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Friday Photo: Pyramid Texts – Unas Blue

The Pyramid Texts were first discovered in 1880 inside the Pyamid of Unas by Gaston Maspero. Unas was the first pyramid to be inscribed with the famous corpus of texts and of the inscribed pyramids, Unas is considered to contain the most complete form of the texts. Maspero published the texts from the pyramids of Unas, Teti, Pepi I, Merenre, and Pepi II before the discovery of the other five tombs. Actually, it was only the texts of Unas that were published in their entirety as the other four pyramids had not been completely cleared of rubble at that time and were only partially recorded.

Some of the blue colouring that remains on the hieroglyphs in the pyramid of Unas

There are ten pyramids in all that have parts of the Pyramid Texts inscribed on their walls, the other five being excavated by French expeditions in the early 20th century. The ten pyramids in chronological order are:

    Unas (Dynasty V, ca. 2352-2323 B.C.)
    Teti (Dynasty VI, ca. 2323-2291 B.C.)
    Pepi I (Dynasty VI, ca. 2289-2255 B.C.)
    Ankhesenpepi II, wife of Pepi I
    Merenre (Dynasty VI, ca. 225-2246 B.C.)
    Pepi II (Dynasty VI, ca. 2246-2152 B.C.)
    Neith,wife of Pepi II
    Iput II, wife of Pepi II
    Wedjebetni, wife of Pepi II
    Ibi (Dynasty VII, ca. 2109-2107 B.C.)

It wasn’t until 2001 that the pyramid of Ankhesenpepi was cleared and found to contain Pyramid Texts. Each additional pyramid discovered containing the texts adds to our knowledge and understanding of these enigmatic utterances.

With the discovery of portions of the Pyramid Texts inside the pyramid of Behenu, wife of Pepi I or Pepi II, the number of pyramids known to contain the magical texts rises by one more.

Photo Unas Blue, by Jon Bodsworth

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 10:39 am and is filed under Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Friday Photo: Pyramid Texts – Unas Blue”

  1. Hi Vincent

    Great picture and thanks for the run down of burials known to contain these texts.

  2. Thanks Tim,

    The Pyramid Texts are a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle, all the pyramids/pieces fitting together to compose the bigger picture. No single pyramid contains a complete form of the Pyramid Texts.

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