Photo of the Week: Unas Burial Chamber
This week’s ‘Photo of the Week’ is of the Unas Sarcophagus chamber. This photo shows the chamber’s ceiling near the eastern end of the north wall.
The texts that can be seen in the lower section of the photograph detail the purifications and presentation of offerings.
“The texts on the north wall of the sarcophagus chamber of the pyramid of Unas are a liturgy of offerings, usually thought of solely in funerary terms. Certainly the North-wall liturgy reflects the stages of an elaborate ceremony, but whether this ceremony was employed only in the funerary rights for the dead king or whether it also served the symbolic purpose of preparing the living king for a profound initiatory experience is less a matter of established fact than of interpretation.” - Jeremy Naydler, Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts.
“O Re, you are adored in heaven, you are adored for Unas, Lord of all things.
For your body are all things, for the Ka of Unas are all things, for his body are all things.” - Utterance 50.
This image is hosted on the Pyramid Texts Online Flickr account and forms part of the Gallery on this blog (see lower section of the column on the right).
You can view images of the texts on this wall by going to Pyramid Texts Online and navigating to the sarcophagus chamber north wall via the navigational diagram of the tomb.
