Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts: The Mystical Tradition of Ancient Egypt

To the Greek philosophers and other peoples of the ancient world, Egypt was regarded as the home of a profound mystical wisdom. While there are many today who still share that view, the consensus of most Egyptologists is that no evidence exists that Egypt possessed any mystical tradition whatsoever. Jeremy Naydler's radical reinterpretation of the Pyramid texts - the earliest body of religious literature to have survived from ancient Egypt - places these documents into the ritual context in which they belong. Until now the Pyramid texts have been viewed, primarily, as royal funerary texts that were used in the liturgy of the dead pharaoh or to aid him in his afterlife journey. This emphasis on the funerary interpretation has served only to externalise what were actually experiences of the living, not the dead, king. In order to understand the character and significance of the extreme psychological states the pharaoh experienced - states often involving perilous encounters with alternate realities - we need to approach them as spiritual and religious phenomena that reveal the extraordinary possibilities of human consciousness. It is the shamanic spiritual tradition, argues Naydler, that is the undercurrent of the Pyramid Texts and that holds the key to understanding both the true nature of these experiences and the basis of ancient Egyptian mysticism.