Pyramid Texts: How Did Egypt's Kings Plan to Reach the Stars?

The oldest religious writing in Egypt, carved inside pyramids to send the dead king up to the stars.

The Pyramid Texts are Egypt's oldest large body of religious writing, carved inside pyramids at Saqqara from the reign of Unas, around 2350 BCE. Their spells aim to send the dead king up to the sky.

The Pyramid Texts are the oldest large body of religious writing from Egypt. They were carved in columns of hieroglyphs on the walls of the burial chambers and corridors of pyramids at Saqqara, starting with Unas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, around 2350 BCE, and continuing into the Sixth Dynasty and a few queens' pyramids. Earlier pyramids, including the great ones at Giza, have no inscriptions inside.

They are not a single story but hundreds of separate spells, called utterances, recited for the dead king. They protect his body, provide offerings, repel snakes, and above all get him to the sky. The king climbs a ladder, rides reed floats across the heavens, rises as smoke or as a falcon, and joins the sun god Ra in his boat or the circumpolar "Imperishable Stars" in the north. He is also identified with Osiris, the dead and reborn god.

The texts were uncovered in 1880–81, when workers of Gaston Maspero entered the pyramids of Pepi I and Merenre and then Unas. Samuel Mercer published a full English translation in 1952, and R. O. Faulkner's 1969 translation remains standard. The most famous passage, the so-called Cannibal Hymn (Utterances 273–274), shows the king hunting and eating the gods to absorb their power.

Egyptologists read the texts as ritual and theology. Readers who favor ancient-visitor ideas point to the ladders, fiery ascents and star destinations as memories of launches to the sky. Both agree the goal was the same: the king was meant to leave the earth and live among the stars. Many of the spells were reused and adapted in the later Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead.