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Because I mentioned it elsewhere and figured that folks who saw that comment and read me here might appreciate some more thorough commentary.
I suspect that it would be a more useful book for me if it didn't devote quite so much time to justifying the legitimacy of phenomenology as an approach to study. Interestingly, I hadn't noticed the explicit denial of mysticism in Egypt that Naydler describes in mainstream Egyptology (despite loving both Hornung and Assmann, both of whom he quotes), perhaps because I read the stuff and immediately extrapolate mystical uses, interpretations, and approaches from the data.
I had noticed the basic "we are only willing to commit to these texts as funerary" attitudes, which I found a bit far-fetched, because Egyptian stuff is completely full of recycled liturgy, including disco remixes of the recycled liturgy, and that's in the pharaonic period; once you start going nonlinear about it in the later periods it's even more sampling, but the same basic recycling. And any detailed afterlife or underworld journey is functional as a spiritual initiation process.
The title still makes me cringe. But he's using "shamanic" not to mean anything that's appropriate to anthropology, but rather the sort of reliable spirit-world interaction process that is a weirdly abstracted understanding of what shamanistic work is intended to be. So I sort of grumble my way through the terminology, especially as he acknowledges that the stuff he's pointing at isn't the same as cultures that have functioning spirit-worker roles that are more widespread in the community.
One of the more interesting things in the text is taking the PTs (primarily in Unas's pyramid, as they are the most complete) and actually placing them in the walls of the chambers. So instead of the semi-abstracted list of texts, there's "these are the texts that are in the sarcophagus room", "these are texts on this wall", and so on, and commentary noting that texts carved in the same location on opposite sides of a wall (such as on either side of a doorway) are often linked ... it's a very different structure to the PTs than just reading through them.
I'm not done with it yet, but I'm at a point of 'awakening after transit', basically, and there's a note that the identification with Sia (divine knowledge) is placed in the center of one wall, as if it were central to the argument of the texts. Which is, y'know, a thing, now, isn't it?
I rather like the fact that "sai" (wisdom) is the same word as "sai" (fullness, as from a satisfying meal). To gain wisdom is to eat, and the food offerings in all of this span the entirety of the nation. And of course the gods feed upon maat.
... I'd write more but I hava to put KJ to sleep now. :}
I suspect that it would be a more useful book for me if it didn't devote quite so much time to justifying the legitimacy of phenomenology as an approach to study. Interestingly, I hadn't noticed the explicit denial of mysticism in Egypt that Naydler describes in mainstream Egyptology (despite loving both Hornung and Assmann, both of whom he quotes), perhaps because I read the stuff and immediately extrapolate mystical uses, interpretations, and approaches from the data.
I had noticed the basic "we are only willing to commit to these texts as funerary" attitudes, which I found a bit far-fetched, because Egyptian stuff is completely full of recycled liturgy, including disco remixes of the recycled liturgy, and that's in the pharaonic period; once you start going nonlinear about it in the later periods it's even more sampling, but the same basic recycling. And any detailed afterlife or underworld journey is functional as a spiritual initiation process.
The title still makes me cringe. But he's using "shamanic" not to mean anything that's appropriate to anthropology, but rather the sort of reliable spirit-world interaction process that is a weirdly abstracted understanding of what shamanistic work is intended to be. So I sort of grumble my way through the terminology, especially as he acknowledges that the stuff he's pointing at isn't the same as cultures that have functioning spirit-worker roles that are more widespread in the community.
One of the more interesting things in the text is taking the PTs (primarily in Unas's pyramid, as they are the most complete) and actually placing them in the walls of the chambers. So instead of the semi-abstracted list of texts, there's "these are the texts that are in the sarcophagus room", "these are texts on this wall", and so on, and commentary noting that texts carved in the same location on opposite sides of a wall (such as on either side of a doorway) are often linked ... it's a very different structure to the PTs than just reading through them.
I'm not done with it yet, but I'm at a point of 'awakening after transit', basically, and there's a note that the identification with Sia (divine knowledge) is placed in the center of one wall, as if it were central to the argument of the texts. Which is, y'know, a thing, now, isn't it?
I rather like the fact that "sai" (wisdom) is the same word as "sai" (fullness, as from a satisfying meal). To gain wisdom is to eat, and the food offerings in all of this span the entirety of the nation. And of course the gods feed upon maat.
... I'd write more but I hava to put KJ to sleep now. :}
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So, are you going to take printouts of the text and stick them up around the walls of a room or two to poke at that further, then? It's kind of what I'd be tempted to do with that idea.
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(I agree with Brooks about thinking that sticking them up physically might be really intriguing - and wondering what one could do in, say, a Second Life style virtual setting to play with that, too.)
I'm also still mulling the bit about the need to take in the parts of the world before going to the underworld.
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