The Cannibal Hymn

The blog post for this week is written by Yvonne Buskens-Frenken, from the Netherlands. She is a member of the Dutch Egyptology society Mehen and a former student of Egyptology at Manchester University (Certificate 2015 and Diploma 2017). While Yvonne has never been to the Egypt Centre before, she hopes to visit in the near future, perhaps with other Mehen members.

Last week, a new online course was launched by the Egypt Centre called The Books of the Afterlife, which is hosted by Dr Ken Griffin at The Egypt Centre. Over the next five weeks, we will be discussing the Pyramid Texts, the Book of the Dead, the Amduat, the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Book of the Earth, the Litany of Re, and the Books of the Sky. For the ancient Egyptians, death was really a part of life. Planning for death and the afterlife was something that should be undertaken during one’s lifetime. And for the navigation into the journey to the afterlife, a collection of texts/spells were produced. Each of these was intended to overcome or avoid obstacles and dangers all for the protection of the body parts of the deceased.

The course started this week with an introduction to the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts. I would like to highlight one particular section of the Pyramid Texts in this post, which is known as the Cannibal Hymn.

Fig. 1: Burial chamber of Unas (photo by Jan Koek)

The Pyramid Texts emerge in the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2400–2300 BC), at the end of the Old Kingdom. These texts are the oldest Egyptian religious writings, although the language and grammar suggest that these texts could be several hundred years older. The Pyramid of Unas in Saqqara is the first pyramid with such Pyramid Texts (fig. 1). A collection of 283 spells are identified in his tomb and all 283 are found in other sources as well, except for spell 200. The spells are carved in sunk relief with blue pigment (fig. 2). These spells mostly related to the king’s relationship with Osiris and the Sun and focus on his eternal existence after death: the ba of the deceased needs to reunite with its ka to become an akh; the offering spells provide a source for the ka; and the Resurrection Ritual serves to release the ba from its attachment to the mummified body.

Fig. 2: Pyramid Texts of Unas (photo by Yvonne Buskens)

Spells 273 and 274 (also called utterances) of the Pyramid Texts are only attested in the pyramids of Unas and Teti. Their content has intrigued Egyptologists ever since their discovery almost 150 years ago (fig 3). The texts are located on the eastern wall of the antechamber of the two pyramids. One wonders why it was only recorded in these two? Did the ancient Egyptians really practice cannibalism? Evidence of cannibalism in pharaonic Egypt is scarce. We do have evidence of defleshing during the Predynastic Period, but this does not mean that the dead were eaten. An ivory label dating to the reign of the First Dynasty king Djer possibly depicts the killing of a kneeling figure in a ritual setting (fig. 4). It is very difficult to interpret this scene as there is no explanatory text or suitable parallels: possibly a ritual killing that took place during the funeral of the king (van Dijk 2022). However, it is not hard no proof that it relates to cannibalism.

Fig. 3: Antechamber wall with Cannibal Hymn

There are actually more references to cannibalism in the Egyptian texts (Eyre 2002, 161) as in consuming enemies or eating to survive. The Egyptian dead wished to eat and not be eaten in the afterlife. For example, in Pyramid Text spell 665, the resurrected king is addressed as a “unique star who eats his enemy”, who is “saved from Kherty; he lives on the hearts of men”. The same general theme is developed in the “fisherman” spells of the Coffin Texts: ‘Oh Great One, I have not been carried off. I have not been eaten. I am not for eating […] yesterday or for the catch of today. You do not catch me.” (Eyre 2002, 161). Another reference to eating is the text in the tomb of Ankhtifi, which dates to the First Intermediate Period. In his autobiographical text, he says children were being eaten. However, this text must be interpreted in context as Egypt was in the grip of famine (fig. 5).

Fig. 4: Djer label (Cairo JdE 70114)

According to Eyre, in his study of the Cannibal Hymn, “the theme of cannibalism is treated in a brief or allusive way in other Egyptian rituals and that the metaphors used in the text are familiar, if characteristically implicit themes in the symbolic context of sacrifice and the offering meal at all periods in Egypt” (Eyre 2002, 161). So what was the content of the text of the Cannibal Hymn? The text can be divided into five sections, which will be summarised in the following paragraphs. 

Fig. 5: The nomarch Ankhtifi (photo by Yvonne Buskens)

1. Introduction
The Cannibal Hymn begins with upheaval as the cosmos is overwhelmed by the appearance of the king in the afterlife: he arrives in his full glory and he is not only the begetter, like his father Atum, but actually mightier than  Atum. The gods are his ancestors. The issue here is his power as the pharaoh is the Lord of Wisdom, whose mother doesn’t know his name. The king’s attributes include elements of power, the guiding-serpent on his forehead, and a trunk on his neck, which give him the ability to defeat his enemies.

2. Preparing the divine meal
It is in this section that the theme of power and authority develops into the “cannibal” section. Although it is explicitly stated, the king lives on “every god”, a series of deities seem to escape the dinner-pots and even assist in preparing the meal. Motifs of the slaughter, processing, and consumption are used here as a metaphor for the transfer of the various powers from other gods to the king. The “magic” of the gods, and their manifestations of power such as their ba and akh, are “transferred” into the belly of the king. The eating makes the king stronger and he becomes more divine.

3. The divine meal

The text as a whole is about the preservation of the king’s food, and his slaughter of his enemies, ending with his identification as the victorious Bull of the Sky.

4. After the meal

After the meal, the king is more powerful than before, and his true essence is revealed: he has become a “great power”. He is now the head of the gods, older than the oldest. At this point, he reaches eternal repetition and everlastingness of his existence. He finally seizes the ultimate power, encircled by all possible horizons, just like the sun god. As such, he has attained the ultimate goal of being reborn again. 

5. Confirmation

By the divine act of eating his own divine kind, “cooked for the king from their bones”, the pharaoh now has all the power of the gods in him and can rise eternally and last forever: “The doers of ill deeds have no power to destroy, the chosen seat of Pharaoh, among the living in this land. Forever and ever”. The context is the assertion that the king is, or has become, the primeval sun god.

Bibliography

Allen, James P. 2012. Cannibal Spell for King Unis, ca. 2325 BCE. In Puchner, Martin, Suzanne Akbari, Wiebke Denecke, Vinay Dharwadker, Barbara Fuchs, Caroline Levine, Pericles Lewis, and Emily Wilson (eds), The Norton anthology of world literature. Volume A, 26–28. New York; London: W. W. Norton.

Bělohoubková, Dana, Jiří Janák, and Marie Peterková Hlouchová 2019. The king of the Cannibal Hymn as the new creator. In Piacentini, Patrizia and Alessio Delli Castelli (eds), Old Kingdom art and archaeology 7: proceedings of the international conference; Università degli studi di Milano 3–7 July 2017 1, 334–341. Milano: Pontremoli.

Eyre, Christopher 2002. The Cannibal Hymn: a cultural and literary study. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Goebs, Katja 2004. The Cannibal Spell: continuity and change in the Pyramid Text and Coffin Text versions. In Bickel, Susanne and Bernard Mathieu (eds), D’un monde à l’autre: Textes des Pyramides & Textes des Sarcophages. Actes de la table ronde internationale, “Textes des Pyramides versus Textes des Sarcophages”, IFAO – 24–26 septembre 2001, 143–173. Le Caire: Institut français d’archéologie orientale.

van Dijk, Jacobus 2022. Ritual homicide in ancient Egypt. In Innemée, Karel C. (ed.), The value of a human life. Ritual killing and human sacrifice in antiquity, 41–52. PALMA 26. Leiden.