Abstract:
Since their discovery in late 19th Century, the Pyramid Texts belonging to kings Unis, Teti, Pepy I, Merenre and Pepy II, have been studied extensively. However, relatively absent from much of this scholarly dialogue are the more fragmentary Pyramid Texts of the 6th Dynasty queens whose tombs, and the textual corpora housed within, ultimately stand apart from those of the kings in both their architectural layout and the arrangement and content of their texts. Through the construction of a full queenly concordance, updated to reflect the recently discovered texts of Ankhenespepy II, the primary objective of this thesis is to collate and systematically examine the Pyramid Texts belonging to four queens of the 6th Dynasty, namely Ankhenespepy II, Neith, Ipwt II and Wedjebten, in order to determine the thematic function of the cardinal walls within their individual sarcophagus chambers. Through this, it will be shown that by utilising both standard and unique thematic assemblages, the sarcophagus chambers of the queens were fundamentally dualistic. By conflating texts conventionally associated with both the sarcophagus chambers and antechambers of the kings, each queen was able to achieve the same ontological goal as her male counterpart: to be purified and reborn every day in the eastern horizon, and to take her place with her ancestors amongst the ixmw-skw, the “Imperishable Stars,” in the northern sky.
