Class 4 Notes - Gods in the Desert (Egyptian Gods). Dr. Frame PDF

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Gods in the Desert (Egyptian Gods). Dr. Frame...

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Reading: Gods in the Desert (Egyptian Gods and the World They Made) -

The full range of Egyptian religion stayed homogenous throughout history

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Predominant characteristic of ancient Egyptian religion was serenity and eternity - In contrast to the disorder of most Egyptians’ lives - Egyptians believed in dichotomies in most ways, such as order vs disorder, fertile valley vs arid desert, light vs darkness, life vs death, not as conflicts but as complementary parts of a whole

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Gods were originally depicted as animals and this stayed a bit with animal heads on human bodies - Anthropomorphized, both gods and humanity were part of created order except for the self-created creator god - Gods differed from humans by virtue of divine power, length of life, location - Simultaneously existed in two sorts of time, one the cyclical eternity of change and renewal (neheh) and the other the eternity of the changeless (djet)

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Ennad: the nine gods who are the first products of divine creation

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Horus: chief god of lower Egypt, sky god, falcon-headed human

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Gods associated with natural phenomena were important in creation stories and to the continuing welfare of the cosmos

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National deities appeared to have developed from local or regional gods

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Funerary deities were significant, with heads of jackals

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There were also gods associated with occupations such as arts and craftsmen

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Hathor: popular goddess that represents nature and fertility, represented as a cow. Goddess of love, joy, erotic love, fate, patroness of singers and dancers, warrior goddess, inflicts punishment on those who offend the gods - Identified with Sekhmet, lion-headed goddess associated with war/violence - Story with Ra where she destroys half of mankind and Ra gets her drunk

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Isis: sister and consort of Osiris, who is god of underworld, queen of heaven, protector of the king, resurrects Osiris to conceive Horus as his heir, so Osiris’s death and revival guarantee food and continued life for all of Egypt

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Solar deities - Kheprer: identified with sun at its rising - Ra: dominant solar deity, carries the sun across the sky each day, sometimes the sun’s passage across the sky was thought of as parallel to passage of human life. Divine essence of the sun, cosmic reality and true source of light

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Amun was a primeval deity, worship of Amun-Ra became an expression of Egyptian national identity and power - Other gods were at times represented as personified facets of his divine being - Worship of Amun-Ra came close to monotheism in practice if not theory

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The power of the priests of Amun led to the attempted replacement of Amun by Aten - Worship of Amun was suppressed and his name removed from temples - Aten was not anthropomorphized but represented as a sun disk, its light descending as rays ending in human hands in a gesture of blessing/welcome - After Akhenaten’s death Amun was again the preeminent god

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King is at the head of human hierarchy and a divine figure as the intermediary between gods and the rest of humanity - King’s first response was to hold the kingdom together and Egyptians ascribed divine power to the man who was capable of accomplishing this

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Kings of the first and second dynasty were identified as incarnations of Horus - Each successive king was Horus, making his acts the acts of god - Over time the king’s status was reduced to that of a human in whom god dwelt and did god’s will on earth

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Ka is each person’s individual identity and both humans and gods had this, the king’s royal ka symbolized the presence of the divine within him - When kings died they were worshipped as gods, like Osiris the dead god

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The myth of kingship: death of Osiris - Osiris is killed by brother Seth who dismembers him because he is jealous for some reason, Osiris’s sister and wife Isis is distraught and finds all the pieces of his body scattered around Egypt and resurrects him enough to become impregnated, Osiris then goes to the underworld because he is dead, Osiris is associated with fertility as it is necessary for the grain to die and be scattered before returning to life as new crops - Isis gives birth to Horus and protects him from Seth, Horus becomes Seth’s rival

for the kingship and reclaims it after a series of trials and Osiris becomes ruler of the netherworld -

Isis is an ideal fulfillment of lover, wife, widow, and mother: protector of the king, wise, clever, a trickster, power of magic and healing and spells

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In each stage of life a king retains his royal authority and divinity, while allowing a new king to follow in a historical cycle (each king is he young Har-pa-kher, then the mature and assured Horus, then the venerated Osiris)

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The good king must provide for the needs of the nation, be just, be ruthless when needed, rely on their own abilities to discern who is trustworthy - Gods only gave favors to kings, even if the favors benefitted all of Egypt it was only meant to help the king and helping the country/humanity was a side effect

Reading: David Silverman, The Gods -

Gods associated with natural phenomena and abstraction - Before creation could take place three powers had to be present: Hu (divine utterance), Heka (magic or divine energy), Sia (divine knowledge)

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Solar deities - Ra: most prominent - Khepri: form of solar orb as it came into being in the morning and traveled across the sky during the day - Atum: setting sun who battled eternal enemy Apophis, the serpent, during his daily and evening journeys through the heavens and underworld - Aten: disk of the sun

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Moon deities - Thoth: scribe of the gods, patron god of scribal profession - Khonsu: one of sacred family members in triad of Thebes - Others were Osiris, Min, Shu, and Khnum

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Local and national deities - Each precinct had associated deities - From time to time a local deity transcended provincialism and gained national prominence - Montu, worshipped in Theban nome, became preeminent throughout Egypt during 11th dynasty and eventually eclipsed by Amun

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Two local goddesses associated with important cities of Nekheb in Upper Egypt and Buto in Lower Egypt were the vulture Nekhbet and cobra Wadhit, who in time became prominent protector deities of Upper and Lower Egypt Many of these changes had political implications

February 4th -

Egyptians didn’t write down their tales as other cultures did - Belief that writing things down could have magical significance - Like to draw a snake you should draw it cut in two so if it came alive it would die (or with a dagger in it)

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Terms - Ka: divine or non-divine life force of an individual (hard to define) - Maat: cosmic and social order and balance, goddess personified as daughter of _____, major duty of pharaohs to ensure that maat was present

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Gods were depicted as humans with animal heads but they didn’t actually think the gods had animal heads, it was just a way of depicting them with their characteristics

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Re/Ra: head of a falcon with a solar disk that has a cobra around it, god of sun at its height Kephri: morning sun, head of a dung beetle (these beetles push balls of dung on the ground up hills, so the sun is being pushed up) Atum: evening sun

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Sun god was so important that he was sometimes combined with other gods to create major gods - Combined with Amun (hidden one, god of Thebes) - Amun-Re’s temple controlled ⅓ of Egypt’s land (??) at one point, probably why Akhenaten led a major religious reformation to take this power away

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Isis: cow horns and solar disk, cult, people worshipped her in a bunch of places, major female deity of the ancient world - What distinguishes her from Ishtar and Aphrodite is her very close ties with kingship as its protector - Image of Madonna and child in history might go back to Isis holding Horus

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Thoth: god of wisdom, writing, lunar deith, baboon or head of an Ibis bird

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Anubis: divine embalmer, head of a jackal Hathor: sky goddess, love, sexuality, depicted as a cow or with the head of a cow Ptah: creator god of Memphis, god of craftsmen and architects, blue skullcap Imhotep: patron god for physicians, scribes, and magicians

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Mummies - Gods’ spirits were in animals, when the animal died it was mummified and a new animal represented the god - They basically ran puppy mills and killed the puppies soon after birth to mummify then, then people bought them to give to the gods/temples

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Three main Egyptian cosmogonies - Heliopolitan cosmology - First is limitless water, the Nun - The first god is Atum, sun god, on the mound - In one story, Atum masturbates and from his semen come the first male (Shu, air) and female deity (Tefnut, moisture) - In another story, Atum spit out Shu and splattered out Tefnut - Shu and Tefnut have sex and create the next deities, Geb (male, earth) and Nut (feminine, sky) - Geb and Nut have two kids -- Osiris (male, underworld king), Isis (female, throne of Egypt), Seth (male, chaos, storm, desert), Nephthys (female, ) - Next is the important myth of Osiris (read above)

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A lot of material from ancient Egypt that has been preserved is dedicated to death and the afterlife/underworld - Were ancient Egyptians obsessed with death? Or were they obsessed with life and continuing on alive, having something immortal in their essence?...