This thesis investigates how the burial chamber of the 8th Dynasty pyramid of king Qakare Ibi at Saqqara in Egypt (c. 2109-2107 B.C.) was inscribed. It uses a holistic approach to focus on the textual programme and its unusual aspects in comparison to older pyramids. In doing so, it addresses issues of textual transmission and of scribal practice in the process of inscribing the walls of subterranean chambers in pyramids. The aim is to contextualise the texts of Ibi within the Memphite tradition of Pyamid Texts and the development of mortuary literature on different media from the late third millennium BCE Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom in the early second millennium BCE. The first chapter presents the background to this research and information on king Ibi and his pyramid. The second chapter treats research on the arrangement of the texts on the walls of subterranean chambers of royal pyramids of kings and queens and compares the layout of the texts in the pyramid of Ibi with older pyramids. It then discusses in detail one section on the east wall of Ibi, where the order of spells diverges from other transmitted sequences. The unusual combination of spells and the practice of shortening spells is investigated further in the third chapter, where two sections of texts on the south wall are analysed. The fourth chapter explores garbled texts and discusses processes of copying and inscribing the texts onto the walls of pyramids. The fifth chapter analyses the modifications of the writing system in pyramids, especially the mutilation of hieroglyphs, and how this practice relates to the tradition of altering signs in pyramids. Finally, the sixth chapter synthesises the results of the preceding chapters in two sections. The first section summarises the process of inscribing pyramids and contextualises aspects of scribal practices within it. The second section concludes the thesis with a discussion of the features of the textual programme of Ibi and of how it relates to the broader transmission of mortuary literature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:757911 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Alvarez, Christelle |
| Contributors | Parkinson, Richard B. ; Allen, James P. ; Eyre, Christopher ; Baines, John |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:91f5c89d-1c1e-47e2-9780-1136e4b3b10c |
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