells (c. 2400–2300 BCE). The most complete exposition of this ancient Egyptian myth is, however, found in the Greek treatise On Isis and Osiris, in which the 2nd-century CE Platonist Plutarch utilises Egyptian mythology to advocate his philosophical ideas concerning the divine and the nature of the cosmos. This book aims at “decoding” Plutarch’s narrative of the Osirian myth, linking his claims to the existing Egyptian and Greek parallels. It thus analyses a multitude of mythic and religious traditions from a transcultural perspective, exploring the relation of the Pharaonic features of the Osirian divinities to the features they had acquired in Ptolemaic and Roman times, interpreting the Egyptian myth within the overall framework of parallel mythologies from other cultures, and examining whether the brief mythic stories (historiolae) recited in Late Egyptian ritual texts can be deployed to enrich the context of certain obscure episodes in Plutarch’s account of the myth. The book will be of great interest not only to scholars and students of Plutarch and later Middle Platonism, but also to Egyptologists. Due to its thematic variety and scope, this publication will also appeal to a wider array of readers (specialists and non-specialists alike) interested in religious syncretism, interreligious connections, and the challenge of multiculturalism from Hellenistic times until Late Antiquity.

Download or read book Egyptian Religion and Mysteries written by Earle de Motte and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Subjects covered in these pages include: Egyptian Spirituality The Akhenaten Heresy and Its Impact on Religion and Mystical Thought Creation Mythology of the Four Centres The Soul and Its Journey in Egyptian Metaphysical Thought Secrets of the Book of the Dead The Nature of the Human Being Ra's Journey through the Underworld and Its Initiatory Significance Egyptian Mysteries as the Prototype of Ancient Mystery Schools Shamans, Hierophants, and the Initiatory Process Wisdom of the Egyptian Sages, from Ancient Egypt to the Hermetic Mystics of Alexandria The Heart as the Spiritual Self and Monitor of Morality in Human Behaviour KIRKUS REVIEW: A collection of insights into the esoteric meanings of ancient Egyptian religious and spiritual practices. This extraordinary book, the product of extensive research by author and Rosicrucian lecturer de Motte (The Grail Quest, 2003), is ideal for readers who want to go beyond ancient Egypt's pyramids, artifacts and mummies. Here, in highly readable form, the author presents the broad outlines of the ancient Egyptian spiritual belief system-from the founding cosmology of a watery, amorphous pre-creation mass to the rise of Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus and Seth, and on to the highly developed use of symbols as keys to mystic truths, comprehended only by a chosen few. Why do ancient Egyptian renderings of human figures have bird heads? The book gives the answer: They depict, among other things, the soul in flight, freed from an earthly cage and able to access other realms of reality. The book also explains how the scarab, an insect that stores balls of dung to feed its offspring, is intimately linked to the mighty sun god Ra, who must successfully pass through the underworld each night. One of the book's main themes is the notion that, in every age, there's a body of secret knowledge about life, death and the afterlife known only to initiates and never preached or recorded. That knowledge is passed on exclusively by word of mouth over the millennia, lest it fall into the hands of those who would abuse it. In the Egyptian model, the priestly class served this function in so-called "mystery schools" with elaborate pageantry. Although de Motte's prose is highly readable, some readers may find this a difficult book to absorb. The author presents a very large amount of information here, and readers not well-acquainted with his topic may find it necessary to re-read it to keep from getting lost. Only bona fide Egyptologists can render scholarly judgment on de Motte's dazzling pages, but neophytes will appreciate the author's liberal citation of experts, even when he doesn't agree with them. An impressive work that brings light to a mysterious ancient culture.

Download or read book Down to the Hour Short Time in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Clock time", with all its benefits and anxieties, is often viewed as a "modern" phenomenon, but ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures also had tools for marking and measuring time within the day and wrestled with challenges of daily time management. This book brings together for the first time perspectives on the interplay between short-term timekeeping technologies and their social contexts in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Its contributions denaturalize modern-day concepts of clocks, hours, and temporal frameworks; describe some of the timekeeping solutions used in antiquity; and illuminate the diverse factors that affected how individuals and communities structured their time.

Download or read book The National Union Catalog Pre 1956 Imprints written by and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fingerprints of the Gods written by Graham Hancock and published by Crown. This book was released on 2012-09-19 with total page 779 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could the story of mankind be far older than we have previously believed? Using tools as varied as archaeo-astronomy, geology, and computer analysis of ancient myths, Graham Hancock presents a compelling case to suggest that it is. Graham Hancock is featured in Ancient Apocalypse, a Netflix original docuseries. “A fancy piece of historical sleuthing . . . intriguing and entertaining and sturdy enough to give a long pause for thought.”—Kirkus Reviews In Fingerprints of the Gods, Hancock embarks on a worldwide quest to put together all the pieces of the vast and fascinating jigsaw of mankind’s hidden past. In ancient monuments as far apart as Egypt’s Great Sphinx, the strange Andean ruins of Tihuanaco, and Mexico’s awe-inspiring Temples of the Sun and Moon, he reveals not only the clear fingerprints of an as-yet-unidentified civilization of remote antiquity, but also startling evidence of its vast sophistication, technological advancement, and evolved scientific knowledge. A record-breaking number one bestseller in Britain, Fingerprints of the Gods contains the makings of an intellectual revolution, a dramatic and irreversible change in the way that we understand our past—and so our future. And Fingerprints of God tells us something more. As we recover the truth about prehistory, and discover the real meaning of ancient myths and monuments, it becomes apparent that a warning has been handed down to us, a warning of terrible cataclysm that afflicts the Earth in great cycles at irregular intervals of time—a cataclysm that may be about to recur. “Readers will hugely enjoy their quest in these pages of inspired storytelling.”—The Times (UK)

Download or read book Making and Breaking the Gods written by Troels Myrup Kristensen and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2013-06-30 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basic premise of the book at hand is that there is meaning to be 'excavated' (in both meanings of the word) from Christian responses to pagan sculpture in the period from the fourth to the sixth century. More than mindless acts of religious violence by fanatical mobs, these responses are revelatory of contemporary conceptions of images and the different ways in which the material manifestations of the pagan past could be negotiated in Late Antiquity. Statues were important to the social, political and religious life of cities across the Mediterranean, as well as part of a culture of representation that was intricately bound to bodily taxonomies and visual practices.

Download or read book Library Catalog of the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York written by Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.). Library and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt written by Christina Riggs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook, arranged in seven thematic sections, is unique in drawing together many different strands of research on Roman Egypt, in order to suggest both the state of knowledge in the field and the possibilities for collaborative, synthetic, and interpretive research.

Download or read book Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt written by Jan Assmann and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-14 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Human beings," the acclaimed Egyptologist Jan Assmann writes, "are the animals that have to live with the knowledge of their death, and culture is the world they create so they can live with that knowledge." In his new book, Assmann explores images of death and of death rites in ancient Egypt to provide startling new insights into the particular character of the civilization as a whole. Drawing on the unfamiliar genre of the death liturgy, he arrives at a remarkably comprehensive view of the religion of death in ancient Egypt. Assmann describes in detail nine different images of death: death as the body being torn apart, as social isolation, the notion of the court of the dead, the dead body, the mummy, the soul and ancestral spirit of the dead, death as separation and transition, as homecoming, and as secret. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt also includes a fascinating discussion of rites that reflect beliefs about death through language and ritual.