"Creative Copying" : Notes on Text Tradition and Alteration Evidenced in Multiple-Occurring Texts in the Shaft Tomb of Iufaa at Abusir
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to examine the creative traits in what has been held as a predominantly reproductive tradition of ancient Egyptian religious texts in the context and in the light of general archaizing tendencies that reached their climax in the 26th Dynasty, and thus add further light on the interplay of productive and reproductive traditions within a single corpus. In order to do so, a small sample of texts from the Late Period shaft tomb of Iufaa at Abusir has been selected, namely, the texts that occur more than once in the tomb, as these have the greatest potential for revealing possible editorial or even creative processes behind the individual versions.
The analysis shows that the scribes/copyists of the Late Period shaft tomb necropolis at Abusir approached each text individually, and that the often simplistic division of productive tradition for secular texts versus reproductive tradition for religious texts cannot be upheld in view of the often major text work undertaken on at least some of the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead chapters found in the Abusir shaft tombs.