Morrow Susan B. The Silver Eye: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts

Head of Zeus, 2016. — 352 p.The Pyramid Texts were carved onto the walls of burial chambers in royal pyramids 4,000 years ago. They have intrigued scholars, mystics and historians ever since they were discovered in 1881. They have usually been misconstrued as a garbled collection of primitive myths and incantations, relegating their radiant fusion of philosophy, scientific inquiry, and religion to obscurity. Translations of the texts often reduce them to gibberish. Yet these writings are in fact among the world's oldest poetry, cosmological speculations and reflections on nature.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. The result is a work of beautiful and intelligent literature, alongside a persuasive argument for The Pyramid Texts' central importance to the history of language.Susan Brind Morrow studied classics, Arabic, and Egyptology at Columbia University. She has lived and traveled extensively in Egypt and Sudan, working as an archaeologist and as a Guggenheim Foundation fellow 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 Art of the Memoir in 1998. She is also the author of Wolves and Honey: A Hidden History of the Natural World.