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62-530: The Sixth Dynasty is considered by many authorities as the last dynasty of the Old Kingdom, although The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt includes Dynasties VII and VIII as part of the Old Kingdom. Manetho writes that these kings ruled from Memphis , since their pyramids were built at Saqqara , very close one to another. By the Fifth Dynasty, the religious institution had established itself as

124-849: A 2015 re-appraisal of the fall of the Old Kingdom , the Egyptologist Hracht Papazian has proposed that the Seventh Dynasty was real and that it consisted of kings usually attributed to the Eighth Dynasty . Based on the now lost writings of Africanus (c. 160–240) and Eusebius (c. 260–340), themselves based on the now lost work of the Egyptian priest Manetho (3rd century BC), the Byzantine scholar George Syncellus (died after 810) variously assigns to

186-450: A base length of 78.5 m (258 ft; 150 cu) converging to the apex at ~53° attaining a peak height of 52.5 m (172 ft; 100 cu). The substructure of the pyramid was very similar to Unas's and Djedkare Isesi's; it had a descending corridor and horizontal passage guarded at about the middle by three granite portcullises, leading to an antechamber flanked to its east by the serdab with its three recesses and to its west by

248-406: A downward sloping corridor, followed by a 'corridor-chamber' with three granite portcullises that guarded the entrance into the horizontal passage. The horizontal passage ends at the antechamber of the substructure and is guarded by a fourth granite portcullis. The antechamber connects to two further rooms, a room with three recesses for holding statues – called the serdab – to the east, and

310-476: A lavish tomb in North Saqqara. As part of his policy of pacification, Teti issued a decree exempting the temple at Abydos from taxation. He was the first ruler to be closely associated with the cult of Hathor at Dendera. Abroad, Teti maintained trade relations with Byblos and Nubia. Teti commissioned the construction of a pyramid at North Saqqara. His pyramid follows the standard set by Djedkare Isesi, with

372-547: A number of rulers usually seen as belonging to the mid-Eighth Dynasty identified by the Abydos King List should be attributed to a Seventh Dynasty: Pyramid Texts The Pyramid Texts are the oldest ancient Egyptian funerary texts , dating to the late Old Kingdom . They are the earliest known corpus of ancient Egyptian religious texts . Written in Old Egyptian , the pyramid texts were carved onto

434-641: A sow eating her offspring so also is the King as the dawn sun. Utterance 217 describes the King in stellar form as being "swallowed up" at dawn with the other stars. The Cannibal Hymn represents a discrete episode (Utterances 273–274) in the anthology of ritual texts that make up the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom period. Appearing first in the Pyramid of Unas at the end of the Fifth Dynasty ,

496-600: Is considered to be the standard version of the texts. Samuel A. B. Mercer published a translation into English of Sethe's work in 1952. British Egyptologist Raymond O. Faulkner presented the texts in English in 1969 in The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts . Between 1926 and 1932, Gustave Jéquier conducted the first systematic investigations of Pepi II and his wives' pyramids – Neith , Iput II , and Wedjebetni . Jéquier also conducted

558-461: Is debated. The only historical account on the Seventh Dynasty was in Manetho 's Aegyptiaca , a history of Egypt written in the 3rd century BC, where the Seventh Dynasty appears essentially as a metaphor for chaos . Since next to nothing is known of this dynasty beyond Manetho's account, Egyptologists such as Jürgen von Beckerath and Toby Wilkinson have usually considered it to be fictitious. In

620-551: Is thought to be a daughter of Unas . This would mean that Teti ascended to the throne as Unas's son-in-law. His inauguration solved a potential succession crisis, Unas had died without a male heir. Teti adopted the Horus name Seheteptawy (meaning "He who pacifies the Two Lands") to establish his reign as one of renewed political unity. The transition appears to have occurred smoothly, and Teti retained officials from his predecessors of

682-607: The Eighth Dynasty is not quite as obscure as the Seventh. As a consequence, some Egyptologists combine the Seventh and Eighth Dynasty into a single line of kings, reigning immediately after the Sixth Dynasty. The Seventh Dynasty is usually considered fictitious and is thus either ignored altogether by modern scholars or it is combined with the Eighth Dynasty. The Egyptologist Hracht Papazian has proposed in 2015 that

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744-541: The Kher-Heb (the chief lector priest), along with assistants, opening the eyes and mouth of the dead while reciting prayers and spells. Mourners were encouraged to cry out as special instruments were used to cut holes in the mouth. After the ceremony was complete, it was believed that the dead could eat, speak, breathe, and see in the afterlife. The Egyptian pyramids are made up of various corridors, tunnels, and rooms, each of which have differing significance and use during

806-557: The Cannibal Hymn preserves an early royal butchery ritual in which the deceased king – assisted by the god Shezmu – slaughters, cooks and eats the gods as sacrificial bulls, thereby incorporating in himself their divine powers in order that he might negotiate his passage into the Afterlife and guarantee his transformation as a celestial divinity ruling in the heavens. The style and format of the Cannibal Hymn are characteristic of

868-581: The Fifth Dynasty, such as viziers Mehu and Kagemni who had begun their careers under Djedkare Isesi. Despite this, the RTC too inserts a break between Unas and Teti, which the Egyptologist Jaromìr Malek contends relates to a "change of location of the capital and royal residence". The capital migrated from "White Wall" to the populous suburbs further south to "Djed-isut"—derived from the name of Teti's pyramid and pyramid town, and located east of

930-815: The New Kingdom (1550 BCE – 1070 BCE), Pyramid Texts were found on tombs of officials. French archaeologist and Egyptologist Gaston Maspero , director of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo , arrived in Egypt in 1880. He chose a site in South Saqqara, a hill that had been mapped by the Prussian Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius in 1842, for his first archaeological dig. There, Maspero found

992-413: The Old Kingdom. It had a core built six steps high from roughly dressed limestone , encased in a layer of carefully cut fine white limestone. It had a base length of 57.75 m (189 ft) with an incline of 56° which gave the pyramid a height of 43 m (141 ft). The substructure was accessed through an entrance in the pavement of a chapel on the north face of the pyramid. The entry led into

1054-517: The Old, Middle , and New Kingdoms of Ancient Egypt. During the Old Kingdom (2686 BCE – 2181 BCE), Pyramid Texts could be found in the pyramids of kings as well as three queens, named Wedjebten , Neith , and Iput . During the Middle Kingdom (2055 BCE – 1650 BCE), Pyramid Texts were not written in the pyramids of the pharaohs, but the traditions of the pyramid spells continued to be practiced. In

1116-731: The Pharaoh himself. Kurt Sethe's first edition of the pyramid texts contained 714 distinct spells. Later additional spells were discovered, for a total of 759. No single edition includes all recorded spells. The following example of a spell comes from the pyramid of Unas. It was to be recited in the South Side Burial Chamber and Passage, and it was the Invocation to New Life. Utterance 213: Ho, Unis ! You have not gone away dead: you have gone away alive. Sit on Osiris 's chair, with your baton in your arm, and govern

1178-458: The Pyramid Texts were primarily concerned with enabling the transformation of the deceased into an akh (where those judged worthy could mix with the gods). The spells of the Pyramid Texts are divided into two broad categories: Sacerdotal texts and Personal texts. The sacerdotal texts are ritual in nature, and were conducted by the lector priest addressing the deceased in the second person. They consist of offering spells, short spells recited in

1240-444: The Pyramid Texts. Unas' sarcophagus was left without inscription. The king's royal titulary did not appear on the walls surrounding it, as it does in later pyramids. The west gable of the burial chamber is inscribed with protective spells; in later pyramids the gable was used for texts commending the king to Nut , and, from Pepi I onwards, also for Sakhu, or 'glorifications', for the transformation into an Akh. The other walls of

1302-518: The absolute rule of the king. As a result, it is believed that on the death of the long-lived Pepi II his vassals were entrenched enough to resist the authority of his many successors, which may have contributed to the rapid decline of the Old Kingdom. Seventh Dynasty of Egypt The Seventh Dynasty of Egypt would mark the beginning of the First Intermediate Period in the early 22nd century BC but its actual existence

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1364-456: The being of every god, Who eats their entrails When they come, their bodies full of magic From the Isle of Flame... But as the same spell also declares: May I be with you, you gods; May you be with me, you gods. May I live with you, you gods; May you live with me, you gods. I love you, you gods; May you love me, you gods. The Cannibal Hymn later reappeared in

1426-516: The burial and ritual processes. Texts were written and recited by priests in a very particular order, often starting in the Valley Temple and finishing in the Coffin or Pyramid Room. The variety of offerings and rituals were also most likely recited in a particular order. The Valley Temple often contained an offering shrine, where rituals would be recited. Pyramid texts were found not only in

1488-568: The burial chamber are primarily dedicated to ritual texts. The north wall, along with the northern part of the east wall and passage, is dedicated to the Offering Ritual. Spatial considerations required that part of the ritual be inscribed on other walls, and likely explains the omission of the Insignia Ritual altogether from the pyramid. The Offering Ritual, from the 'initial libation' to the 'dedication of offerings', occupies

1550-484: The burial chamber containing the sarcophagus. The walls of the chambers and a section of the horizontal passage were inscribed with Pyramid Texts , as in Unas' pyramid. The mortuary temple, with the exception of its entrance, conforms to the same basic plans as his predecessors. The complex contained a cult pyramid to the south-east of the pyramid with base length 15.7 m (52 ft; 30 cu). The causeway connecting to

1612-461: The burial chamber with the ruler's sarcophagus to the west. The roofs of both the antechamber and burial chamber were gabled . With the exception of the walls immediately surrounding the sarcophagus, which were lined with alabaster and painted to resemble reed mats with a wood-frame enclosure, the remaining walls of the antechamber, burial chamber, and a section of the horizontal passage were covered with vertical columns of hieroglyphs that make up

1674-560: The celebration of a Sed festival is not attested to, and the latest date recorded corresponds to the sixth cattle count, 12 or 13 years into his reign. The Royal Canon of Turin (RTC) gives another unlikely estimate of seven months. The archaeologist Hartwig Altenmüller mediates between Manetho and the record of the cattle count to offer a reign length of around 23 years. The Egyptologists Peter Clayton and William Smith accord 12 years to his reign. The relationship between Teti and his predecessors remains unclear, but his wife Iput

1736-425: The contemporary history in Egypt broadened. There is modern veracity to records of an unsuccessful plot against Pepi I, and a letter written by the young king Pepi II , excited that one of his expeditions will return with a dancing pygmy from the land of Yam , located to the south of Nubia . These non-royal tomb inscriptions are but one example of the growing power of the nobility, which further weakened

1798-490: The dominant force in society; a trend of growth in the bureaucracy and the priesthood, and a decline in the pharaoh's power had been established during Neferirkare Kakai 's reign. During Djedkare Isesi 's rule, officials were endowed with greater authority—evidenced by the opulent private tombs they constructed—eventually leading to the creation of a feudal system in effect. These established trends—decentralization of authority, coupled with growth in bureaucracy—intensified during

1860-433: The excavations of Qakare Ibi 's pyramid. He later published the complete corpus of texts found in these five pyramids. Since 1958, expeditions under the directions of Jean-Philippe Lauer , Jean Sainte-Fare Garnot , and Jean Leclant have undertaken a major restoration project of the pyramids belonging to Teti, Pepi I, and Merenre I, as well as the pyramid of Unas. By 1999, the pyramid of Pepi had been opened to

1922-406: The general scholarly understanding of the end of the Old Kingdom. According to Papazian (2015), "a re-examination ... of the Seventh Dynasty's existence, remains fully justified" and some of the kings usually attributed to the mid-Eighth Dynasty should instead be understood to belong to the Seventh Dynasty. Being attested by two additional ancient historical sources as well as archeological evidence,

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1984-404: The gods to help, even threatening them if they did not comply. It was common for the pyramid texts to be written in the first person, but not uncommon for texts to be later changed to the third person. Often this depended on who was reciting the texts and who they were recited for. Many of the texts include accomplishments of the pharaoh as well as the things they did for the Egyptian people during

2046-414: The gods. Examples of these rituals are the opening of the mouth ceremony , offering rituals, and insignia ritual. Both monetary and prayer-based offerings were made in the pyramids and were written in the pyramid texts in hopes of getting the pharaoh to a desirable afterlife. Rituals such as the opening of the mouth and eye ceremony were very important for the Pharaoh in the afterlife. This ceremony involved

2108-463: The kings in a few additional ways. Like those of the kings, the use of both the first and third person is present in these pyramid texts. Neith's name is used throughout the texts to make them more personal. Many of the pronouns used throughout her pyramid texts are male, indicative of the parallels between the texts of the kings and queens, but a few female pronouns can be found. The texts also contain spells and utterances that are meant to be read by both

2170-551: The layout and structure of those that belonged to these queens were much simpler. But the layout of the texts corresponded to similar walls and locations as those of the kings. For example, the Resurrection Ritual is found on the east end of the south wall. Due to the fact that the pyramid of Neith did not contain an antechamber, many of the spells normally written there were also written on the south wall. The texts of Queen Neith were similar and different from those of

2232-424: The living; with your water lily scepter in your arm, and govern those of the inaccessible places. Your lower arms are of Atum , your upper arms of Atum, your belly of Atum, your back of Atum, your rear of Atum, your legs of Atum, your face of Anubis . Horus 's mounds shall serve you; Seth 's mounds shall serve you. The various pyramid texts often contained writings of rituals and offerings to

2294-417: The monument. The royal residence might have been yet further south, in the valley away and across a lake from the city, east of South Saqqara—where the pyramids of Djedkare Isesi and Pepi I were built. Teti had his daughter, Sesheshet, married to one of his viziers and later chief priest, Mereruka, a clear sign of his interest in co-operating with the noble class. Mereruka was buried close to Teti's pyramid, in

2356-447: The mortuary temple is yet to be excavated, while the valley temple and pyramid town are entirely missing. Teti's pyramid became the site of a large necropolis, and included the pyramids of his wives Neith and Iput, mother of Pepi I. Iput's skeleton was discovered buried in her pyramid in a wooden coffin. Manetho claims that Teti was assassinated by a bodyguard, but no contemporary sources confirm this. The story, if true, might explain

2418-483: The mummy of a man in the sarcophagus of the burial chamber. This time, he visited Mariette personally, who again rejected the findings, saying on his deathbed that "[i]n thirty years of Egyptian excavations I have never seen a pyramid whose underground rooms had hieroglyphs written on their walls." Throughout 1881, Maspero continued to direct investigations of other sites in Saqqara, and more texts were found in each of

2480-461: The north wall; it is arrayed into three horizontal registers. The set up and layout of the Unas pyramid were replicated and expanded on for future pyramids. The causeway ran 750 meters long and is still in good condition, unlike many causeways found in similar ancient Egyptian pyramids. In the pyramid of Unas, the ritual texts could be found in the underlying supporting structure. The antechamber and corridor contained texts and spells personalized to

2542-430: The oldest, and are the most difficult to interpret. These utterances were meant to be chanted by those who were reciting them. They contained many verbs such as "fly" and "leap", depicting the actions taken by the pharaohs to get to the afterlife. The spells delineate all of the ways the pharaoh could travel, including the use of ramps, stairs, ladders and, most importantly, flying. The spells could also be used to call

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2604-406: The oral-recitational poetry of pharaonic Egypt, marked by allusive metaphor and the exploitation of wordplay and homophony in its verbal recreation of a butchery ritual. Apart from the burial of Unas , only the Pyramid of Teti displays the Cannibal Hymn. A god who lives on his fathers, who feeds on his mothers... Unas is the bull of heaven Who rages in his heart, Who lives on

2666-565: The period after the Sixth dynasty – the Seventh Dynasty – 70 kings in 70 days (Africanus) or 5 kings in 75 days (Eusebius). According to Manetho, these kings would have ruled in Memphis . Rather than a historical reality, this rapid succession of kings has long been interpreted as a metaphor for chaos. Some Egyptologists, such as Papazian (2015), believe that this interpretation may give undue weight to Manetho's writings, and that it distorts

2728-401: The pharaoh to reach the heavens, one of which is by climbing a ladder. In utterance 304 the king says: Hail, daughter of Anubis , above the hatches of heaven, Comrade of Thoth , above the ladder's rails, Open Unas 's path, let Unas pass! Another way is by ferry. If the boatman refuses to take him, the king has other plans: If you fail to ferry Unas, He will leap and sit on

2790-631: The presentation of an offering, and recitations which are predominantly instructional. These texts appear in the Offering and Insignia Rituals, the Resurrection Ritual, and in the four pyramids containing the Morning Ritual. The writing in these texts (Dramatic Texts) suggests the formulation of these texts may have occurred around the time of the Second and Third dynasties. The remaining texts are personal, and are broadly concerned with guiding

2852-518: The public. Debris was cleared away from the pyramid, while research continued under the direction of Audran Labrousse  [ fr ] . The corpus of pyramid texts in Pepi ;I's pyramid were published in 2001. In 2010, more such texts were discovered in Behenu 's tomb. To date, Pyramid Texts have been discovered in the pyramids of these pharaohs and queens: The spells, or utterances, of

2914-695: The pyramids of Unas , Teti , and Pepi II . Maspero began publishing his findings in the Recueil des Travaux from 1882 and continued to be involved until 1886 in the excavations of the pyramid in which the texts had been found. Maspero published the first corpora of the text in 1894 in French under the title Les inscriptions des pyramides de Saqqarah . Translations were made by German Egyptologist Kurt Heinrich Sethe to German in 1908–1910 in Die altägyptischen Pyramidentexte . The concordance that Sethe published

2976-789: The references to the ephemeral ruler Userkare , proposed to have briefly reigned between Teti and Pepi I. Userkare is attested to in the Royal Turin Canon and Abydos king-list, and is mentioned in several contemporaneous documents. During this dynasty, expeditions were sent to Wadi Maghara in the Sinai Peninsula to mine for turquoise and copper , as well as to the mines at Hatnub and Wadi Hammamat . The pharaoh Djedkara sent trade expeditions south to Punt and north to Byblos , and Pepi I sent expeditions not only to these locations, but also as far as Ebla in modern-day Syria . The most notable member of this dynasty

3038-407: The reigns of the added Eighth Dynasty kings, this is reduced to 155 regnal years. This estimate varies between both scholar and source. Neith Teti is identified as the first king of the Sixth Dynasty by Manetho, after the conclusion of the reign of Unas. He acceded to the throne in the 23rd century BC. Teti is assigned a regnal duration of 30 or 33 years by Manetho — improbably long as

3100-466: The ruins of a large structure, which he concluded must be the pyramid of Pepi I of the Sixth Dynasty . During the excavations he was able to gain access to the subterranean rooms, and discovered that the walls of the structure were covered in hieroglyphic text. Maspero contacted the 'director of the excavations' in Egypt, Auguste Mariette , to inform him of the discovery. Mariette concluded that

3162-584: The spirit herself as well as others addressing her. After death, the king must first rise from his tomb. Utterance 373 describes: Oho! Oho! Rise up, O Teti ! Take your head, collect your bones, Gather your limbs, shake the earth from your flesh! Take your bread that rots not, your beer that sours not, Stand at the gates that bar the common people! The gatekeeper comes out to you, he grasps your hand, Takes you into heaven, to your father Geb . He rejoices at your coming, gives you his hands, Kisses you, caresses you, Sets you before

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3224-480: The spirit out of the tomb, and into new life. They consist of provisioning, transition, and apotropaic – or protective – texts. The provisioning texts deal with the deceased taking command of his own food-supply, and demanding nourishment from the gods. One example of these texts is the king's response in Unas' pyramid. The transition texts – otherwise known as the Sakhu or Glorifications – are predominantly about

3286-419: The spirits, the imperishable stars... The hidden ones worship you, The great ones surround you, The watchers wait on you, Barley is threshed for you, Emmer is reaped for you, Your monthly feasts are made with it, Your half-month feasts are made with it, As ordered done for you by Geb, your father, Rise up, O Teti, you shall not die! The texts then describe several ways for

3348-446: The structure must be a mastaba , as no writing had previously been discovered in a pyramid. Maspero continued his excavations at a second structure, around one kilometre (0.62 mi) south-west of the first, in search of more evidence. This second structure was determined to be the pyramid of Merenre I , Pepi I 's successor. In it, Maspero discovered the same hieroglyphic text on the walls he had found in Pepi I's pyramid, and

3410-588: The subterranean walls and sarcophagi of pyramids at Saqqara from the end of the Fifth Dynasty , and throughout the Sixth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, and into the Eighth Dynasty of the First Intermediate Period . The oldest of the texts have been dated to c. 2400–2300 BCE. Unlike the later Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead , the Pyramid Texts were reserved only for the pharaoh and were not illustrated. The use and occurrence of Pyramid Texts changed between

3472-413: The texts in the Old Kingdom. Copies of all but a single spell, PT 200, inscribed in the pyramid appeared throughout the Middle Kingdom and later, including a near-complete replica of the texts inscribed in the tomb of the 12th-Dynasty High Priest Senwosretankh at El-Lisht . Unas' pyramid , situated between the pyramids of Djoser and Sekhemkhet in North Saqqara, was the smallest of those built in

3534-484: The three decades of Unas 's rule, which also witnessed economic decline. This continued on into Sixth Dynasty, leading into the First Intermediate Period . Known pharaohs of the Sixth Dynasty are listed in the table below. Manetho accords the dynasty 203 regnal years from Teti to Nitocris, while the Turin Canon assigns 181 regnal years, but with three additional kings concluding with Aba – discounting

3596-427: The time of their rule. These texts were used to both guide the pharaohs to the afterlife, but also to inform and assure the living that the soul made it to its final destination. The texts first appeared in the pyramid of the last pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty, that belonging to Unas . A total of 283 spells appear on the subterranean walls of Unas' pyramid. These spells are the smallest and best-preserved corpus of

3658-409: The tombs of kings, but those of queens as well. Queen Neith, who was the wife of Pepi II, is one of three queens of the 6th dynasty whose tomb contains pyramid texts. The pyramids of the other two queens (both also thought to be wives of Pepi II), Iput II and Wedjebetni, also contained tombs inscribed with texts. Those of Neith have been kept in much better condition. Compared to the tombs of the kings,

3720-480: The transformation of the deceased into an Akh, and their ascent, mirroring the motion of the gods, into the sky. These texts form the largest part of the corpus, and are dominated by the youngest texts composed in the Fifth and possibly Sixth dynasties. Apotropaic texts consist of short protective spells for warding off threats to the body and tomb. Due to the archaic style of writing, these texts are considered to be

3782-515: The wing of Thoth, Then he will ferry Unas to that side! Utterances 273 and 274 are sometimes known as the "Cannibal Hymn", because it seems to be describing the king hunting and eating parts of the gods: however, as Renouf pointed out when it was first published: As has been observed, the spell is echoing how the Goddess Nut (as the Sky) causing the stars to disappear at dawn is likened to

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3844-493: Was Pepi II , who is credited with a reign of 94 years. Also known by the Greek name Nitocris , this woman is believed by some authorities to have been not only the first female pharaoh but the first queen in the world, although it is currently accepted that her name is actually a mistranslation of the king Neitiqerty Siptah . With the growing number of biographical inscriptions in non-royal tombs, academic knowledge of

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