Egyptian letters to the dead

"The dream in ancient Egypt functioned as a liminal zone between the land of the living and the afterlife. However, the dream was also a phenomenon over which the dreamer had little control, and its permeable boundaries allowed both the divine and the demonic inhabitants of the beyond access to the visible world. Sometimes the result was a positive beneficial experience, as is attested in New Kingdom royal texts and elite hymns that relate the awe-inspiring contact a dreamer could have with a god or a goddess. But another more disturbing belief was that dreams could also allow the vulnerable sleeper to be watched or even assaulted by the hostile dead. While today we call these events « nightmares » and consider them psychological phenomena, the Egyptians blamed them on external monsters or demons crossing over from the other side. These entities included the dead, and here it appears that the line between the justified transfigured dead and the malevolent unjustified dead might not have been an immutable one.

Drawing upon both textual and material evidence primarily from the New Kingdom, this paper will explore the identity and nature of the hostile entities who dared to disturb the sleep of the living. Surviving spells, prescriptions, and apotropaic devices attest to the prevalent fear of nightmares while the intricate steps one could take to ensure safety in the night emphasize the tangible nature of these fears. To protect themselves against such demons of the dark, sleeping mortals could access the same potent energies that restored order and kept at bay the chaotic enemies of the sun-god himself.
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"Unfortunately outdated now (written in 2003) and really superseded by my article on Nightmares in Le cauchemar dans l’Antiquité: Actes des journées d'étude de l'UMR 7044 (15-16 Novembre 2007, Strasbourg)

"The dream in ancient Egypt functioned as a liminal zone between the land of the living and the farworld. However, dreams and nightmares were also phenomena over which the dreamer had little control, and their permeable boundaries allowed both the divine and the demonic inhabi- tants of the beyond access to the visible world. Sometimes the result was a beneficial experience, as is attested in New Kingdom royal texts and elite hymns that relate the awe-inspiring contact a dreamer could have with a god or a goddess. But another more disturbing belief was that dreams could also allow the vulnerable sleeper to be watched or even assaulted by the hostile dead. While today we call these events “anxiety dreams” or “nightmares” and consider them psychological phe- nomena, the Egyptians blamed them on external monsters or demons crossing over from the other side. These entities included the dead, and here it appears that the line between the justified transfigured dead, and the malevolent unjustified dead might not have been an immutable one. Drawing upon both textual and material evidence primarily from the New Kingdom, this paper will explore the identity and nature of the hos- tile entities who dared to disturb the sleep of the living and the methods for their repulsion.""

The paper aims at analysing the social factors connected with the increase of sequential multiple burials around the first quarter of the Second Millennium BC in Egypt. In particular, in the late Middle Kingdom, the practice of multiple burials became more widespread across the whole country and it was more visible at all social levels, reaching also the uppermost levels of society and the royal court. Such a burial demography pattern can be linked with deeper transformations in the social organisation noticeable through iconographic, textual, linguistic, and archaeological evidence: an increase of plurality of people named/represented on stelae; a lexical deviation inside the vocabulary related to ‘familial’ groups (CT 146); the interruption in the archaeological record of the texts known as ‘Letters to the Dead’; the introduction of an uncommon architectural feature in the eastern Delta (Avaris), the ‘house of the dead’. The increase and spread on a preeminent scale of multiple burials drove a renegotiation of the role of the dead body within the burial assemblage. In the light of a changed burial demography, the tomb became the ideal memory container for supporting the identity of a more crowded household structure and dead bodies constituted the tangible mnemonic bridge to the past and social identity. Sequential multiple burials affected also temporality, and the passage of time increased the objectification of the body itself; therefore multiple bodies inside a grave may have influenced the selection of the range of objects to be placed in, as demonstrated by a consistent infiltration of the domestic sphere inside the funerary domain at the end of Twelfth Dynasty.

Dans l’Égypte pharaonique, les vivants entretenaient des relations avec
les défunts de leur communauté domestique, notamment à l’occasion
de fêtes et de célébrations rituelles spécifiques. Dans ce cadre, le mode
de communication privilégié avec l’ancêtre était celui de la parole, du
discours oral. L’écriture était toutefois aussi occasionnellement utilisée
comme médium de communication. C’est ce qu’atteste en particulier
le corpus des « lettres aux morts » – requêtes formulées sous format
épistolaire et tracées en écriture cursive («hiératique») sur divers supports
(vaisselle en terre cuite et papyrus essentiellement) –, attesté de
la fin du IIIe millénaire au Ier millénaire avant notre ère.
À travers l’étude de ce dossier, révélateur des mécanismes relationnels
reliant les survivants à leurs morts, cet ouvrage propose une
enquête sur un usage de l’écrit dans la procédure rituelle de l’Égypte
ancienne. L’importance de l’écrit dans le domaine religieux pharaonique
est bien connu, mais c’est sur l’écriture monumentale hiéroglyphique,
dont la « fonction de sacralisation» a particulièrement été
bien mise en évidence par Pascal Vernus, que l’essentiel de la
réflexion a jusqu’ici porté. Ce livre cherche donc à engager une
réflexion sur l’utilisation rituelle d’une technique d’écriture d’abord
réservée à une pratique quotidienne de l’écrit (documents administratifs,
lettres, archivage…), et aborde la question de l’efficacité de la
parole écrite par rapport à la parole énoncée en contexte rituel, ainsi
que la question de l’efficacité du texte tracé en écriture cursive par
rapport au texte hiéroglyphique en contexte votif.
(Ouvrage publié avec le concours de l'Université de Strasbourg)

This new book is the first to present a comprehensive study of dreams as they were perceived and interpreted by the Egyptians in the third and second millennia BC, from the Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom. The author examines the various roles dreams could play in ancient Egyptian society, whether political, religious, magical, or literary. She also considers the value of dream-interpretation for the happiness of private individuals. The work is accessibly written, and should inform the wider study of psychology and comparative religion. Its arguments are based on an intimate study of the original Egyptian texts; the texts themselves are here set out in translation.

Through an analysis of the letters to the dead, the paper focuses on the role played by women in Egyptian ancestor worship. Special attention is given to the missives addressed to the female spirits: the so-called
misplaced stele of Merityfy, the Berlin bowl 22573, Papyrus Leiden I 371, and Ostracon Louvre 698. The investigation has highlighted the existence of a ritual to appease wrathful female ghosts. The malevolent
attitude of these spirits is explained in the light of their premature death, perhaps during childbirth. Another trigger is identified as the fear of being replaced in their social role of “mistress of the house” by another
woman (for example, because the husband was planning to remarry). Remarkably, the documents taken into consideration did not turn out to be a mere exorcism to ward off a malignant spirit; rather, the aim was
to establish or restore, the positive role of the ancestress as a protector of the household.

""Unfortunately outdated now (written in 2003) and really superseded by my article on Nightmares in Le cauchemar dans l’Antiquité: Actes des journées d'étude de l'UMR 7044 (15-16 Novembre 2007, Strasbourg) "The dream in ancient Egypt functioned as a liminal zone between the land of the living and the farworld. However, dreams and nightmares were also phenomena over which the dreamer had little control, and their permeable boundaries allowed both the divine and the demonic inhabi- tants of the beyond access to the visible world. Sometimes the result was a beneficial experience, as is attested in New Kingdom royal texts and elite hymns that relate the awe-inspiring contact a dreamer could have with a god or a goddess. But another more disturbing belief was that dreams could also allow the vulnerable sleeper to be watched or even assaulted by the hostile dead. While today we call these events “anxiety dreams” or “nightmares” and consider them psychological phe- nomena, the Egyptians blamed them on external monsters or demons crossing over from the other side. These entities included the dead, and here it appears that the line between the justified transfigured dead, and the malevolent unjustified dead might not have been an immutable one. Drawing upon both textual and material evidence primarily from the New Kingdom, this paper will explore the identity and nature of the hos- tile entities who dared to disturb the sleep of the living and the methods for their repulsion."""

Séminaire de recherche « Ce qui se dit, à qui et comment » Les dits et les non-dits dans la communication avec l'ancêtre. Stratégies rhétoriques dans les lettres aux morts de l'Egypte pharaonique Par Sylvie Donnat Maître de Conférence en Egyptologie Université de Strasbourg UMR 7044

Through an analysis of the letters to the dead, the paper focuses on the role played by women in Egyptian ancestor worship. Special attention is given to the missives addressed to the female spirits: the so-called
misplaced stele of Merityfy, the Berlin bowl 22573, Papyrus Leiden I 371, and Ostracon Louvre 698. The investigation has highlighted the existence of a ritual to appease wrathful female ghosts. The malevolent
attitude of these spirits is explained in the light of their premature death, perhaps during childbirth. Another trigger is identified as the fear of being replaced in their social role of “mistress of the house” by another
woman (for example, because the husband was planning to remarry). Remarkably, the documents taken into consideration did not turn out to be a mere exorcism to ward off a malignant spirit; rather, the aim was
to establish or restore, the positive role of the ancestress as a protector of the household.

In ancient Egypt, the dead were not only benign ancestors, but also malevolent spirits able to cause misfortune and diseases. Such ambivalent attitude have to be understood in the light of a complex
“code of conduct”, in which the categories of “time” and “space” played a relevant role. The coexistence of the dead with the living, especially inside the domestic spaces, was probably perceived as potentially dangerous. Thus, the interactions were regulated by specific norms of
conduct in order to maintain the right harmony. One of the main occasions of interaction with the dead was the dream. For the Egyptians there was a strong connection between death and sleep. The
words for sleeping may be used as analogous terms for death. Moreover, the letters to the dead show that dreams were perceived as a physical space (however, here, “space” could be a metaphor
for “time”) where the sleepers were more close to the preternatural world. In regard of the category “time”, the presence of specific festivals for the commemoration of the deceased is well attested.
Drawing inspiration from the works of E. De Martino, one of the principal characteristic of these religious fests was a “timeless dimension”; it means that the fests were a special event, during
which men could infringe the normal conduct of their life in order to regenerate the everyday established order. As several texts – from both the vernacular and the official tradition – shown, this
thought is perfectly applicable to Ancient Egypt, especially in the light of certain Egyptian religious categories, such as “Nun” and “Maat”.

In Ancient Egypt, ancestor worship was characterized by a complex relationship between living and deceased. In particular, the so-called letters to the dead show a pact of mutual aid in which the spirits gave protection and prosperity to their offspring in exchange for food offerings and periodical commemorations. The transgression of the covenant would implied serious repercussions, such as the transformation of an ancestor in an evil spirit. A new interpretation of the text on Berlin bowl has provided interesting insights to investigate these variegated dynamics. In fact, the document is a rare example of letter to dead written to appease the anger of a malevolent spirit and not to ask for an ancestor help. Moreover, the picture in the center of the bowl - a half-length portrait of the addressee - is analyzed, and a wide range of symbolic meanings were identified.

The present article aims to combine an accurate philological analysis of the letter to the dead UC16163 and its archaeological context. The letter is a double document containing two letters addressed by Shepsi to both his dead parents (Iinkhenmut and Iy). In fact, the letter was found in an undisturbed tomb, no. 7695, in the necropolis of Qau, where only a single male deceased lay in the funerary chamber, with no evidence/traces of any further interment or later disturbance. According to the text of the letter, one would expect two internments inside the tomb, Shepsi’s father and mother. The discrepancy between the content of the letter and the archaeological evidence is remarkable. However, the new philological reading here proposed sheds new light on the role of Shepsi’s brother, Sobekhotep, switching his role from the dangerous, as previously interpreted, to simply negligent dead. Sobekhotep is the prime element in both texts and he is the last person to have died in Shepsi’s family, as in many points evident in the two letters. The particular emphasis of the episode of the funeral/burial of Sobekhotep reveals that Shepsi is addressing directly to his brother. The new interpretation of the text seems to support the idea that the deceased found together with the bowl in Qau tomb 7695 is Sobekhotep himself.

The article takes into account the meaning of the word mskA in the Old Kingdom letter to the dead, Cairo JE 25975. This term was previously translated, in this context, as “couch” or “leather”, influencing the interpretation of the events described in the rest of the letter. As evident from the internal content, the letter addressed to Seankhenptah is mainly focussed on property  transmission from father to son. The question of inheritance is
the Leitmotiv of the whole letter. Also from a comparative analysis with other letters to the dead, it stands out also that the letter would represent an attempt at creating a solid base to support an unsolved inheritance question. Hence, the lemma mskA could be more simply interpreted as “inheritance” or any related words belonging to the inheritance sphere. At the end of discussion, the author tantalisingly proposes to translate the word mskA as “child’s inheritance”, interpreting it as compound of the verb ms “bear, give birth”, related to the world of “infancy”, and the noun kA, “vitality”, “Nahrung”, related to the world of “sustenance”.

Several letters to the dead were written to solve inheritance problems. The main purpose of the paper is to investigate on the possible juridical function of these documents. A comparison between the letters and the oracles from Deir el-Medina showed the importance of the ancestral spirits in the legal disputes concerning real estate. The analysis of the letters provided some new interpretations: the term mskʒ in the Cairo Linen (JdE 25675) could denote a legal document written on a piece of leather; the peculiar incipit of the Qaw bowl (UCL 16163) describes a rite performed during the funeral of the sender’s brother.

In an impressive number of apotropaic documents, male and female deceased are often associated. In fact, they are listed in pairs (Ӡḫ/Ӡḫ.t, mwt/mwt.t, etc.) in order to strike as many preternatural enemies as possible. Thus, at first sight, it could seem that a distinction based on gender did not play an active role in religious beliefs related to ghosts and ancestors. However, an in-depth analysis of the so-called letters to the dead could highlight some interesting aspects. These peculiar documents were mainly written to obtain the help of the ancestors in order to solve existential crises. However, a restricted number of letters was written to appease the anger of malevolent spirits, and it is surely significant that in most cases this latter type of document was sent to female deceased. The transformation of an ancestor into a malevolent spirit could be related to several causes, predominantly the transgression of a complex pact of mutual aid between the living and the dead. For the “male-sphere”, the rules of this alliance were strongly influenced by a specific code of conduct with clear connections with the Loyalist Instructions, whereas, for the relationship between the living and the female deceased other factors, which played a relevant role, may be recognized. Most importantly, the connection of women within the sphere of procreation and her social role as wife and mother.

Ancient Egypt, like any other culture or civilization, had rules, customary and written laws in order to regulate the society. However, several sources, both textual and archaeological, highlight how the concept of community found in Pharaonic Egypt did not include only men and women still alive but also the spirits of the dead. This phenomenon shows interesting parallels
with several cultures characterized by the presence of an elaborate ancestor cult, and especially with certain African traditions, such as those studied by anthropologist I. Kopytoff. Through a comparison of some of the so-called letters to the dead with the oracular practices attested in Deir el- Medina, it was also possible to identify a possible role of the spirits in the legal field; in fact, the deceased were invoked to solve some particular types of legal disputes
related to the ownership of real estate, or inheritance issues.