On interpreting ancient Egyptian funerary texts

Abstract

Ancient Egyptian funerary texts have traditionally been read as providing detailed, literal descriptions of afterlife beliefs, but various aspects of this view have begun to be questioned in recent research. The present article reviews such contributions in contrast to the classical view of funerary texts as established by Kurt Sethe (1931), arguing that it is possible in several respects to extend their stances and conclusions. The resulting view is one in which the very notion of “funerary texts” as a text genre sui generis is questioned, along with the defining feature that such texts contain literal descriptions of a transcendent, personal afterlife. Instead, it is suggested with reference to both Egyptological and interdisciplinary ideas that funerary texts can fruitfully be viewed as sharing their structure and function with other ancient Egyptian ritual texts. In questioning the intuitive reading of the texts as descriptions of the afterlife, such an approach opens up new interpretive possibilities of relevance both within Egyptology and in cross-cultural comparison.