Audrey wrote:

> I imagine egyptologists
> will blame the AE's themselves. "Scribal error" is a favorite.


It is so hard to believe in a belief system that is so complex that it can't be understood even with a whole book of magic and religion. "Scribal error" would sound like a more plausible answer if the exact same errors aren't carved into stone in pyramid after pyramid. It seems far more likely that we have to change our beliefs than that scribes would make any error at all in stone much less that they'd make the same one century after century. It's not so much that Egyptologists could be wrong as it is that they are apparently wrong. The Pyramid Texts does look like the book of the dead on the surface and it's apparent the book of the dead followed fromthe Pyramid Texts. But this simply shouldn't be considered proof that the PT means the same thing. The meaning of the book of the dead is obvious. There's odd phraseology and enigmatic lines but the meaning is reasonably clear and not really open to a lot of interpretation. It's not clear how these "beliefs" originated or their original meanings but the book of the dead is clearly about the afterlife and the beliefs of the people who wrote and used it. This does not apply to the PT. Even after trying to force it into the same mould as the book of the dead it simply doesn't fit. The meaning is not apparent. All the meaning is open to interpretation and no two people seem to share quite the same interpretation.

The "eye of horus" is the most basic term in the PT and Egyptologists write entire books about what it might mean. Everything is conflated because there is no clear distinction between what is known from earlier evidence and later evidence. There is an obvious assumption on the part of Egyptologists that the religion and people never changed so trying to understand the PT in light of the book of the dead is sound methodology. Since it's believed to be sound methodology there is no compunction to fixing the errors.

I believe these words were literally chiseled in stone and there are no errors.

The errors are in our assumptions as well as our interpretations derived from those assumptions.