The
Pyramid Texts of UNAS
by Wim
van den Dungen
Passage-way
l
Antechamber
l
Corridor l
Serdab
introduction
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English text
l plan
of the tomb l
commentary
BURIAL-CHAMBER
SARCOPHAGUSROOM
ca. 7.3m (E/W) x 3.08m (N/S)
THE MIDNIGHT MYSTERY or Ars Obscura
Sethe's Edition
l
Central Plan
Overall textual
distributions :
The burial-chamber has no texts near the sarcophagus, although 18 texts adorn
the West Gable, right above the false door designs. These are protective
spells against evil serpents. On the North Wall, there are 118 texts. Taken
together, these texts form an offering liturgy in 5 parts. The latter
takes up over half of the total utterances in the pyramid of Unas. There are 12
more texts on the South Wall and 7 on the East Wall. The South Wall deals with
the voyage to the Duat, ending in the coronation & solarization of
the king on the East Wall. Finally, on the East Gable, we find foodspells
to replenish the king as a Living Horus.
The last text of the South Wall (219) continues on the East Wall. The texts of
the North and South Walls begin in the West and read to the East. The texts of
the West Gable read from North to South and those of the East Wall and East
Gable read from South to North. Let us remind the sacred directions of space :
The first movement is in accord with the daily movement of
the Sun, who "dies" in the West at dusk and is "reborn" in the East at dawn (cf.
the so-called "Hours" of the night which return a millennium later in the Books
of the Netherworld, in particular in the
Amduat).
This procession is also suggestive of a movement from the burial-chamber toward
the antechamber, persisting in the passage-way and in the antechamber. The
South-North axis reflects the dynamics between constellations changing through
the cycles of the year, in particular Sirius (reflective of the myth of
Osiris
and the Duat) and the Imperishable Stars in the North (reflective of the sky of
Re, the ultimate abode of the divine king).
Structural parts :
►
West
1.
Protecting the West
Every start is difficult and needs to be protected from adverse forces,
offering resistance to whatever process is to be initiated. In this case, the
text starts with protecting the tomb of evil creatures related to darkness and
Earth (like a series of serpents). The prominent placement of these opening text
on the West Gable, right above the sarcophagus, is balanced by the closing
spells against similar obnoxious beings on the East Wall of the antechamber,
forming as it were the two poles of an imaginary
"protective field" (Naydler,
2005, p.296), defining the written areas of the tomb as the protected place of
ritual workings.
►
North
2.
Offering Liturgy
A thorough preparation is necessary before the king takes off to the
Duat. In a dramatic, performative way, the Offering Liturgy presents the divine
king and his priest as officiating at a royal ritual involving purifications &
offerings. This elaborate ceremony, in which the king presides, has (1) rites of
purification, (2) the opening of the mouth, (3) a preliminary presentation of
offerings, (4) anointing & adornment of the king and (5) offerings made in the
form of an elaborate banquet. In these ceremonies, the essential ritual
implement is the Eye of Horus, hurt by Seth and restored (healed) by
Thoth. The text elucidates how this Left
Eye
of Horus, or
Eye of Wellness, operates three registers :
-
sum total of
offerings
: the Eye represents all possible foodstuff etc. placed on the table of
offerings ;
-
offer of
offerings (offertorium) :
the Eye as the standard for all possible offerings, for every
offering is like offering the Eye of Horus ;
-
offer of communion (canon) : the "embrace" as communion
with the Eye to restore Osiris implies the absorbation of the Eye of
Horus to heal Osiris (the King).
►
South
3. Voyage to the Duat
•
Departing alive
After the banquet, the divine king finally departs to the Duat. The South Wall
records, in 7 texts, the Old Kingdom version of Egypt's theology of
regeneration, the so-called
midnight mystery, returning a millennium later
in the 6th Hour of the
Amduat. The first and last three texts are
spoken by the priest, while the crucial passage (a prayer recited by the king),
is sandwiched between these. The priest affirms the king has not gone dead, but
alive. He sits on the throne of Osiris and is identified with Atum (213).
However, this does not mean his final goal lies in the Duat. Quite on the
contrary, the king is a "purified Falcon" at the "head of the Westerners", who
will eventually bathe in the "cool waters of the stars" (214). In the Duat, he
is protected by Atum, who will not allow the heart of the king to be claimed by
Osiris. Paradoxically, in order to guarantee this escape from the special
jurisdiction of the king of the dead, the divine king, a Ba, has to (in a ritual sense) identify with Osiris
and simulate his death to live his restoration (rejuvenation & regeneration) to
the point of precipitation (incarnation or embodiment). The king is never
at the mercy of Osiris, and this because he is a Solar spirit pulled down by Geb,
protected by Atum, and eventually ontologically identified with the "Father of
the gods".
•
Midnight Mystery
Just as it would be the case in the
Amduat many centuries later, the actual
midnight mystery implies (a) the encircling of the king, in the Night Bark, by the Duat & (b)
his unification with Atum "in darkness". Being encompassed by the Duat
and in its depths, the king comes to renewal. United in the darkness, he rises
in the horizon, the place of his spiritualization. The principle is simple : the king, by way of the horizon and its
interstitial twilight, returns to the place of origin (the First Time, the
Golden Age of he self-created Atum) and, just like the Sun god each night, taps
the powers of rejuvenation there.
In the
Amduat, the Ba of Re enters the "body" of
Osiris
(Sokar). Encircled by the Oroboros-serpent, the crucial transformation, by
returning the corpse of Re to the First Time (Zep Tepi), is effectuated. The
fact that the king is a Solar being is stressed again and again. His ultimate
abode is the sky of Re and the dwellers of the Duat, in particular Osiris at the
head of the Westeners, are made aware of this through repetition. Even in the
Duat, the king is linked with Atum-Re, his father. The Duat Voyage is a darkness
leading to regeneration, but the latter is only possible because king Unas (like
the Ba of Re in the Amduat and the Book of Gates), unites with
Atum, the origin of the deities, the king and the world.
"Through the paradox of rite, every consecrated space
coincides with the center of the world, just as the time of any ritual coincides
with the mythical time of the 'beginning'. Through repetition of the cosmogonic
act, concrete time, in which the construction takes place, is projected into
mythical time, in illo tempore when the foundation of the world occurred.
Thus the reality and the enduringness of a construction are assured not only by
the transformation of profane space into a transcendent space (the center) but
also by the transformation of concrete time into mythical time. Any ritual
whatever, (...) unfolds not only in a consecrated space (i.e., one different in
essence from profane space) but also in 'sacred time', 'once upon a time' (in
illo tempore, ab origine), that is, when the ritual was performed for the
First Time by a god, an ancestor, or a hero." -
Eliade, M. : The Myth
of the Eternal Return, 1965, p.21.
►
The Rebirth of the King as a Living Osiris
The king, identified with Osiris, encounters twelve deities and "lives".
The affirmation that King Unas, son of Atum, is Osiris, is not dead, is not
destroyed, and has not been judged but instead judges is repeated twenty-four
times !
The last text of the South Wall continues on the East Wall.
►
East
•
Coronation as Horus
The king prays to the Red Crown and is crowned with it.
He receives the emblems of power and is enthroned with Lotus and Sekhem
sceptres. He is a Living Horus.
•
Coronation Ritual of a Solarized Horus King
A coronation ceremony invokes the staircase at either end of the dais
upon which the double throne of the king was placed during the Sed festival.
Here, ritual act and ecstatic experience join forces. While certain ritual
activity is ongoing, meditative techniques & states are entered to facilitate
imagination (visualization), charge the repetition of holy words and trigger
various trance-states (much like in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism). Together
with the experience described earlier, we have here the two main variants of
altered states of consciousness perceived by king Unas. The "silent" third is
the divine king himself, the Living Horus who transcends duality and keeps
divisions united :
These coronation rituals indicate a this-life context, and
were placed at the end of the Duat voyage. These rituals might have followed
after the trance-state of the king expired and he returned to this plane and
awoke.
4. Return from the Duat
The king is called back and nourished, and the
"mood has an unfamiliar urgency" (Naydler,
2005, p.180.). Is this the awakening of the initiate-king who returns from
a trancelike experience of the Duat ? If so, then the divine king, in a ritual
trance, left as a dying Osiris (assumed the death posture) to become (by virtue
of the midnight mystery) a newborn Horus and be coronated as such. The Duat
provides the transformation-key to move from a living but depleted Horus
King to a newborn or Living Horus King (cf. the Sed festival).
Identification with the "body" of Osiris provided the key, and in the case of
the divine king the merging had to be complete. Osiris the King would be
restored (by the Eye of Horus working ex opere operato as a sublimation
of offerings and on the level of basic myths) and this restoration of Osiris the
King is the awakening of the divine king as a Living Horus.
5. Spiritual nourishment
On the East Gable, these texts mainly deal with the physical and spiritual
nourishment of the king. They tell what happened to him in the Duat after
he was regenerated by way of the midnight mystery.
As a Bull, king Unas is associated with Min, the god of fertility. He feeds,
like the deities, on Maat, the "eye of Ra" and avoids the inversion of his food
(eating excrement). His feeding is the result of his spiritual rebirth. As a
newborn Horus, he eats and drinks what Horus lives on.
Comments
:
While on Earth, the king enters the underworld in an altered state of
consciousness. The burial-chamber is the place of
Duat-regeneration (rejuvenation) accessible to the divine king in this-life
rituals, assuming the death-posture and the role of Osiris. This is a general
rehearsal of what happens when the king receives a "sah" or mummy. Because of these
this-life practices, he
escaped Osiris in this life and in the afterlife.
The midnight conjunction with Atum "in darkness", taps into the infinite power-base
outside the natural order. It involves
the deepest layer of the Egyptian concept of reality, the everlasting
primordial ocean (Nun) and its autogenetic capacities (Atum, the Ba of Nun). This
ultimate layer lies outside the sphere
of creation, and is described in the Heliopolitan myths as Atum hatching
himself by himself in Nun, the inert waters in which Atum floats.
Nun is everything outside what is deemed necessary for creation and order.
Nun and absolute chaos, isotropic (in all directions) and homogeneous
(uniform), are identical. Nun is inimical to life itself and dissolves
everything. But, uniting with Atum in the Duat of Osiris,
rekindles king Unas, and a new beginning unfolds. The depleted Horus,
by identifying ritually with Osiris (becoming Osiris King Unas), is regenerated
as a newborn Living Horus, a rejuvenated king.
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