Literatur und Politik im pharaonischen und ptolemdischen Agypten Vortrage der Tagung zum Gedenken an Georges Posener 5. - 10. September 1996 in Leipzig Herausgegeben von Jan ASSMANN und Elke BLUMENTHAL Servei de Biblioteques Biblioteca dHumanitats INSTITUT FRANCAIS D’ARCHEOLOGIE ORIENTALE BIBLIOTHEQUE D’ETUDE 127 - 1999ALBERTYNA DEMBSKA Note on Pyramid Texts, Utterance 558 and 263 YRAMID TEXTS, the title given by Egyptologists to the collection of religious texts that had been copied on the walls of pyramids since the reign of Wenis, the last king of the fifth dynasty, were composed for the benefit of the king and were uttered during royal funeral ceremonies. Later, these compositions also served nobles, as proven by the copies of them on the walls of their tombs. Among these religious texts there is an address to the dead king, utterance 558 (1390a-1391a), which reads as follows 1390 a, dd mdw j2 M p(n) jnd brek hh! b. sktanek si2u(t)? km wr cc hmnek bne ner? d.Jdinek jdt kaj smk m Junw 1391 a Recite. O you M. Hail to you, (0) Heh. “nbet) “nhet) wsset) wsset) wlset) wes ib m nbtek ‘nbetf You travelled * indeed, (0) Great Black. You stopped indeed, (0) god. You burnt incense indeed, (o) Long Lock, in Junu. May you live, may you live. Be happy, be happy. Raise. Live on your strength. 'Chaos-god, of R.O. FAULKNER, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Oxford, 1969, 217 n.1. 2 This verb transliterated 7 and shu, ef. Wb IV, 268, 3, according (0 J.P. ALLEN (The Inflection of the Verb in the Pyramid Texts, Malibu, 1984, Il, 576) is "Usually Identified as caus. 2ae gem., but the verb exhibits no specific features of that conjugation. No simplex is know (unless Usk. I, 19, 3; 20, 2 5) and the verb does not have causative meaning’. The verb only appears in a few compositions and probably this was the reason May you live. why the scribe overlooked to copy £ at the end of it CLalso the orthography of the verb da in Pyr.1270b and 1271 3 sometimes the two signs “| [Af are transtterated as air (L. SPELEERS, Les Texts des Pyramides é4yptiennes Bruxelles, 1924, 90) oF ntr smsw (C-E. SANDER-HANSEN Studien zur Grammatik der Pyramidentexte, Copenhague, 1956, § 131) * After RO, FAULKNER, op lt, 217 but L.SPELEERS. op tL 90; I, 90 prefers the meaning “row. Cf. also Wo IV, 286, 3. 105,106 ALBERTYNA. DEMBSKA This short composition being an utterance, as the rubrum dd wdw points out, opens an address to the dead king and a greeting to him. From the grammatical point of view, vocative and short verbal sentence are used with an epithet of the dead king. Short verbal sentences build the theme of the whole composition which is closed by phrases in the Old Perfective. This last grammatical from has an exclamatory value. The predicates of the verbal sentences are sdm.n,f active forms. They are followed by the same verbs from the semantic point of view. According to the flexional ending ¢, the feminine participle is used as a "complementary infinitive” or “verbal noun”. Due to this fact, the author introduced a new relation between these two verbs. He enriched the meaning of the predicate of each sentence giving it a special function: to intensify semantic value to the point that the listener accepts the description of this action as expressed verbs ® ‘An unknown author, the composer of this utterance, desired to strengthen the belief connected with the life beyond the grave. He drew his literary picture which exhibits fictious behaviour of the king after his death by using the following motives: the king wanders until he reaches Junu, the town where the sun-god Re’, the creator of the world, is worshipped. Then the dead king stops there and offers incense to the god in order to be allowed to accompany Re‘ in his boat while crossing the sky. The author reveals new connections and interdependencies for these three stages. Every stage is built of simple topo! (here verbal sentence) and shows phenomenons that could be observed in everyday life. The author used them consciously as well as using phonetic and grammatical rules for his fictious picture. The worshipper reconstructs the order of the literary picture within the compass of the utterance, accepts describing action expressed by verbs as the truth (axiom) and has no objection to it. This created vision of the literary picture within the compass of utterances adds strength to his growing conviction of the real existence of life after the death. It is the reason why he wishes the dead king life and happiness. The sdm.n,f from followed by the same verb from the semantic point of view formed a stylistic figure, a topos by means of which the author built his fictious picture. It was used by him in order to obtain intended results from the audience. Then, one may put a question if this grammatical construction is always used in utterances of Pyramid Texts to obtain intended results from listeners? This stylistic figure may be found in other utterances; utterance 263 of Pyramid Texts belongs to them, The utterance 263 has been copied on the upper part of the south wall of the antechamber at the pyramid of Wenis’. The composition consists of five spells and some of them are also to be found thread of the utterance, with the dead king who ferries over the sky ®. There is also another other utterances. These spells are connected with the main 3B EDEL, Aledgyptische Grammatik, Rome, 1955, 366, 2; 7 A. PIANKOFF, The Pyramid of Unas, Bollingen Series XL, 5, CLE. SANDERHANSEN, op. cit, 44, § 128, 45, 81 New York, 1968, pl. 22:24. © A. DEMBSKA, "A Note on Urk. V, I7L, 2°, Rocentk ® Pyr.337ad, 340b, c, 341a. Orlentalistyceny (Annual of Orlentall Studies) L, 21, 5-7