Monday, April 15, 2019

A New Concordance of the Pyramid Texts

[First posted in AWOL 7 July 2013, updated 2019 April 2019]

A New Concordance of the Pyramid Texts
James P. Allen

These documents are again available online hosted by courtesy of the Oriental Institute Research Archives. The are accessible via the Research Archives OPAC:
THIS CONCORDANCE was prepared as the basis for a new study of the lexicon, orthography, and grammar of the Pyramid Texts. It contains all currently available instances of Pyramid Texts from the pyramids of Unis to those of Pepi II’s queens. Where possible, the texts have been scanned from photographs (Unis) or published facsimiles, each sized to a width of 8.9 mm (0.35 in); I am grateful to Élise Bène for permission to use the facsimiles of Teti’s texts that she prepared for her doctoral dissertation. Where no facsimile was available, I have used the hand copies published by Sethe, sometimes rearranged to avoid excessively large signs or gaps between signs; I have also reversed Sethe’s consistent left-facing lines when the original faces right. The Merenre fragments published in Orientalia are rendered in normalized hieroglyphs. 
In place of the sequential column numbers used by Sethe and Jéquier for each pyramid, I have used the convention inaugurated by Leclant, where each column is numbered according to its location in the pyramid; for conventions, see the “Occurrences of Pyramid Texts,” below. Parentheses are used to indicate text beginning within a column rather than at the top. 
The texts are arranged by Sethe’s spell numbers (Sprüche); parentheses indicate a spell that continues over more than one page. I have appended letters in cases where Sethe assigned a single number to what was subsequently revealed to be more than one spell: for example, PT 71A–D. I have also assigned new spell numbers, marked by an asterisk (PT *704–*806), to texts not numbered by Sethe, where these are either substantially preserved or have a known location in the pyramid. In place of Sethe’s paragraph numbers (Pyr.), I have numbered the lines of each spell larger than a single line sequentially, usually corresponding to Sethe’s paragraph numbers; the latter are given in small type below the corresponding sequential number: thus, for example, PT 50.1, corresponding to Sethe’s Pyr. 37b. An asterisk following a sequential number (or Sethe’s Pyr. number, where no sequential number has been assigned) signals a textual note, found on the same page. 
The texts of each spell are arranged chronologically from left (earliest) to right (latest). For passages with discernible revisions on the wall, the original text is presented in normalized hieroglyphs to the left of the final version, with the column headed by the same siglum plus a prime (Sethe’s älterer Text) or, for instances of two revisions, a double prime (Sethe’s ältester Text): for instance, PT 509.3 (Pyr. 1120c), with Pʺ to the left of Pʹ, to the left of P. In a few cases where Sethe’s publication shows signs not preserved in the facsimile, I have added these in normalized hieroglyphs in a column to the right, headed “Sethe.” 
I hope that this concordance, and its conventions, will prove useful to scholars of the Pyramid Texts. At a minimum, it combines the two volumes of Sethe, the four of Jéquier, and the one of Leclant’s MAFS, into a single source. In particular, however, I hope it will ease the current confusion in numbering, replacing the quadruple system of Sethe, T.G. Allen, Faulkner, and new MAFS numbers by a single, coherent system. I have decided to abandon Sethe’s Pyr. numbers for three reasons. First, the latter do not immediately reveal to which spell they belong. Second, a system of revised Pyr. numbers, such as that used in my Inflection of the Verb in the Pyramid Texts, becomes unwieldy in cases where a large amount of text has been discovered since Sethe’s publication; an example is PT 698A, to which Sethe assigned Pyr. 2176 but which turns out to have thirty-three lines, necessitating Pyr. numbers from 2176a to 2176ee in Sethe’s system. Third, because my sequential numbers do not continue beyond a single spell, they can be easily revised if new text is discovered for spells currently preserved only in fragments. 
This concordance is being made freely available via the internet in the hope that it will prove useful to scholars of the Pyramid Texts. It is divided into six volumes (PDF files) to make for easier downloading. This initial volume contains a list of all currently available occurrences and a transcription of spells (numbered and unnumbered) and major fragments. 
This is by no means a final edition. The texts from the pyramids of Teti, Pepi I’s queens, and Merenre still await full publication, and a true facsimile edition of those from the pyramids of Pepi II and his queens is also needed. As new sources become available, I will add them to the CorelDraw files that are the basis of this concordance. More than a century and a quarter after they were first discovered by Maspero, the Pyramid Texts remain a work in progress.
Providence, 2013

    4 comments:

    1. i am really interested and intrigued ! but all the links are broken is there any way i can get them ?

      ReplyDelete
    2. The links are all repaired and updated

      ReplyDelete
    3. Can a copy of Élise Bène's doctoral dissertation be obtained?

      ReplyDelete