Description

This book, a complement to Elements de theologie thebaine (SAT 16) published in 2010, is a synoptic edition of the six spells of the Book of the Dead, defined by Willem Pleyte in 1882 as a "supplement". They are here translated and accompanied by a philological commentary. Two of these spells, 162 and 166, are attested for the first time during the second part of the 21st dynasty in Thebes, where the practice of the Amonian theocracy was at its strongest. The rest of the texts is only known from the "canonization" of the Book of the Dead at the end of the 25th dynasty; they are probably a contemporary creation. The grouping under the appellation "chapitres supplementaires" is an invention of the Ancient Egyptians, but it also allows us to put together this ensemble of texts which contain some common linguistic, theological and conceptual particularities.This publication offers a synoptic edition containing a dozen attestations of each text, conceived as a representative sample of the papyrus containing those spells. It enables the reader to follow in particular their chronological as well as their linguistic and syntactic evolution. Each spell is also translated and commented, completing thereby the analysis presented in Elements de theologie thebaine.