Ancient Egyptian Books of the Earth

Joshua Aaron Roberson is Assistant Professor, Department of History, Camden County College (Blackwood, NJ).  He has worked as an epigrapher and sigillographer with the University of Pennsylvania expeditions to Saqqara and Abydos. He has also worked as a sigillographer for the French-Egyptian expedition (CNRS/CFEETK) to the Opet temple at Karnak, and has conducted independent research in the Valley of the Kings and El Asasif at Thebes (modern Luxor) and the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

• Contents List of Figures, Tables, and Plates Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Introduction 1.1 General remarks 1.2 Underworld Books 1.3 The Designation of "The Book of the Earth 1.4 Definition of the Corpus 1.5 Outline of Sources 1.6 Content and Internal Structure of the Book 1.7 The Notational System Used in the Present Study 2. Architecture 2.1 Development of the Royal Tomb in the Valley of the Kings 2.2 Underworld Cosmology and Architecture 2.3 Considerations on the Evolution of the Ramesside Royal Tomb: Precursors and Prototypes 2.4 Internal Orientation in the Mature Ramesside Royal Tomb 2.5 Catalogue of Monuments 2.6 The Symbolic Significance of the Ramesside Sarcophagus as akhet and Divine Birth Station 2.7 Excursus: The Sarcophagi 3. Orthography 3.1 General Remarks 3.2 Orthographic Variation among Individual Signs 3.3 Phonetic Change 3.4 Adaptations from the Hieratic 3.5 Shape Substitutions 3.6 Superfluous Signs 3.7 Miscellaneous 3.8 Cryptography 4. Grammar 4.1 General Remarks 4.2 The Introductory Formula 4.3 Pronouns 4.4 Prepositions 4.5 The Proclitic Particle 4.6 Circumstantial 4.7 Noun + sdm=f Construction 4.8 sdm.hr=f 4.9 Subject + Stative vs. Pseudo-Verbal Construction 5. The Vignettes 5.1 General Remarks 5.2 Catalogue of Scenes 5.3 The Merneptah Template 5.4 The Aker Group 6. The Texts 6.1 General Remarks 6.2 The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos 6.3 Merneptah 6.4 Tawosret 6.5 Ramesses III 6.6 Ramesses IV 6.7 Ramesses VI 6.8 Ramesses VII 6.9 Ramesses IX 6.10 Twenty-First Dynasty Mythological Papyri 6.11 Osorkon II 6.12 Pedamenopet 6.13 Mutirdis 6.14 Padineith 6.15 Horira'a 6.16 Sarcophagus of Nakhtnebef 6.17 Sarcophagus of Tjahorpta 6.18 Sarcophagi Inscribed on the Model of Ramesses III 7. Closing Remarks 7.1 The Internal Structure of the Books of the Earth 7.2 Date of Composition 7.3 The Original Function of the Books of the Earth, from the Later New Kingdom (Dynasties 19-20) 7.4 The History and Evolution of the Books of the Earth from the Third Intermediate Period and Later Appendix 1, Tables Appendix 2, Black and White Plates Appendix 3, Text Plates Bibliography Indices

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