The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts: Texts from the Pyramid Age.

• Author: Szpakowska, Kasia

The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. By JAMES P. ALLEN. Writings from the Ancient World, vol. 23. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2005. Pp. x + 471. $39.95 (paper).

Texts from the Pyramid Age. By NIGEL C. STRUDWICK. Writings from the Ancient World, vol. 16. Pp. xxxvii + 522. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2005. Pp. x + 471. $39.95 (paper).

The publication of these two volumes is a welcome addition to our understanding of life in Old Kingdom Egypt. Each provides an important contribution to the corpus of Egyptian texts that have been translated into English.

In particular, the Pyramid Texts as a corpus have long been in need of revising. Since Faulkner's 1969 publication, previously unknown spells have been discovered and the known texts have been reinterpreted in light of current understanding of the structure and order of the passages. New insights have also been achieved by examining the compositions within their original tomb contexts, bringing to light modifications that occurred during the inscribing process. This corpus was due for a new publication, and this task has now been admirably accomplished by one of the top scholars of the Pyramid Texts, James P. Allen.

One of the most important features of this volume is the introduction of a new numbering system for the spells. Allen's arrangement is logical and well explained, with each spell labeled with the letter of the name of the tomb-owner (thus W = Weni) plus a number indicating its location in the tomb. This is particularly valuable as it allows the compositions to be studied within their spatial context. However, new numbering systems require concordances with older ones already in use. To help the researchers locate a particular spell, Allen provides a series of concordances after the main body of translations. These concordances list: spells by pyramid, spells by location, spells by PT or other numbers, spell numbers, spells not in Sethe's edition, utterance numbers of Faulkner's translation, and MAFS (Mission archeologique franchises de Saqqara) numbers. Each of these tables is useful, but it would also have been convenient to include a single concordance collating Sethe's numbering to the actual page where that spell appears in Allen's book.

As it stands, the volume can be a bit tricky to use. For example, in order to find Sethe's spell 220. the reader must first go to the Concordance: Spells by PT or Other Numbers, to find which tomb and which number the...