The ancient Egyptian coffin texts : spells 1-1185 & indexes

299 Pages·2004·2.18 MB·English

by  Raymond O Faulkner

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN COFFIN TEXTS
Volume I, Spells 1-354
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Plural and Dual in Old Egyptian.
The Papyrus Bremner-Rhind (Pap. Brit. Mus. 10188).
The Wilbour Papyrus, ed. Sir Alan Gardiner. Vol. IV. Index.
An Ancient Egyptian Book of Hours (Pap. Brit. Mus. 10569).
A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian.
The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts.
The Book of the Dead (printed for the Limited Editions Club, New York).
The Literature of Ancient Egypt, with W. K. Simpson and E. F. Wente, Jr.
THE
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN
COFFIN TEXTS
••
Volume I Spells 1-354
R. O. Faulkner, D.Lit., F.S.A.
ARIS & PHILLIPS Ltd.
Warminster
Englan(t .
ISBN 0 85668 005 2
© R. O. Faulkner. All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission of the publishers. 1973.
Set in 12/14 pt Monotype Imprint 101
Designed by Pete Elek
Published by Aris & Phillips Ltd
Teddington House, Church Street, Warminster, Wiltshire
Printed by offset in Great Britain at
The Pitman Press, Bath
To
PHYLLIS AND CYRIL SPA ULL
In token of a long friendship
and of many kindnesses received

PREFACE
The Coffin Texts take their title from the fact that they are inscribed in ink
on the inside walls of the large rectangular wooden coffins which were much
used for the burial of wealthy Egyptians during the Middle Kingdom; texts
written on papyrus are very rare, though of course they must once have
existed to provide the necessary copies for the scribes working on the coffins.
The first attempt to publish these texts as a whole was made by Pierre Lacau,
who produced a printed text of eighty-four spells in Receuil de Travaux
relatifs it la Philologie et it I' Archaeologie egyptiennes et assyriennes, vols. 26-31,
reprinting them in Textes religieux egyptiens, Paris, 1910. Quotations from
these texts were used by J. H. Breasted in his Development of Religion and
Thought in Ancient Egypt, New York and London, 1912~ Lacau was prevented
by other preoccupations from carrying this work any further, so Breasted
and (Sir) Alan Gardiner, after the end of the war of 1914-18, and with Lacau's
full consent and co-operation, took up again the idea of making a complete
collection of all known Coffin Texts, and of publishing them in autograph in
vertical columns with the signs in their original arrangement and order.
This colossal task was undertaken by Professor Adriaan de Buck, at first in
collaboration with Gardiner, but later by himself, with the whole-hearted
support of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, which also
made itself responsible for the publication of the copied texts. The magnificent
result of de Buck's labours is the seven volumes of The Egyptian Coffin Texts,
published at intervals between 1935 and 1961. The versions of the Pyramid
Texts which appear in the Coffin Texts are not, generally speaking, included
in de Buck's published copies, for reasons which he states on p. xi of his first
volume. It was his original intention to publish these later, but sadly he did
not live to do so. But his edition of the Coffin Texts is complete, apart from
any later discoveries there may have been, and these seven large volumes are
the lasting monument to the acumen and industry of a very great scholar.
Had he been spared to do so, de Buck himself would doubtless have carried
out the task for which he was uniquely competent, namely the translation of
this great corpus of texts into a modern language, but this was not to be, save
for one spelllJublished in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 35. This
rather formidable duty has now been undertaken by one who lacks de Buck's
long familiarity with the material, but who can at least plead a life-long active
interest in Egyptian religious texts. As justification for the attempt he can
quote Gardiner's dictum in JEA 32, 56: 'Scholars should not shrink from
translating difficult texts. At the best they may be lucky enough to hit on the
right rendering. At the worst they will have given the critics a target to tilt at'.
In general the present work follows the model of my translation of the
Pyramid Texts, except that there are no italicized headings to the spells, and
the same conventions of translation have been followed. The notes on the
spells are confined mostly to textual and philological matters, as a work of this
nature does not lend itself to lengthy exposition; discussions of this sort in
respect of individual spells of especial interest by various authors will be found
in the periodical literature of Egyptology. In such cases the reader is referred
in the note or notes following the translation to the relevant article; in the
interest of economy the discussions to be found there have not been repeated
in the present work. Furthermore, owing to the recent phenomenal rise in
the costs of book-produotion, other economies have had to be employed if
the price of this work were to be kept at all with reasonable bounds. Thus
hieroglyphic signs and groups have been reproduced by zincograph instead
of hieroglyphic type, and the indexes, which are intended for inclusion in
vol. II, now in course of preparation, will also have to undergo some economy,
though in any case the mere mass of the material would have enforced some
thing of the sort.
In preparing this work for publication one of my greatest pleasures has
been the great encouragement I have had from friends and colleagues, especi
ally those of myoId Department in University College, London; in fact it is
not too much to say that without their· support this book would not have seen
the light. I also acknowledge most gratefully the friendliness and help I have
had from Mr. Adrian Phillips of Aris and Phillips Ltd., the publishers of this
book. I further express my great thanks to the Sir Alan Gardiner Settlement
for Egyptological Purposes for a generous subvention towards the costs of
publication.
R. O. Faulkner
CONTENTS
PREFACE vn
ABBREVIA TIONS Xl
NOTES TO READERS Xlll
TRANSLATIONS AND NOTES I