Death is Only the Beginning: The Pyramid Texts of Unas (Part 1)

The History of Egypt Podcast

Dominic Perry

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2013

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Unas in the sky with deities. Around 2320 BCE, King Unas did something interesting. His pyramid, at Saqqraa, is the first (surviving) monument to feature the Pyramid Texts. These elaborate hieroglyph texts reveal the religious rituals, references, and philosophy of the Old Kingdom Egyptians. In this episode, we begin a journey deep into the night and up to the sky, as King Unas travels to his immortality… Date: c.2320 BCE. The History of Egypt Podcast Website: www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Support the show via Patreon www.patreon.com/egyptpodcast. Make a one-time donation via PayPal payments. Pyramid Texts in translation: https://pyramidtextsonline.com/translation.html. The "Imperishable " or Circumpolar Stars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Indestructibles. The Egyptian gods family tree: https://veritablehokum.com/comic/the-egyptian-god-family-tree/. Intro music by Jeffrey Goodman, “Lament of Isis and Nephthys,” Ancient Egyptian Music II. Interludes by Keith Zizza. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.7	slash setup.
0:32.6	Hello and welcome back to the History of Egypt podcast.
0:40.3	This is a special series of episodes, the complete pyramid texts, as found in the monument of
0:48.3	King Unas in the necropolis of Sakara.
0:52.3	The pyramid texts are Egypt's oldest surviving corpus of religious literature.
0:58.9	They probably come from prayers, hymns and rituals that had slowly developed and accumulated
1:05.4	over generations.
1:07.5	But the first example of carving these texts in stone comes from the walls of Unas' tomb.
1:15.3	Today, I would like to introduce you to the texts themselves, to read as fully as possible the passages they include.
1:24.4	The pyramid of Unas is located at Sakara, just south of the famous Steppe Pyramid.
1:31.8	In 2024, it is open to tourists, and if you are going to the necropolis, I highly recommend
1:38.0	seeing this monument.
1:40.0	But of course, hieroglyphs are meaningless if you can't get a sense what they're actually saying.
1:46.2	So, this series is intended to be a tourist's guide to the monument and its text.
1:53.4	The pyramid texts are long. When fully translated, they run approximately three hours to read. That's a lot of religion, a lot of arcane
2:03.9	references and names. So, to keep it manageable, we are going to tackle it one hour at a time.
2:11.1	This is part one, beginning in the burial chamber, the heart of Una's monument.
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