Abstract

In Ancient Egyptian thought, there is something before creation. This state-of-no-state is approached using two fundamental concepts : the limitless waters (Nun) and the autogenous potential of precreation (Atum). Both form a dual-union and express opposite ideas : Nun is lifeless, inert, dark and everlasting, Atum is life, differentiation, light and eternal recurrence (eternity-in-everlastingness). These notions are as old as the Pyramid Texts (ca. 2348 to 2205 BCE) and probably older.

In this paper, all Pyramid Text utterances containing the word "Nun" have been translated. In the Old Kingdom, Nun is also the "place" where creation started, namely when Atum self-creates and initiates the "first occurrence" (zep tepi). Because of the pre-rational mode of cognition at work in these texts, the distinction between Nun and this first time is not clearly made yet. Arguments are presented to interprete precreation in terms of Nun, the Abyss, hand in hand with Atum, the Pleroma of the deities.

Introduction

The Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt are the oldest extensive body of written material in the world. They are incised on limestone in thousands of lines of hieroglyphics, containing fragments of myths and legends, historical references and astronomical lore, geography and cosmology, religion and rituals, systems of theology, festivals, magic and morals. This was done with literary skills capable of expressing subtle religious and refined ethical thoughts, albeit in an ante-rational mode of cognition.

Technically, this royal funerary corpus consists of a series of "utterances" or "spells", so called because the expression "Dd mdw" ("Dd" = "words" ; "mdw" = "speech"), "to say" or "words to be said", i.e. "to be recited" is, as a rule, at the head of most. Nearly three centuries after the Old Kingdom began (ca. 2670 BCE), these important ritual sayings were recorded and entombed for the first time by Pharaoh Wenis (ca. 2378 - 2348 BCE) of the Vth Dynasty and Pharaohs Teti, Pepi I, Merenre & Pepi II (ca. 2270 - 2205 BCE) of the VIth Dynasty. These pyramids were erected and inscribed between the years about 2348 to 2205 BCE.

Additional texts, parallel and complementary, have been found in the pyramids of Oudjebten, Neit, and Apouit, queens of Pepi II, Pharaoh Aba of the VIIth Dynasty, of whom little historically is known, and Sen-Wosret-Ankh, an official of the XIIth Dynasty. The abbreviations of the pyramids in which texts so far have been found are : W. = Wenis, T. = Teti, P. = Pepi I, M. = Merenre, N. = Pepi II (Neferkare), Nt. = Neit, Ip. = Apouit, Wd. = Oudjebten, Ib. = Aba and Sen. = Sen-Wosret-Ankh.

This "eternalized" body of texts includes drama, hymns, litanies, glorifications, magical texts, offering rituals, prayers, charms, divine offerings, the ascension of Pharaoh, the arrival of Pharaoh in heaven, Pharaoh settled in heaven, and miscellaneous texts. It is the oldest body of theology in the world, and precedes the textualization of the Vedas.

"... from internal references in the Vedic literature we can now state with some certainty that the Rig-Veda was not composed, as maintained by many scholars under the spell of the Aryan invasion model, around 1200 BC, but at least more than eight centuries earlier. The hymn composers knew of an environment that simply ceased to exist around 1900 BC. What more concrete evidence could anyone wish for ?" - Feuerstein, Kak & Frawley, 1995, p.105.

Auguste Mariette (1821 - 1881) was the modern discoverer of the inscribed pyramids at Saqqara. However, in 1880, Gaston Maspero (1846 - 1916), working under Mariette's direction, discovered the first set of Pyramid Texts. They were those inscribed on the walls of the sarcophagus chamber of the pyramid of Pepi I. Following that, he found texts in the pyramids of Wenis, as well as in the pyramids of Teti, Merenre, and Pepi II. Pharaoh Teti's pyramid followed the prototype established by Pharaoh Wenis. Its dimensions are practically identical with those of the pyramids of Pepi I, Merenre & Pepi II.

This search for texts in pyramids did not find a continuation until the years 1920 and 1936, when Gustave Jéquier (1868 - 1946), besides clearing the pyramid of Pepi II (Neferkare), discovered additional texts, parallel and complementary. All these and other additional texts may be drawn upon (cf. Allen, 1950).

When Pharaoh Wenis decided to adorn his tomb with sacred hieroglyphs, in order to assure for himself -through the magic of his great speech- his ultimate realization in the afterlife, Osirian faith was already very popular and its incorporation in the royal funerary rituals had already begun. The name "Osiris" was inserted before Pharaoh's name wherever it stood at the head of a spell. It was omitted in all cases when it occurs in the text (except in Utterances 25 & 38). Breasted (1912) concluded the editor must have been "Osirian", working hastily and mechanically ...

"While there is some effort here to correlate the functions of Re and Osiris, it can hardly be called an attempt at harmonization of conflicting doctrines. This is practically unknown in the Pyramid Texts. (...) But the fact that both Re and Osiris appear as supreme king of the hereafter cannot be reconciled, and such mutually irreconcilable beliefs caused the Egyptian no more discomfort than was felt by any early civilization in the maintenance of a group of religious teachings side by side with others involving varying and totally inconsistent suppositions. Even Christianity itself has not escaped this experience." - Breasted, 1972, pp.163-164.

Although historical traces of Osirian faith predating the Pyramid Texts are sparse, popular Osirian beliefs had, during the previous Dynasties, already slowly infiltrated the Solar state religion. Had predynastic religion identified Osiris with the fertile waters of the inundation, with soil and vegetation (cf. Orion and the Dog-Star in the South, the direction of the inundation) ? The ever-waning and ever-reviving life of Egypt's soil through the Nile was entrenched by the story of the murder & resurrection of Osiris and the triumph of his son Horus over Seth, the evil uncle. As a result, and despite its popular origin, Osirian faith entered into the most intimate relationship with the ideology of divine kingship, causing a fundamental tension to be resolved later, when Osiris, as god of the dead  and king of the netherworld, was increasingly seen as the nocturnal aspect of Re (cf. the New Kingdom Solar theology and Netherworld literature).

So, although the religion of the state was a Solar faith focused on Pharaoh, the Pyramid Texts evidence an ambiguous relationship with Osiris, the god of the common people and popular beliefs. The Terminal Predynastic Osirian cult, probably local to the Delta, involved a forbidding, stern & repellent hereafter. Osiris was a Nile-god and a spirit of vegetable life, a harvest-god. But, as a King of Egypt, he had been killed by his brother Seth, recovered and restored by his wife Isis (with the help of the secret great name of Re) and resurrected by his son Horus, who avenged his father by overcoming Seth in a battle presided by Thoth. When Osiris migrated up the Nile from the Delta, he was identified with the old mortuary jackal-god of the South, "the First of the Westeners" (Abydos, Assiut). His kingdom was conceived as situated below the western horizon, where it merged with the netherworld. He became the "King of the dead" below the earth, the "Lord of the Duat", monarch of a subterranean kingdom. 

"... in the Solar faith we have a state theology, with all the splendor and the prestige of its royal patrons behind it ; while in that of Osiris we are confronted by a religion of the people, which made a strong appeal to the individual believer. (...) In the mergence of these two faiths we discern for the first time in history the age-old struggle between the state form of religion and the popular faith of the masses." - Breasted, 1972, pp.140-141.

According to Breasted, and there is no reason to disagree, nothing in these primordial myths proved Osiris to have a celestial afterlife. Indeed, the Pyramid Texts evidence survivals from a period when Osiris was even hostile to the Solar dead (cf. the exorcisms intended to retain Osiris from entering the Solar tomb with evil intent). However, the popularity of Osiris among the common people forced the Heliopolitan theologians to incorporate him into the Solar creed. In this way, Heliopolitan Solar theology got slowly Osirianized, a fact we witness in the Pyramid Texts.

The resurrection of Osiris by Horus and the restoration of his body was affirmed to be Pharaoh's privilege. The Osirian hereafter was celestialized. Osiris was called "Lord of the sky" and Pharaoh was announced to Osiris in the sky precisely in the same way as he had been announced to Re in the Solar theology. Hence, we find Pharaoh ascending to the sky and then descending among the dwellers in the netherworld, implying that the Duat became somehow accessible from the sky. In the Osirian cult, the netherworld became the lower region of the sky, in the vincinity of the horizon, below which it is also extended (Breasted). An important link between Re and Osiris was the former's death every day in the West, the place of the dead. The dead Pharaoh and the dying Sun corresponded well, as did the resurrection of Osiris (as king of the dead) and the dawning of the Sun (as the child Harpocrates).

"The fact remains, then, that the celestial doctrines of the hereafter dominate the Pyramid Texts throughout, and the later subterranean kingdom of Osiris and Re's voyage through it are still entirely in the background in these royal mortuary teachings. Among the people Re is later, as it were, dragged into the Nether World to illumine there the subjects of Osiris in his mortuary kingdom, and this is one of the most convincing evidences of the power of Osiris among the lower classes. In the royal and state temple theology, Osiris is lifted to the sky, and while he is there Solarized, we have just shown he also tinctures the Solar teaching of the celestial kingdom of the dead with Osirian doctrines. The result was thus inevitable confusion, as the two faiths interpenetrated." - Breasted, 1972, pp.159-160.

In the Old Egyptian language of the Pyramid Texts, the composition between semantic groups is loose. Subjectivity is still objectified. Pre-operatoric activity is limited by the immediate material context. Older structures are mingled with new ones and many traces of earlier periods are left over. The extent of this layeredness has been called in to reject the possibility of Ancient Egyptian philosophy. The language, which has the style of the "records" of the Old Kingdom, is often additive and offers little self-reflection (which starts with the literature of the First Intermediate Period). Didactic poetry (precepts) and lyrics in which personal emotions & experiences are highlighted are nearly absent.

"Along with the Sumerians, the Egyptians deliver our earliest -though by no means primitive- evidence of human thought. It is thus appropriate to characterize Egyptian thought as the beginning of philosophy. As far back as the third millennium B.C., the Egyptians were concerned with questions that return in later European philosophy and that remain unanswered even today - questions about being and nonbeing, about the meaning of death, about the nature of the cosmos and man, about the essence of time, about the basis of human society and the legitimation of power." - Hornung, 1992, p.13, my italics.

In the ca. 650 years between ca. 3000 BCE (the beginning of the Dynastic Period and of writing) and ca. 2348 BCE (the death of Pharaoh Wenis), the written language had considerably developed. Nevertheless, although words could be joined together in simple sentences and the latter in groups (dealing with honors & gifts, offices, legacies, inventories, testaments, transfers, endowments, etc.), the additive, archaic quality of the literary style remained pronounced.

Various types of parallelism occur : synonymous (doubling or by repetition), symmetrical, combined, grammatical, antithetic, of contrast, of constraint, of analogy, of purpose and of identity. Metrical schemes of two, three, four, five, six, seven or eight lines occur (the fourfold being the most popular). The play of words is the commonest literary feature and depends on the consonantal roots of the words. Alliteration, metathesis, metaphors, ellipses, anthropomorphisms and picturesque expressions are also found.

"The only basis we have for preferring one rendering to another, when once the exigencies of grammar and dictionary have been satisfied -and these leave a large margin for divergencies- is an intuitive appreciation of the trend of the ancient writer's mind." - Gardiner, 1925, p.5.

The Pyramid Texts pose their own particular problems and difficulties. From a thematical point of view, they are a set of symbolical "heraldic"  spells which mainly deal with the promotion of Pharaoh's welfare in the afterlife. These spells were recited at various ceremonies, mostly religious and especially in connection with the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Pharaoh. These texts are to a large extent compositions, a compilation and joining of earlier texts which must have circulated orally or were written down on papyrus many centuries earlier. Some of these probably go back to the oral tradition of the Predynastic Period, for they suggest the political context of Egypt before its final unification (as Sethe pointed out). Others, although the archeological record is limited, were used in this-life rituals, and have initiatoric connotations. The relative rarity of corruptions, which cannot be said of later compositions as the Coffin Texts, is another important fact which makes their study rewarding.

"The Pyramid Texts were not the work of a single man or of a single age. They are entirely anonymous and of uncertain date. And they are religious literature which reflect more or less clearly the conditions of religious thought in ancient Egypt previous to the Seventh Dynasty - more like the Psalms than any other book of the Old Testament." - Mercer, 1956, p.2.

The contemporary school of egyptological literalism equates the earliest temporal layer of any text with its historical date of composition, mistrusting the presence of literary antecedents. In the case of the Pyramid Texts, they would agree to push the date of inception with a few centuries (the margin of error for this period being ca. 100 years) but try to avoid a Predynastic figure. But, comparisons with the architectural language of the period, makes it likely that under Pharaoh Djoser (ca. 2654 - 2635 BCE), the Egyptians had the conceptual framework of the Pyramid Texts at their disposal. King Djoser, the "inventor of stone" and his Leonardo da Vinci, Imhotep, the "great seer" (or prophet) of Re at Iunu, "the Pillar", 40km northeast of Memphis (the Greek Heliopolis, the Coptic area of contemporary Cairo), layed the foundations of the Old Kingdom "canon" which ruled all aspects of the life of the Ancient Egyptian elite, including writing, art & religion.

The Pyramid Texts evidence the emergence of a composite mortuary doctrine. But what used to be viewed as a separate "Osirian" destiny of the king "has more recently been recognized as one aspect of his celestial cycle - the regenerative phase through which he passes before 'rising in the eastern side of sky like the Sun' (Pyr. 1465d-e)." (Allen, 1989, p.1).

1. The earliest literary source : the Wenis Texts.

"O You, the Great God, whose name is unknown."
 Pharaoh Wenis (PT 276c - ca. 2350 BCE)

Pharaoh Wenis, Unis or Unas (ca. 2378 - 2348 BCE) was the last Pharaoh of the Vth Dynasty. His pyramid at Saqqara is at the South-western corner of Djoser's enclosure. The complex, a model for subsequent rulers, is almost diagionally opposed to the pyramid of Userkaf (ca. 2487 - 2480 BCE), the founder of this Heliopolitan Dynasty. Pharaoh Wenis is the first to include hieroglyphic inscriptions in the tomb, namely in his antechamber and burial-chamber (not in the Ka-chamber).

Cartouche of Pharaoh Wenis.

The inscriptions carved and filled with blue pigment on most walls of the royal tomb underneath the pyramid of Wenis, contain, in 234 of the 759 known utterances, the first historical account of the (Heliopolitan) religion of the Old Kingdom.

Text-fragment in the tomb of Wenis.

The texts from the tomb of Wenis are available online. So is Sethe's standard edition of the Pyramid Texts (1910) and Mercer's translation (1952). In Sethe's edition, 714 Utterances are given, whereas Faulkner's standard edition of 1969 brings the total to 759.

Plan of the Pyramid-complex of Wenis (ca. 2378 - 2348 BCE).
The Pyramid was 57.75 m², 43 m high, with a slope of 56°.

The causeway to the pyramid of Wenis was 750 m long and was equal to Pharaoh Khufu's. In its roof, a slit was left open, so a shaft of light could illuminate the gallery of brightly painted reliefs, of which only fragments survived. A wide array of scenes once covered the wall : boats transporting granite palm columns, craftsmen working gold & copper, harvesting scenes (grain, figs & honey), offering bearers, battles with enemies, bearded "Aziatics" ... Two boat graves (each 45 m long) lay side by side South of it. By the New Kingdom, the complex had fallen into ruins.

The antechamber of the pyramid tomb lies directly under the centre axis of the pyramid. In the East, a doorway opens to the uninscribed Ka-chamber with three recesses. The middle recess of this Ka-chapel (intended for sitting statues of Pharaoh Wenis ?), lies exactly behind the false door of the mortuary temple.

The sitting statue is attested in the funerary domain from the Early Dynastic Period onwards. It is the three-dimensional realization of the picture of the Slab-stela, representing the enthroned tomb owner in front of an offering table, to which he is stretching out one hand. The stretched (mostly right) hand is shown resting on the thigh, the left hand often on the breast (but variants in gesture and garment exist). During the IVth Dynasty, the sitting statue is a formal part of the Giza cemetery. It was placed in a closed "serdab" (the Arabic for "cellar"). In this "inner" cult place -dedicated to the provision cult for the deceased- the Ka-statue is the "double" of the tomb owner, representing the latter as corporally intact, provided and able to receive provisions by way of the mummy enshrined in the sarcophagus, and by way of the Ka and/or Ba visiting the tomb and recognizing its own image in the Ka-statue.

On the ceiling of the tomb, golden, pentagram-like stars were carved in relief on a sky-blue background. The tomb is made of Tura limestone, except for the West wall of the burial-chamber and the western halves of its North and South walls, opposite the ends of the granite sarcophagus, which are in albaster, cised and painted to represent a reed-mat and a wood-frame enclosure (cf. the Early Dynastic Period and earlier). Sunk in the floor to the left of the foot of the sarcophagus was the canopic chest (near the South Wall).

Burial-chamber  - pyramid of Pharaoh Wenis.
Sarcophagus West, western half of North & South walls in albaster.
Canopic chest to the left (South) of the foot of the sarcophagus.

For Sethe (1908), the texts found in these pyramids were a free collection of magical utterances, which, by virtue of their presence, assisted Pharaoh in his resurrection & ascension de opere operato, dispensing with the need for daily priestly offerings to his Ka.

"Food offerings alone, however, even when they conformed to the prescriptions regarding purity and dietary taboos (e.g. no pork, no fish), did not suffice to maintain the divine forces. These forces were nothing without ritual and efficacious speech." - Traunecker, 2001, p.40.

The presence of offering-texts feeds the subtle bodies of the deceased. Sacred words not only describe objects, but embody their double (cf. the Lascaux pictures and the Eastern desert petroglyphs). Hence, once properly recited (by the dead and/or the living, the so-called "voice-offerings"), they become efficient (for all of eternity). The hidden, secret, dark potential of hieroglyphs is evidenced by the sacrificial rituals found in the extended mortuary literature. The Ba of the deceased reads the words and the latter manifest their meaning.

"We have already pointed out that the spells of the so-called sacrificial ritual, i.e. the texts used in the provision of supplies, were inscribed in a prominent place where they could be seen by the dead person resting in his sarcophagus. (...) In other words, texts were written down so that the dead themselves could 'proclaim the provision of supplies' ("nis dbHt-Htp") instead of this being done by unreliable priests. This was the nucleus around which the texts crystallized." - Morenz, 1996, p.229.

Schott (1945) & Ricke (1950) advanced the thesis that at the time of the funeral, these texts were recited in the various chambers, corridors and courts through which the procession passed on its way to the pyramid. But it was not easy to identify which spell was recited were ! For Spiegel (1953 & 1971) the texts were an integral part of the funerary ritual performed in the tomb and hence were recited in the area were they were inscribed. They reflect the royal burial ritual. This hypothesis was criticized. In 1960, Morenz wrote :

"This bold, learned and ingenious interpretation can properly be accessed only by one who has examined it in terms of the vast and diverse material. When this is done, it appears that quite serious objections may be levelled against numerous points in the argumentation and thus against the thesis as such." - Morenz, 1996, p.228-229.

Nevertheless, Altenmüller (1972) agrees with Schott & Ricke that these texts were recited in the mortuary temple, as well as in the pyramid, involving priests assuming the god-forms of Re, Horus, Seth and Thoth. Recently, Eyre (2002) suggests the training and initiation of these priests points to this-life rituals.

"The promise of divine assistance, resurrection, and safe passage to the afterlife is not, however, a concern purely of funerary ritual, and the markedly initiatory form of parts of the mortuary literature must be taken as a pointer to contemporary 'this-life' ritual that is otherwise lost from the archaeological record." - Eyre, 2002, p.72.

In "Reading a Pyramid", Allen (1988) compared the location of the texts within the tomb of Wenis with other Old Kingdom pyramids and tombs (cf. Morenz, 1960). He was able to establish a coherent model describing the funerary ideology of these royal tombs. The position of particular groups of texts within Wenis' pyramid corresponds with the placement of the same texts in other pyramids. Spells recited during the burial ritual were thus eternalized as divine words on the walls, further complementing the symbolism of the general layout of the mortuary complex in general and the royal tomb in particular. Assmann (1983, 1989) notes :

"The Egyptian describes this function of the spoken word with the causative derivation of the phonetic root (i)Ax, thus arriving at s-Ax 'to transfigure'." - Assmann, 1989, p.137.

A combination of all these elements is likely. The overall Egyptian funerary mentality seems to favour an enduring canon of broad schemes adaptable to immediate circumstances. As each Pharaoh had his own titulary, he had his own burial ritual and mortuary complex, reflecting a variety of local (nomic) traditions at work around him. They existed by the grace of the "good Nile" he alone, being divine, could guarantee. His death was thus a major calamity, and could perturbate the agricultural cycle, leading to famine, conflicts and death. His burial provided him with a ladder between heaven and Earth, and so the first thing he would do, arriving in the Field of Offering, was to provide Egypt with a new king and a "good Nile".

The reciprocal function of the tomb has to be emphasized. The Ba returned and the Ka could be reanimated. The liberated "Akh" has freedom of movement and time. It is bright, light and radiant. While it stays in the sky, the spirits make their souls and doubles come down and unite with their statues. The destruction of a tomb, implied the end of its role as "interphase" with "the other side" of the false door.

Plan of the royal tomb underneath the pyramid of Wenis.

"Allen's analysis of the sequence of spells in the pyramid of Wenis defines the architecture as a material representation of the passage of the king through death to resurrection, exploiting themes familiar in the Underworld Books of the New Kingdom. From the darkness of the earth he passes to life in the light of the sky, progressing from the burial chamber as underworld (duat) through the antechamber as horizon (akht) where he becomes Akh, through the doorway leading to the corridor -ascending by ladder- to heaven (pet), or passing like the setting sun from the west to his rising from the mouth of the horizon in the east, or exploiting the image of the king passing from his sarcophagus -the womb of Nut- through her vulva to birth at the door of the horizon. (...) Allen's analysis focuses on the principle whereby the position of discrete units of ritual text asserts a functional identity between the theology of the text and the architectural symbolism of the pyramid substructure, and so the reality of the king's passage to resurrection". - Eyre, 2002, p.44-45 & 47.

The direction of the texts was thus identical with the soul's path through the tomb, moving from the innermost parts of the burial-chamber (the "Duat" in the West), through the antechamber (the Eastern horizon or "Akhet"), to the outside of the pyramid via the second northern tunnel, flying to the Northern, circumpolar (imperishable) Stars, reaching the Field of Offering.

• the Duat (burial-chamber) : though a part of the world (Earth), but neither Nun or sky, the netherworld is inaccessible to the living and outside normal human experience. It is separate from the sky and reached prior to it. This Field of Reeds is the realm of the deceased and the deities and the mystery of Osiris. Pharaoh has perpetuated offerings, and stands at the door of the horizon to emerge from the Duat and start his spiritualization ;

• the Horizon (antechamber) : "Axt" ("Akhet"), translated as "horizon", is both the junction of sky and Earth and a place in the sky underneath this point (before eastern dawn and after western dusk), a secret interstitial zone reached and crossed by boat. It is a zone of transition and a "radiant place", the "land of the blessed". The horizon is the place of becoming effective, the locus of the becoming "Ax" ("Akh"), an effective spirit. Note (as did Allen, 1988), that the Cannibal Hymn, thematically belongs in its place (the East gable). It summarized Pharaoh's passage through the night sky to the Sun at dawn. The process of spiritualization ends with the emergence of the new light. In this hymn to Pharaoh, the king prepares the deities for his meal ;

• the Imperishable sky (northern tunnels) : the process of transfiguration (ultimate spiritualization) being completed, the Akh-spirit leaves the tomb and ascends to the northern stars.