The article pursues two tasks: the first is to analyze history and practice of a reform-oriented religious movement active within the Armenian Apostolic Church at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries; the second task is to use this Armenian example, and to compare it with other cross-cultural material, in order to hypothesize the existence of a trans-local and trans-national Christian pattern of the structural tension between the “pure faith” and the ethnonational culture.

The paper explores one of the aspects of the calendar myth – the semantics of inserted time (month). In some traditions (Buryats, Komi, Ob Ugrians, etс. ) the purpose of such insertion into the calendars is maintaining the order of the time count, and therefore, the order of universe. Such adjusting of calendar directly correlates with the image of the secret (hidden) and/or unexpected son. This image is close in its many motives with the gospel story about Jesus, as well as about other Eurasian epic heroes, whose function is to save their people at the end of the world.

Ancient Egyptian civilization flourished for about three thousand years. However scholars who studied Egyptian religion rarely turned their attention to any kind of changes, occurred during this span of time. Partly it is due to the notion of “traditional” character of Ancient Egyptian outlook, which underscores significance of such changes. If one is to look for them, some obstacles will surface. Not so many texts survived from the earlier periods of Egyptian history (in comparison with New Kingdom, for example). Furthermore, survived texts of ritual nature are quite hard to interpret – so scholars for a long time used later texts to fill lacunae in text as well as in understanding of the Pyramid texts, for example.

In this essay we will turn to the works of Yu. M. Lotman dedicated to the problem typological study of cultures. We are going to apply his attitudes to comparative description of survived religious texts of the Old Kingdom – royal and elite funerary texts. These two types of texts (the Pyramid texts and (auto) biographies) are usually regarded as totally different in form and function. So they are studied by scholars of different interests and attitudes. We place our focus on the notion that both kinds of texts were produced in the framework of the same worldview which was common to the pharaoh and his elite. For this reason a uniform description of this texts in the language of topology is possible. It’s main value is in synchronous snapshot of Egyptian religion of the Old Kingdom in terms of structure of sacred space and principles of circulation of the creative energy of the gods in it. This ‘topological model’ can be further compared with the one produced for the texts of later periods making possible comparative study of Egyptian religion in historical perspective.

The temporal studies of such an archaic culture as ancient Egyptian, with a general increase in the number of publications on this topic, could be characterized by very poorly developed main problematic topics. The Egyptologist has a considerable body of textual and graphic materials at his disposal that are associated with the representation of time, directly or indirectly, however, the vast majority of studies in this area do not go beyond the concept of the ancient Egyptians having two types of time – cyclic and linear. Moreover, a large number of words-terms to denote different types of time suggests that they could be characterized by semantic fields, related to both the level of psychophysiology and the level of cultural understanding, which are completely different from each other (and sometimes unexpected for a modern person). The paper discusses how and to what extent these terms could characterize the “personal” qualities of various Egyptian gods and the sacred sphere as a whole. The author also for the first time formulate J. Assman’s conception of constellation, used by him for for dt and nhh relations in relation to other types of Egyptian time.

The article deals with a problem of descriptions of the sacred topography in Ancient Egypt and location of the Netherworld in this theological system. The main sacral texts differ in the description of the location of the Netherworld. However, its remoteness, isolation, secrecy and disconnection from other “parts of the world” can be seen in all sources. If we turn to the analysis of the structure and morphemes of the word Duat, denoting the Netherworld, its meaning can be defined as “very distant place”, which is not seen and where not to get an ordinary person in life. This is the other side of the visible world; the world where the gods have gone and where the great mystery of the resurrection takes place.

The subject of the paper is the analysis of the iconographic development of the vignettes of chapter 42 of the Book of the Dead (BD) on three stages of its evolution.

I. In the New Kingdom the variety of BD 42 vignettes was maximal. There were two basic types of such pictures with some subtypes. The first type of vignettes is drawn as friezes (Type ‘A’) and the second type comprises the fullsize vignettes (Type ‘B’). The Type ‘A’ vignettes were related with the title of the spell, intended to avoid “slaughtering in Heracleopolis” (the pictures play upon these two words literally: Sa.t and Nnj-nsw). Type ‘B’ was represented as “vignettes-tables” connected with the lists of “Deification of body members” (Gliedervergottung). II. During the Third Intermediate Period the new iconographical subtype of Type ‘A’ vignettes was formed (A2a). It was adapted to the hieratic copies of the BD. III. In the Late BD tradition the previous forms of chapter 42 illustrations disappear and a new type of iconographic representation that inherits Type ‘B’ appears. The iconography of the vignettes is the following: frieze images of gods, placed in one or more registers.

Thereby, the pictorial tradition of BD 42 demonstrates the ways of adaptation of the graphical and textual programs of funeral rolls design, concluding millennial way from “hieroglyphic” (vertically oriented text with adopted images in two different forms of Types ‘A’ and ‘B’ vignettes) to the canonical and “hieratic” (horizontally oriented text with new form of images closely subordinated to it or with BD 41 vignettes).

Books review:

• Astapova O.R. Roots of the sacred rulership. Sacred rulership in ancient kingdoms of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Israel. M.: Ripol-classic, 2017. 490 p.
• Ladynin I.A. ‘Egypt rules again!’. The start of the hellenistic period in the concepts and constructs of late egyptian historiography and propaganda. SPb.: RHGA, 2017. 332 p.

Books review: Quirke S. Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt. The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, UK; Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015. VIII, 271 p.

Books review: Henri II à Saint Germain en Laye. Une Cour Royale à la Renaissance. Paris, 2019, 183 p.