«PULL BACK, BABI’S PENIS!» SEXUAL BODY PARTS IN THE PYRAMID AND COFFIN TEXTS (original) (raw)

It is clearly possible to define a vocabulary of body parts within the ancient Egyptian texts, in particular those which pertain to medical and magic contexts. Nevertheless, there are often different meanings behind the terminology of body parts in the two more ancient corpora of texts, the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts. This particularly happens with terms relating to sexual and reproductive body parts, which appear very rarely in the texts and with various significances. References to sexual body parts do not always imply, in fact, a sexual connotation and sometimes they are part of specific devices, such as the so-called “deification of the members” (Gliedervergottung), in which every part of the human body is identified with a deity. In addition to this, the god Babi, in particular, occupies a prominent place in this matter, since he is mentioned in relation to his penis in various occasions. Cosmogony («It was before vulvae were made and before wombs were born that I came into being» [CT IV 135b]) or the use of metaphors represent other important features, while the mythology of Horus and Seth obviously plays an important role. The aim of this contribution is to examine all of the occurrences of terms related to sexual body parts – i.e. penis, vulva/vagina, testicles, womb, breasts, hind parts etc. – within the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, analyzing the word, its context and meaning, with special regard to the specific religious characterization of the same texts. Keywords: sexual body parts; Pyramid/Coffin Texts; Gliedervergottung; Babi.