Skip to content
Egyptian Mythology
← All sources

The Pyramid Texts

When

c. 2400-2300 BCE, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties

Where it survives

Carved inside the burial chambers of pyramids at Saqqara

What it is

The oldest substantial religious writing to survive from anywhere. Spells to carry the dead king into the sky to join the imperishable stars and the sun god. Not a narrative: a working ritual apparatus, in fragments.

Read it with this in mind

They were written for the king and no one else. Reading them as general Egyptian belief imports a royal theology into a population that had no access to it.

Myths attested here

Other sources