The First Religious Literature

June 10, 2006

In our attempt to get to all the pyramids in Egypt (we have a little work to do on this front) today Emily and I got to Saqqara. One of the stops here includes the pyramid of Teti.. The pyramid itself is not too impressive.. by this time the Egyptians had figured out how to do a pyramid on the cheap. You construct it with relatively simple and untroublesome materials (i.e. not large cut-to-fit limestone blocks) and then only use nice limestone to case the outside of the pyramid. So although these pyramids undoubtedly looked wonderful at their inauguration.. they weather badly. The picture below is the mound that remains of Teti's pyramid:

But underground it really is wonderful.. since the Egyptians had also by this time begun to carve what are known as the pyramid texts on the walls of the burials chambers. These texts consist of spells and snatches of what might pass for theology.. an immense intellectual effort heaped upon the acquisition of eternal life for the king. We look at the great pyramids and marvel at the human labor that must have gone into these constructions.. but we should also marvel at these elegant texts, which also reflect untold human labor.. mental labor, that is. In fact, here, for the first time, human beings enunciate in written language the hope for a future life.. not a future life for all human beings.. or even all Egyptians (nothing democratic about this hope!). It may seem strange, but this is where so much that we take for granted about human life (and the afterlife) began..

In the internal chamber there is a basalt sarcophagus.. with its top broken, of course.. marking the place where some ancient robber broke into the tomb. On the ceilings above are white stars on a black background.. and the wall in the rear has pyramid texts on the top, with the palace facade design that graces everything from king's tombs to coffins decorating the bottom half of the wall.

On the way out I also noticed the distinctive pink granite that comes from Aswan far in the south of Egypt.. another reminder of the physical resources and time that went into the construction of even this small-seeming pyramid.

Despite the tendency of some to define ancient Egyptian art and monuments as an expression of "Egyptian" identity and history.. it is much easier for me to see it as an expression of a broadly human identity.

Granted: modern Egyptians are genetically related to the creators of these works. But human beings are created by cultural systems, and if a cultural system changes, the human beings will be different too. To put this another way.. a non-Egyptian boy who was raised from infancy in ancient Egyptian culture would be much more the heir and rightful claimant of ancient Egyptian culture than a modern Egyptian who shares a certain percentage of genetic material with those same ancient Egyptians.

Granted also: these works fall within the borders of the modern nation state of Egypt, and so that state is entitled to their profits. But that is far cry from a right for the state to monopolize these works.. and not as works equally accessible (or equally inaccessible) to human beings in every nation. To walk into the inner chambers of the pyamid of Teti.. and to see the hieroglyphs running up and down the gray walls.. is to contemplate the twisted paths that our mental development has taken.. the weird directions it took to get to what seems perfectly normal to most: human beings will live after death.

If we are lucky we will even be around for the offerings brought to us by the living (the following picture is from a private tomb.. not the pyramid of Teti):