5-Week SASA Reading Group: The Pyramid Texts: The Earliest Ancient Egyptian Rituals
Thu, Jun 08
|Zoom Meeting
5-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group Thursdays at 3 pm Eastern Time Led by Brendan Hainline.
Time & Location
Jun 08, 2023, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT
Zoom Meeting
Guests
About the Event
In this course, we will read selections from the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts — the oldest religious literature in the world and the foundation of the long history of Egyptian mortuary texts. The Pyramid Texts are inscribed on the walls of the tomb chambers in the royal pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty and record the spoken utterances of Old Kingdom rituals. Although the overall corpus of the Pyramid Texts is large, many of the individual texts are quite short, just a few clauses, and so multiple texts could be discussed in one week — this is important, as some texts will express the same ideas in different ways, while others will present wildly different and seemingly incompatible beliefs. We will discuss how to interpret the often enigmatic texts in order to understand not only the beliefs and myths that underlie them, but also how the rituals functioned to ensure the deceased passed safely into the Afterlife and transformed into an 𝘢𝘬𝘩, or “Effective Spirit.”
5-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group
Thursdays at 3 pm Eastern Time
Start date: June 8th
End date: July 6th
MUST RSVP TO GET THE ZOOM LINK. The same link will be used for all sessions.