ABSTRACT
Egyptologists have divided the constantly evolving stream of writing into three principal groups: Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and Book of the Dead. A reductive synthesis was the initial response of modern European scholarship to the hundreds of compositions on the hundreds of sources from dozens of such varied types of object. In the New Testament account of Pentecost, tongues of flame appear on the heads of the disciples of Jesus. Ancient spatial diagrams are readily labelled maps' in contemporary western reception and translation of other cultures. In common with other material products of western technologies, such as watches and telephones, its existence as object seduces the western consumer into accepting it as an automatic, even natural', adjunct to human society. The history of cartography involves the intricate elaboration of specific technologies. The remarkable spatial diagrams and exact measurements in ancient Egyptian funerary literature form one revealing aspect of the range in perception and construction of life after death.
