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Unlocking the Pyramid Texts
by Susan Brind Morrow
A stunning and original interpretation of an ancient system of poetic, religious, and philosophical thought.
Buried in the Egyptian desert some 4,000 years ago, the Pyramid Texts are among the world's oldest poetry. Yet ever since the discovery of these hieroglyphs in 1881, they have been misconstrued by Western Egyptologists as a garbled collection of primitive myths and incantations, relegating to obscurity their radiant fusion of philosophy, scientific inquiry, and religion.
Now, in a seminal work, the classicist and linguist Susan Brind Morrow has recast the Pyramid Texts as a coherent work of art, arguing that they should be recognized as a formative event in the evolution of human thought. In The Dawning Moon of the Mind she explains how to read hieroglyphs, contextualizes their evocative imagery, and interprets the entire poem. The result is a magisterial religious and philosophical text revealing a profound consciousness of the world with astonishing parallels to Judeo-Christian culture, Buddhism, and Tantra.
More than twenty years in the making, The Dawning Moon of the Mind is a monumental achievement that locates one of the origins of poetic thought in Western culture. Almost before science, art, and written language, these texts set forth the relationship between time and eternity, life and death, history and ideas. In The Dawning Moon of the Mind they emerge in their original luminosity and intelligence alongside a persuasive argument for their central importance to the history of language.
[A] brilliant combination of literary criticism, cultural history, and linguistic expertise ... Most translations misinterpret the Pyramid Texts to be the stories of animals and gods, but Morrow's translation and interpretation reveal them to be the story of the invention of time and an examination of the ways in which humanity is deeply embedded in the cosmic." - Publishers Weekly
"Highly recommended for anyone with serious interest in ancient Egyptian or comparative religion. " - Library Journal
"An erudite investigation that rewards patient, careful reading." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about The Dawning Moon of the Mind was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Susan Brind Morrow studied classics, Arabic, and Egyptology at Columbia University. She has traveled extensively in Egypt and Sudan, working as an archaeologist and studying natural history, language, and the uses of poetry. Her first book, The Names of Things: A Passage in the Egyptian Desert, was a finalist for the PEN Martha Albrand Award for the Memoir in 1998. She is also the author of Wolves and Honey: A Hidden History of the Natural World and is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship for her work on the Pyramid Texts.
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