Jeudi: Great Spirits

Known to his worshipers as both "he who makes green" and "raging one", the Ancient Egyptian crocodile god Sobek remains somewhat of a mystery.

His name, in direct translation, means simply crocodile and he was never represented in art without at least the head of that fearsome beast. He was a god of water and in particular the life-giving River Nile. The thing he "made green" was the land through the growth of plants and Sobek doubtless had some role in the annual flooding of the river. In fact, according to Richard H. Wilkinson in his book The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, the river was said to be made of Sobek's sweat.

It probably goes without saying that his sacred places were sandbars, marshes and any other locations where crocodiles might reside. Wilkinson tells us the Sobek was also known as the "Lord of Bakhu". Bakhu was a kind of Shanghai-La at the far edge of the world. It was conceived as an insurmountable mountain and it was near its crest that Sobek was thought to have a vast palace made entirely of carnelian. It may be for this reason that carnelian amulets in the shape of crocodiles were carried - by those who could afford them - to gain Sobek's favor and protection. Less expensive crocodiles made of pottery have also been found and jewelry, particularly necklaces, featuring crocodiles seem to have been worn by many Ancient Egyptians.

In the New Kingdom era, Sobek was thought to be a protector of the Pharaoh and his family. In this permutation he was often attached to other "royal" gods such as Amen, Osiris and the sun god Re in particular. This led to the personification Sobek-Re and probably also led to the Greeks syncratizing Sobek with their minor sun god, Helios.

Sobek was thought to be the son of the most warlike of Ancient Egyptian goddesses, Neith and his personal ferocity did not end with the association with crocodiles. He was said to "take women from their husbands whenever he wishes according to his desire." Some historians see this as a sign of Sobek ruling over virility and male fertility. It may be, however, that he is also - or alternatively - a god of the rapine and pillage that accompanies war.

Temples of Sobek were built throughout Egypt and, of course, most often located on the river. At Kom Ombo, where his consort was designated as the cow-shaped love goddess Hathor, sacred pools held crocodiles who were treated like kings in life and mummified with all ceremony after their deaths. By the New Kingdom, almost all of Sobek's temples had sacred crocodiles.

The worship of Sobek seems to have continued into the Greek era and the Ptolemy dynasty. After Egypt became a Roman possession, however, Sobek - like so many of his brother and sister deities - fell from favor. How fortunate we are that, through the work of archaeologists and historians, we can know Sobek and all those other gods once again.

Header: Sobek Protecting Amenhotep III from the Luxor Museum via Wikipedia

Mercredi: The Art of Beauty

Though many of our female ancestors were given no end of trouble over their penchant for cosmetics, jewels and other fripperies, the ladies of Ancient Egypt never seem to have had that problem.  From the earliest recorded times they were not only encouraged but expected to maintain a clean, lean, healthy appearance.  Elegance was over the top by the dawn of the New Kingdom, around 1,550 BCE, and this was especially true at the royal court where both ladies and gentlemen primped, plucked and groomed like modern celebrities.

One of the most interesting things about Ancient Egyptian culture, at least to me, is its unusual lack of change.  Things were pretty well set in place for close to 3,000 years as far as politics, religion, etiquette and so on.  This was true of fashion as well and so, with only a few fluctuations, we can look at the Ancient Egyptian’s beauty regimen as being fairly static throughout the culture.

Women in particular but men as well had a mania for removal of body hair.  This may have been due to a combination of the hot, arid climate of the Nile Valley, the ever-present threat of parasites and the cult of the body developed in Ancient Egypt.  Bodies, even those of the common folk, were worked over with a pumice stone virtually daily to remove all possible hair.  Among the working poor it was not unusual to remove one’s clothing to attend to heavy labor.  Bodies were easy to wash; linen was not.

Bathing was considered a must, even if it only meant pouring water over the body in the evening.  Many queens were notoriously addicted to bathing; Queen Nitocris required an hour long bath in cool water sprinkled with a pinch of natron every morning.

The head and hair were particular focuses of care.  Men routinely shaved and wore either wigs or cloth headdresses.  Depending on the era, women either did the same or wore their natural hair intricately dressed with jewels, metal and extensions of human or horse hair.  By the middle of the 18^th dynasty, baldness for women had become the norm.  Ladies polished their heads with precious oils and wore long, intricately plated wigs to formal occasions while wrapping their heads in elegant scarves at home. 

During the reign of Akhenaton, his daughters’ unusually elongated heads became a fashion icon.  The rumor was that a sorcerer had reshaped the girls’ heads in the womb to spare their beautiful mother Nefertiti the worst pains of childbirth.  Whatever the case, fashion historian Mila Contini tells us that court ladies tried to emulate the princesses’ unusually shaped heads by wearing false headpieces of vegetable fiber or wood.

Cosmetics were applied to face and body with regularity.  A fashionista would not think of leaving home without her hair in a perfect coif and her limbs perfumed with oils of lotus, myrrh or acacia.  Her complexion would be whitened with a lead-based paste followed by a delicate sienna blush at cheeks and temples.  The lips would be tinted the same red-orange color, as would the finger and toenails.  Eyes were heavily painted, usually with three or four different colors.  Black kohl rimmed the eyes and elongated the eyelashes while sparkling green malachite was swept over the eyelids.  The eyebrows were extended with antimony powder which was dark gray in color.  Very wealthy women might sweep a bit of gold dust just over the brow as a final highlight.

The ladies must have cut a very beguiling figure as they swept into a temple festival or royal feast.  It is no wonder that we are to this day fascinated by the beauty of Ancient Egypt.

Header: Two of Akhenaton’s daughters from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

The above illustration, from the papyrus scroll known as Ani’s Book of the Dead, illustrates beautifully the modern imagining of the Ancient Egyptian underworld.  In the place where all those who once lived are judged for their actions, known as the Hall of Two Truths, Ani and his wife Tutu approach with reverence on the far left as demigods sit above them to witness the fate of the deceased.  

Ani, who was a scribe in life, next stands before the scales of afterlife judgment.  Ani’s Ba, one of the three “souls” that would survive after the death of his body, perches to the left of the scales in the form of a bird with a human head.  Ani stands facing Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming and necroplei who will handle the delicate balance of the scales.  Behind Anubis the ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the divinities and lord of learning, waits with pen in hand to write down the outcome of the test.  Will Ani’s heart be pure enough to prove lighter than the feather that represents the goddess of truth, Ma’at?  Or will his unjust deeds in life weigh it down?

In fact, the pivotal moment portrayed in this portion of the papyrus is almost more of a dénouement than an all important climax.  To get to this point, Ani – and his faithful wife, a musician in the temple of Amun – had to pass through a seemingly unending series of tests that would make a professional athlete who happened to also be a doctorate student dizzy. 

There were rivers of lava, dark caves and endless wastelands to slog through on the road to face the Lord of the Dead, Osiris.  All that taken into consideration, though, stamina was only half of the equation.  Just as important was being able to answer riddles and knowing names.  An uncountable number of talking objects and body parts would ask Ani if he knew their names.  If he did not, or his answers were incorrect, his journey to the Hall of Two Truths would end, and an everlasting afterlife of wandering, wraithlike and deformed, around the underworld waited.

Spells and amulets, most provided in various versions of the Book of the Dead, could help a soul avoid being disemboweled or having its head cut off.  The answers to the riddles that would be posed to the deceased were also written in the Book.  Whether or not all of these had to be memorized in life or were at hand if the Book was entombed with an individual is still up for debate. 

An example of the kind of quizzing Ani and Tutu could experience went like this:

Upon encountering a door, the lintels on the left and right ask Ani for their names.  He is to respond that they are “scale pan of wine” and “scale pan that carries Ma’at.”  When this correct answer is given, the doorjamb asks if Ani knows its name.  He does, of course: “plummet of the place of truth.”  The questions keep on coming from the door’s bolt, “toe of his mother”, the threshold, “Ox of Geb”, and so on until he passes to the floor beyond.  The floor changes up the line of questioning.  It asks Ani not for its name, but for the name of Ani’s own feet.  (If you’re curious, they turn out to be “who enters before Min” and “wenpet of Nephthys.”)

The final danger – the one that no amount of knowledge and spell casting can help a soul wriggle out of – is Ammut “the devouress of the dead.”  This strange creature, who sits to the right of Thoth in the picture above, is a combination of crocodile, lion (or sometimes leopard) and hippopotamus.  Should Ani’s heart prove heavier than the feather of Ma’at, it will end up in the eager jaws of the demon/goddess Ammut.  This was the worst possible fate for any Ancient Egyptian: total annihilation.

This complex and convoluted maze of travails would lead the happy soul to the its reward: the Field of Rushes.  Here men and women would live simply as agrarians, working part-time for the gods and spending the rest of the afterlife in feasting, music and dance.  A just reward, it seems, for so much trouble.

Header: The Hall of Two Truths from Ani’s Book of the Dead c 1400 BCE

Jeudi: Great Spirits

When my family first moved to Southern California I was very much wrapped up in Ancient Egyptian mythology.  In that hot, arid land it was very easy to imagine the creatures and spirits that Egyptian culture conjured up.  During the extreme weather known as Santa Ana winds, I always found myself meditating on the Lord of the Red Land, Seth.  To me, this ancient god is one of the most paradoxical of the Egyptian pantheon.  And, perhaps, one of the most misunderstood.

Seth, whose name is sometimes spelled Set following the correct pronunciation, was one of the original five children of the sky goddess Nut.  He is an old god; representations of him as a bizarre, donkey-like beast appear on pre-dynastic artifacts such as the war club of King Scorpion.  In the Old Kingdom he was considered a god of strength and courage who rode at the head of the sun god’s barge where he kept the terrible serpent Apophis at bay.  Seth was the protector of Egypt in general and the Pharaoh in particular.  The strongest metal known to the Egyptians, iron, was called “the bones of Seth”.  But something happened to Seth’s good name around the time of the Hyksos occupation toward the end of the Middle Kingdom, and his powerful personality began to take on a very dark mantel.

The Hyksos, invaders from central Europe who introduced the wheel and the horse into Egypt, found a great affinity for the warlike, powerful Seth.  They equated him with their god Ba’al and worshiped him accordingly.  Whether or not the conquered Egyptians, who always had a distaste for foreigners and their customs, imagined Seth had betrayed them is unclear.  What is clear is that, with the restoration of Egyptian Pharaohs around 1640 BCE, Seth became an embodiment of evil.

He was known euphemistically as the “Red One” and, in a culture where order and balance were primarily important, assumed the throne of chaos.  He caused the withering hot winds to blow sand storms toward the Nile.  He encouraged rebellion and invasion.  He married foreign goddesses like Astarte and Anat.  Seth became so horrible in the eyes of the Egyptians that his name was not spoken, or even written, and depictions of him were often pierced through the head or body with a knife to nullify his out of control power.  Though the 19^th Dynasty of Seti I and Ramses II would embrace the old vision of Seth, the damage to his character was essentially done.

The real slander to Seth’s name came with the reworking of the myth of his family which became part of both popular and ceremonial religion by the start of the New Kingdom.  As noted, Seth was one of the five children of Nut and the Earth god Geb.  These children, some of the most powerful gods in the Egyptian pantheon, were born over the course of a five day period in the following order: Osiris, Seth, Horus, Isis, Nephthys.   Four of the gods were grouped into couples, with Osiris marrying Isis and Seth paired with Nephthys. 

The story goes that even at birth Seth was competitive and cruel.  As he saw his brother being born before him, he clawed his way out of the womb rather than have to follow behind anyone else.  Nephthys, originally a quiet consort, was said to be none too happy in her marriage.  Her son, Anubis the jackal headed lord of funeral rights and embalming, was now rumored to be the offspring of a fling with Osiris rather than Seth’s child.

Osiris and Isis took the throne of Egypt and a time of plenty and peace fell over the land.  Seth grew more and more jealous and, in a bid for power, killed Osiris by getting him drunk and convincing him to climb into a sarcophagus which was then locked down and thrown into the Nile.  Isis, a master magician, found her husband’s body in a sycamore tree in far off Cypress.  With her dead husband she managed to conceive their son and heir who was confusingly named after – and eventually absorbed – his uncle Horus.

After Seth found his brother’s body and desecrated it by cutting it into seven pieces, Isis regained all but one piece of her husband and then hid in a swamp.  Here she not only performed the first embalming on her beloved spouse but also raised her son to hate his uncle Seth.

When Horus grew to manhood he challenged Seth for the throne of Egypt and an epic battle lasting eighty years ensued.  Horus lost an eye to Seth and in turn castrated his uncle when Seth tried to rape him.  In the end good, in the form of the falcon headed son of Osiris and Isis, prevailed.  Horus became the protector of Egypt in general and the Pharaoh in particular.

It is obvious, when one takes a closer look, that the story has been doctored.  Originally Horus was not the nephew but the younger brother of Seth.  While obviously murdering ones brother to gain the throne is questionable, there can be no question that in the original family lineage Seth would be next in line for that throne.  It is only with the glaring addition of Horus-son-of-Osiris and the disappearance of Horus-son-of-Nut that the succession changes.  The addition of particularly vulgar actions on Seth’s part, like corpse mutilation and rape, only add insult to the original injury.  Particularly curious to me is the fact that Isis, who is always held up as the ultimate hero of the tragedy, was not known as Isis by the Egyptians but as Au-Set.  Even her name was kin to the Red One’s.

The Egyptian religion, which dominated much of the Middle East for 4,000 years, was bound to be a fluid, ever changing doctrine.  But the jarring demonization of Seth is as unprecedented as it is an instructive bit of foreshadowing with regard to powerful religions around the world.

Header: Ramses III crowned by Horus and Seth c 1170 BCE