ANCIENT EGYPT

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ANCIENT EGYPT
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EGYPTIAN CLASS AND CULTURE

• Egyptian society was a THEOCRACY, meaning that
  religion and government often went hand in hand.
• Egyptians had more than 1,500 gods and goddesses,
  but more often, the worship of specific gods and
  goddesses was confined to specific locations.
  Each town or city could have its own god or
  goddess that they worshipped as the benefactor of
  their location.

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Origins of Egyptian Beliefs

• At a very early time in their history, the
  ancient Egyptians began to create myths as a
  means of explaining natural phenomena.
• Because the forces of nature seemed immutable and
  eternal, they chose familiar and fixed images to
  represent them in their stories. The images that
  were more easily adapted came from the animal
  kingdom.
• The Egyptians observed that animal behavior was
  predictable in the wild, and moreover, once
  falcon looked like another falcon, as one
  generation of lions seemed very nearly like the
  next (Mercatante ix).

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Egyptian Religion and Society

• Egyptians felt that morals and ethics were
  integral to the survival of their culture.
• Some inscriptions found on tombs illustrating
  this belief system include
• I gave bread to the hungry, water to the
  thirsty, clothing to the naked.
• I oppressed no orphan.
• I took no advantage of the widow.
• Sound familiar?...

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• Religion played such an integral part in the
  existence of their civilization that most of the
  ancient Egyptians names we know actually come
  from priests of many different religious cults.

• There were three religious centers in Egypt
  Heliopolis, Memphis and Hermopolis (An
  Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology 97).
• The Heliopolitan cosmology was the most important
  and most widely accepted.

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The Egyptian Creation Deities
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The Egyptian Creation Story
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WHOS WHO IN EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY
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Osiris

• God of the Nile flood, vegetation, corn, the
  moon, the dead and renewal of life often
  depicted as a mummy sprouting corn.
• Osiris was murdered by his brother, Seth, who was
  jealous of his power and success. Seth was
  further upset by Osiris when he slept with his
  wife, Nephthys. Osiris child with Nephthys is
  Anubis the god of the dead.

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The Lord of the Underworld

• To get even, Seth made a coffin-box that would
  fit only Osiris. Once Osiris was in the box,
  Seth sealed it and sent it down the Nile. Isis
  found Osiris and brought him back to life by
  forcing air back into his body with her wings.
  He was revived just long enough to impregnate
  Isis with their son Horus, and then he died
  again.
• Angered by being thwarted, Seth wanted to make
  sure Isis could not revive Osiris again. Seth
  cut Osiris body into 14 pieces and scattered
  them throughout Egypt.
• Isis was able to find all of the pieces except
  for Osiris phallus. She mummified the remains.
  Osiris was revived, but as he was no longer
  fertile, he was made the lord of the dead.

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Isis

• Isis is the most significant goddess in the
  Egyptian pantheon. She is the mother of god, a
  healer, and goddess of magic and sex.
• The blue dress of Mary, the symbolism of the
  crescent moon and association of the sea were all
  attributes first given to Isis by the Roman Cult
  of Isis.
• She is the great lady of the Underworld, who
  assisted in transforming the bodies of the
  blessed dead into those wherein they were to live
  in the realm of Osiris, her name was Ament, i.e.,
  the "hidden" goddess.

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The Ultimate Mother

• In fact, at a comparatively early period in
  Egyptian history, Isis had absorbed the
  attributes of all the great primitive goddesses,
  and she was even identified as the female
  counterpart of the primeval abyss of water from
  which sprang all life.
• It is manifestly impossible to limit the
  attributes of Isis, for we have seen that she
  possesses the powers of a water goddess, an earth
  goddess, a corn goddess, a star goddess, a queen
  of the Underworld, and a woman, and that she
  united in herself one or more of the attributes
  of all the goddesses of Egypt known to us.

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Nephthys

• Sister and wife of Seth sister and lover of
  Osiris
• Mother of Anubis
• Nephthys is the personification of darkness and
  of all that belongs to it, and that her
  attributes were rather of a passive than active
  character. She was the opposite of Isis in every
  respect Isis symbolized birth, growth,
  development and vigor, but Nephthys was the
  death, decay, diminution and immobility.

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The Other Sister

• Isis and Nephthys are associated inseparably with
  each other, even as were Horus and Set, and in
  all the important matters which concern the
  welfare of the deceased they acted together, and
  they appear together in bas-reliefs and
  vignettes.
• Isis, according to Plutarch, represented the part
  of the world which is visible, while Nephthys
  represents that which is invisible, and we may
  even regard Isis as the day and Nephthys as the
  night.
• Isis and Nephthys represent respectively the
  things which are and the things which are yet to
  come into being, the beginning and the end, birth
  and death, and life and death.

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Seth

• Set was also known by the names of Sutekh,
  Setesh, Seteh.
• He is known as a god of evil, chaos, the desert
  and foreigners.
• He is guilty of killing and dismembering his
  brother, Osiris.
• He fought his nephew, Horus, who sought to
  revenge his father.

• There is some speculation that Seth was
  homosexual, and several stories center around him
  being outwitted due to his sexual preferences.
• Seth was the god of Lower Egypt, and his fight
  with Osiris became integrated into the mythology
  when Upper Egypt took over Lower Egypt.

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Horus

• Only child of Isis and Osiris
• Sometimes said to be the husband of Isis
• Sometimes said to be the resurrected form of
  Osiris.
• This really depends on what time period you are
  looking at.
• Had one of his eyes gouged out by Seth during the
  battle for Osiris revenge
• Since one eye is now inferior to the other, the
  eyes of Horus are said to be the sun and the
  moon.
• Is able to defeat Seth, thereby becoming the
  ultimate ruling god of Egypt.

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Anubis

• Is the only child of Nephthys and Osiris.
• His birth is what starts the conflict between
  Osiris and Seth.
• Anubis is often depicted with the head of a a
  jackal.
• His primary responsibility is to guide souls
  through the underworld to the Scales of Judgment.

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Works Cited

• Book of the Dead, The The Hieroglyphic and
  English Translation of the Papyrus of Ani. Edited
  E.A. Wallis Budge. New York Random House, 1960.
• Budge, E. A. Wallis. Egyptian Religion Ideas of
  the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt. New York
  Gramercy Books, 1959.
• Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Gods of the Egyptians
  Studies in Egyptian Mythology, Vol. 2. New York
  Dover Publications, 1969.
• Davis, Kenneth C. Dont Know Much About
  Mythology Everything You Need to Know About the
  Greatest Stories in Human History but Never
  Learned. New York Harper Press, 2005.
• Leitch, Aaron. The Egyptian Creation Epic.
  Theology Website. 25 August 2008.
• ltlt http//www.theologywebsite.com/etext/egypt/crea
  tion.shtmlgtgt
• Mackenzie, Donald A. Egyptian Myths and Legends.
  New York Gramercy Books, 1980.
• Mercatante, Anthony S. Whos Who in Egyptian
  Mythology. New York Crown Publishers, 1978.
• Shapiro, Max. S. and Rhoda A. Hendricks.
  Mythologies of the World A Concise Encyclopedia.
  New York Doubleday, 1979.