Collections of scenes and texts designated variously as the "Book of the Earth," "Creation of the Solar Disc," and "Book of Aker" were inscribed on the walls of royal sarcophagus chambers throughout Egypt's Ramessid period (Dynasties 19-20). This material illustrated discrete episodes from the nocturnal voyage of the sun god, which functioned as a model for the resurrection of the deceased king. These earliest "Books of the Earth" employed mostly ad hoc arrangements of scenes, united by shared elements of iconography, an overarching, bipartite symmetry of composition, and their frequent pairing with representations of the double sky overhead. From the Twenty-First Dynasty and later, selections of programmatic tableaux were adapted for use in private mortuary contexts, often in conjunction with innovative or previously unattested annotations. The present study collects and analyzes all currently known Book of the Earth material, including discussions of iconography, grammar, orthography, and architectural setting.

The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Earth (Wilbour Studies in Egypt and Ancient Western Asia)

Roberson, Joshua Aaron

Religion & Spirituality

Lockwood Press

This is the first synthesis on Egyptian enigmatic writing (also referred to as "cryptography") in the New Kingdom (c.1550-1070 BCE). Enigmatic writing is an extended practice of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, set against immediate decoding and towards revealing additional levels of meaning. The first volume consists of studies by the main specialists in the field. This second volume is a lexicon of all attested enigmatic signs and values.

A Lexicon of Ancient Egyptian Cryptography of the New Kingdom (Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde – Beihefte, 12/2)

History

Ancient Civilizations

de Gruyter

Among the many scenes and texts that occur for the first time in the Nineteenth Dynasty cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos is a representation of the awakening of Osiris by Horus, which appears directly beneath a vignette depicting the transit of the solar barques. The annotations to this bi-partite tableau appear in a mixture of standard, hieroglyphic Egyptian and cryptographic scripts. Similar groups of scenes and texts occur in the Twentieth Dynasty royal tombs of Ramesses VI (KV9) and Ramesses IX (KV6), the Twenty-Second Dynasty tomb of Sheshonq III at Tanis (NRT5), and the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty private tomb of Mutirdis at Thebes (TT410). In addition, significant, albeit partial parallels occur on the re-carved, Twenty-Second Dynasty sarcophagus of Psusennes and a Ptolemaic sarcophagus inscribed for a certain Khaf. This study offers a summary of the scenes iconography together with the first synoptic edition of the relevant annotations, taking into account all currently published exemplars. Many of the cryptographic texts are translated here for the first time, while others receive updated translations and expanded analyses. The author also considers the meaning and context of the paired scenes in royal and private monuments, in order to demonstrate the status of the bi-partite tableau as a unified composition. This composition is identified as a concise representative of the cosmological genre referred to usually as the Books of the Underworld and Sky.

The Awakening of Osiris and the Transit of the Solar Barques: Royal Apotheosis in a Most Concise Book of the Underworld and Sky (Orbis Biblicus Et Orientalis) (Orbis Biblicus Et Orientalis, 262)

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Gmbh & Co

The Awakening of Osiris and the Transit of the Solar Barques: Royal Apotheosis in a Most Concise Book of the Underworld and Sky (Orbis Biblicus Et Orientalis, 262)

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