Old Kingdom part I I
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Unas and Pyramids Texts Unas reigned from -2350 to -2321. It is the last king of the 5th dynasty. His pyramid in Saqqara became famous when Maspero in 1881 discovered the inscriptions that covered the inside. These inscriptions constitute the oldest version of the funeral precepts so-called "Texts of the Pyramids." The king is evoked there at a time as Osiris in the outre-tombe and as son of Re in the sky. The archaic character of the text lets to think that it carries up by oral tradition at least from the 3rd dynasty.
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Teti The name of Abydos re-appears under the reign of Teti, first king of the 6th dynasty (toward -2321). He publishes a decree concerning the relations between the temples of Khenti-Amentiu and Osiris. Begun with Unas, the cult of Osiris develops itself with Teti in Abydos. The king, after his death, is identified with Osiris.
It is from this period
that would date the Temple of Osiris that Mariette
searched in 1860 (cf. Mariette, 1869). Almost nothing remained from this temple in his time. In his work, Mariette showed some steles that he recuperated there
and he gave the following map
The extensive excavations of Petrie in 1902-1903 in this place revealed that constructions to worship usage had existed there since the pre-dynastic periods until a lot more late periods (cf. Harvey p. 85 and following)The most former coherent and analyzable structures would date from the 6th dynasty. However the nature and the function of these old monuments have been put in question: Petrie would have only found some chapels and the true Temple of Osiris would remain to be discovered, maybe buried under more recent monuments. Inspired by the osirian religion, the formula "I gave bread to the one that was hungry, of water to the one that was thirsty, a garment to the one that was naked" became quickly a cliché in the "traditional autobiographies" (Vercoutter, 1992). Among these, the autobiography of Weni detaches itself distinctly by its qualities, notably literary. Weni served under them reigned of Teti, Pepi I and Merenre. IIn his mastaba in Abydos he made his autobiography engraved. Mariette, that discovered it in 1860, made cut the block of 3-m large limestone to transport it in Cairo. This mastaba was the subject of recent excavations by the Kelsey Museum and the Pennsylvania-Yale-New York University in 1995, by the Kelsey Museum in 1999 and 2000. They revealed besides new funeral reliefs let there by Mariette, a new stele false door again in place, but sketchyt. The vizir also carried the name of nefer nekhet mery-Re while the reliefs bring some precisions on his family attesting that Weni was part of a very powerful family. (for Kelsey results, see the page links).. |