A hiatus for the Book of the Dead
Dec. 27th, 2023 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmet"The Book of the Dead was used throughout the New Kingdom and Twenty-first Dynasty, and then, following an apparent hiatus in its use in the Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties, from around 700 BCE to Ptolemaic times." -- Nicola J. Adderley, Personal Religion in the Libyan Period in Egypt, p 42 n211 (which leads to:)
"In the ninth century BC the detailed decoration of Theban coffins gave way to a plainer style without texts and the local practice of placing funerary manuscripts in he burial vanished altogether. At Tanis in the north meanwhile we find for the first time since Ramses XI royal burial chambers inscribed with scenes and texts extracted from the Book of the Dead and the Underworld Books. The occurrence of both startling reversals in the surviving record at the two governing centres of Egypt suggests that there may be a link to wider historical developments; the reign of Osorkon II brought a reimposition of northern control over Thebes, which resisted with force according to the Karnak inscription of the general Osorkon, a prince in the royal house. Yet the link may not amount to a direct royal clampdown on Theban use of texts because the Thebans did not resume their earlier coffin and manuscript traditions under the weak successors of Osorkon II. It is also significant that the disappearance of funerary texts involved not only those reserved before 1100 BC for the king but also.the Book of the Dead which had always been available to his subjects. Therefore the renewed vigour of the north under Osorkon II may have caused the change in Theban burial customs more indirectly, by promoting the spread of northern textless funerary traditions to the southern city, much as funerary customs altered abruptly in the nineteenth century BC without any obvious political motivation.
"Whatever the reasons for the change, for over a century no funerary literature survives..." -- Stephen Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion, pp 167-8
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Nicola J. Adderley. Personal Religion in the Libyan Period in Egypt. OmniScriptum, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2015.
Stephen Quirke. Ancient Egyptian Religion. British Museum Press, London, 1992.
"In the ninth century BC the detailed decoration of Theban coffins gave way to a plainer style without texts and the local practice of placing funerary manuscripts in he burial vanished altogether. At Tanis in the north meanwhile we find for the first time since Ramses XI royal burial chambers inscribed with scenes and texts extracted from the Book of the Dead and the Underworld Books. The occurrence of both startling reversals in the surviving record at the two governing centres of Egypt suggests that there may be a link to wider historical developments; the reign of Osorkon II brought a reimposition of northern control over Thebes, which resisted with force according to the Karnak inscription of the general Osorkon, a prince in the royal house. Yet the link may not amount to a direct royal clampdown on Theban use of texts because the Thebans did not resume their earlier coffin and manuscript traditions under the weak successors of Osorkon II. It is also significant that the disappearance of funerary texts involved not only those reserved before 1100 BC for the king but also.the Book of the Dead which had always been available to his subjects. Therefore the renewed vigour of the north under Osorkon II may have caused the change in Theban burial customs more indirectly, by promoting the spread of northern textless funerary traditions to the southern city, much as funerary customs altered abruptly in the nineteenth century BC without any obvious political motivation.
"Whatever the reasons for the change, for over a century no funerary literature survives..." -- Stephen Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion, pp 167-8
__
Nicola J. Adderley. Personal Religion in the Libyan Period in Egypt. OmniScriptum, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2015.
Stephen Quirke. Ancient Egyptian Religion. British Museum Press, London, 1992.
