Studies on the illustrated Theban funerary papyri of the 11th and 10th centuries B.C

Abstract

The 21st Dynasty (about 1070-945 B.C.) is an extremely interesting period lying on the border line between the New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period. The religious ideas of the solar/Osirian unity developing during the Ramesside period, reached their apex in the early 21st Dyn. In the conceptions of the theologians of the theocratic “State of Amun”, especially in the field of eschatology. Since the tombs – the main source of the information about the funerary beliefs in the New Kingdom – were no longer decorated, coffins and papyris became the principal bearers of these conceptions, expressed in a most complex iconographic repertoire, which is unparalleled in other periods of Egyptian history. In the 21st Dynasty a great diversity of types of funerary papyri occurred, in which new religious ideas were recorded, hand in hand with traditional concepts. The picture became even more complicated, when some royal compositions, which in the New Kingdom has been reserved for kings only, were adapted by priests in the middle 21st Dynasty in Thebes. The author presents some attempts at classifications of various types of the papyri, 427 of which have been taken into consideration in the book. From this typology some conclusions have been reached concerning the development of the contents and the function of the papyri in the funerary equipment in the period between the New Kingdom and the 22nd Dynasty, as well as a picture of the social stratification of those days in Thebes.