Picturing the Pharaoh Through Language – Remarks on the Linguistic Image of the Egyptian King in the Old Kingdom Religious Texts

Abstract

The author of the paper aims at scrutinising the linguistic image of the Egyptian pharaoh in the so-called Pyramid Texts. Was the Egyptian ruler perceived as a human representative of the god on Earth or rather was he a or the god himself? Special emphasis will be put on names and epithets of the King when described or referred to in religious texts of the Old Kingdom. This study is planned as a part of a future research project on picturing the pharaoh through language in religious and royal texts from the beginning of the Old Kingdom till the end of the New Kingdom, and realised in cooperation with Dr. Andrzej Ćwiek and Jadwiga Iwaszczuk. Furthermore, the paper is also a presentation of use of ethnolinguistic methods in Egyptology. Using scholarly methods of the ‘linguistic worldview’ research project in which the present author participates, it is intended to study selected ancient Egyptian concepts. Although language analysis as well as widely understood and studied ‘life context’ of ancient religious notions let us only a textual and linguistic reconstruction of the world presented, concurrently, helps us understand better the Egyptian religious way of description and thinking.

Keywords

• Pyramid Texts
• pharaoh
• Egyptian texts
• linguistic method in Egyptology
• ArcheoJOS