A Little Thoth Goes a Long Way (original) (raw)
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The Egyptian god Thoth is best known as a god of writing and wisdom, a lunar deity, and vizier of the gods, but was also a cosmic deity, creator god, and warrior. Being one of the oldest deities of the Egyptian pantheon, he is attested in many sources from the earliest periods of Egyptian history up to the Roman Period. The etymology of his name remains unexplained, possibly due to the name's antiquity. Perhaps it is his age as a divine figure that led to a rather confusing mythology with a series of contradicting traditions concerning his descent and his reputation as a benevolent versus atrocious or mistrusted deity. Under the influence of Hellenism, he transformed into Hermes Trismegistos in Roman times and lived on as such well into the European renaissance.
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2011
Book review by F. Hagen This book is the long-awaited text edition of a composition that was first announced by the authors at the Seventh International Congress of Egyptology held in Cambridge in September 1995 (Jasnow & Zauzich, 1998: 607-618). The text, dubbed 'The Book of Thoth' by the authors, is a complex and multi-layered discourse in the form of a dialogue between the god Thoth and a student designated as mr-rx, 'lover of knowledge/wisdom' (cf. Greek philosophos). As with most Egyptian papyri, the manuscripts of the text are fragmentary and dispersed, with even a single papyrus often being split between various collections around the world. The dates of the manuscripts fall between the 1 st Century BC and 2 nd Century AD, and they are said to come from various sites in Egypt, including a considerable number from Tebtunis and Dime, as well as Elephantine (P. Louvre AF 13035 and P. Louvre E 10614; the only copy of the Book of Thoth in hieratic) and perhaps Edfu (P. Berlin P 15531, the best preserved manuscript). The composition date is unknown. The authors note that the text "may well go back to the Ptolemaic Period" (p. 77) and "may partly derive from much older material" (p. 109), but conclude that it probably originated in a House of Life in the later Ptolemaic or early Roman Period (e.g. p. 34). On several occasions they associate the Book of Thoth with the role of contemporary temples as repositories for Egyptian language and religion (e.g. p. 72, 75), approvingly citing the work of Jan Assmann (1992). While Assmann's description of these temples as "codifiers of knowledge" may be accurate, a simplified cause-and-effect analysis of this cultural process as an answer to increased pressure from Hellenism is an academic shortcut. Recent research shows that the situation is more complex than this, and the old assumption that Egyptians were excluded, by definition, from high offices in the 'Greek' administration has been laid to rest (contra Assmann, 1992: p. 77 n. 272). The nature of the sources simply does not allow us to determine the ethnic affiliation of an individual a lot of the time. The most famous example of this is that of the dioiketes Dioskourides (2 nd Century BC) who shows up in all the Greek sources as a 'Greek' official. He was in fact buried in an Egyptian coffin with inscriptions mentioning his mother, who had an Egyptian name, in hieroglyphs (Collombert, 2000). The dichotomy 'Egyptian' vs. 'Greek' did not exist: there was a continuous cultural exchange (in which the Book of Thoth itself no doubt played a part). As a composition it is in some ways a 'missing link'; it sits easily between the Egyptian and Greek traditions as a multi-faceted and highly intertextual work, influenced by both cultures. The formal structure of the text as a dialogue between a 'teacher' and a 'student' echoes the frames of traditional Egyptian wisdom instructions (compare the influence of this corpus on pp. 226-232), but also that of Greek philosophical works. The subtitle of the book mentions the classical hermetica, a group of writings that may be unfamiliar to most Egyptologists. The manuscripts of these writings date to the 1 st through late 3 rd Century AD and so are roughly contemporary with the Book of Thoth. They are cast in a similar dialogue form, and occasionally claim to be copies or translations of ancient Egyptian originals-a claim that has been thoroughly discredited by scholars like A.-J. Festugière (1944-1954). The relationship between the hermetic literature and the ancient Egyptian literary tradition has long been a point of debate, and although there is evidence that some of the hermetic texts PalArch Foundation
Religion, 2017
The ancient Egyptian god Osiris was represented in iconic forms in temple reliefs and statues, in semi-iconic form in the so-called corn-Osiris or Osiris-bed, and in aniconic form as the Djed-pillar. All three variations in iconicity are ritual representations of the god and somehow claim his real presence: the temple reliefs by (textually transmitted) conventions, the corn-Osiris by the real, sprouting corn that fills the Osiris outline or form, and the Djed-pillar by the very universality and immense potential of denoting without (yet) depicting or narrating. The synchronous occurrence of these degrees of iconicity illustrates aniconism as a rhetorical option, a matter of ritual design, not a cognitive or theological stage in the evolution of mankind. KEYWORDS Aniconism; Djed-pillar; Books of the Netherworld; Egyptian Book of the Dead; Osiris-bed; real presence; ritual representation of gods In his important and seminal book, Der Eine und die Vielen, or Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, as the English translation has it, Hornung (1971, 125, 1983, 135) begins a chapter on images of gods with a reference to what he calls 'the systematic theology of the New Kingdom' as expressed in the famous hymn to Amun in a Leiden papyrus. According to this 'systematic theology', the god (Amun) is in the sky and his body in the Netherworld, while on earth images bear witness to his presence. In a book about conceptions of god, theology is indeed an obvious and relevant perspective on the religious function of images, but certainly not the only perspective. On the very same page, Hornung points out that also the images on earth, notably those used in temple ritual, may assume the rank of 'bodies' of the gods, in which the gods themselves may be present. The shift of perspectivefrom theology to the ritual use of imagesmay perhaps pass unnoticed, but it is both necessary and recommendable; we must also adopt a ritual perspective, if we want to understand iconic and aniconic representations of gods as means to secure their ritual presence. The modern idea of the image as information and eo ipso also possibly misinformation goes back at least, as Vernant (1979) has shown, to Plato. Before Plato's critique and the new realism in Greek art, images were thought of in terms of representation only, not mimesis or imitation of reality. Early art was often designed for use in a ritual context, and its purpose was, according to Vernant (1983), 'la présentification de l'invisible', to make for the presence of invisible beings. The idea of non-imitative art as denoting
The god Ha in the ornamental texts of Middle Kingdom rectangular coffins from Asyut
Ancient Egypt 2021 - Perspectives of Research, 2023
This paper focuses on a particular group of sources mentioning the god Ha, ‘Lord of the West’: the Middle Kingdom rectangular coffins from Asyut displaying ornamental texts on their outer walls and representing a local style in the capital of the Thirteenth Upper Egyptian nome in respect of paleography as well as textual repertoire. These coffins featured highly homogenous textual elements and very similar layout patterns. The name of Ha appeared in the Dd-mdw-jn-Ra formulae, according to which the god Re placed different deities on each side of the coffin for the protection of the deceased. The god Ha, ‘Lord of the West’ was associated with the back (western) side, and in my paper, these texts will be investigated. The corpus in question has proved to be rich in local orthographic variations. Contrary to the traditional appearance of the divine name as a mountain sign represented on a standard , the unusual and variegated written forms of the god’s name at Asyut unequivocally reveal Ha’s falcon aspect, and the similarities of his nature with gods like Horus or Sopdu. I argue that based on the corpus investigated, Ha can be regarded as a western variant of Sopdu in certain respects. Furthermore, I show that the orthographies known from Asyut prove the essential relationship of Ha with the West – even without his epithet ‘Lord of the West’. Finally, my paper investigates the differences and similarities between the feather of the West and the SdSD-protuberance mainly associated with Wepwawet, the major god of Asyut, which was itself a feather rolled up on itself. This protuberance can be identified in the earliest representations of the Ha logogram as well.
Four Faces on One Neck: The Tetracephalic Ram as an Iconographic Form in New Kingdom Egypt
2021
In ancient Egypt, the ram was regarded as a symbol of protection, male virility, fertility, syncretism, rebirth, and resurrection, which is why ancient Egyptians associated some of their gods with the ram form. The most popular ram deities, each connected with his own temples and cult centers at different geographic locations, were Banebdjed of Mendes, Heryshef of Herakleopolis Magna, Amun-Ra of Thebes, and Khnum of Esna and Elephantine. Similarly, numbers were another important aspect of Egyptian religion and magic, and the symbolic language of numbers manifested itself in a variety of ways in the art of ancient Egypt; occasionally, ram gods, for example, were represented with multiple heads in order to indicate the syncretism of two or, more frequently, four different divinities. This thesis engages with New Kingdom representations of four-headed ram deities, appearing in separate entrance scenes preserved inside the individual tombs of Ramesses IX (KV 6), Ramesses X (KV 19), and Ramesses XI (KV 4), as an artistic response to theological and political change in the late Twentieth Dynasty. This examination of art applies iconographic and iconological analysis on selected images of tetracephalic ram deities in order to better understand the symbolic message articulated by four rams’ heads as an iconographic form. Ultimately, the four-headed ram as an iconographic type during the late New Kingdom was applied to both solar and netherworld divinities, constituting a demiurge par excellence. Four rams’ heads, as a composite motif, also show us that Egyptians of the late New Kingdom perceived many similarities between their individual ram gods, in particular, Banebdjed of Mendes and Amun-Ra of Thebes, who were each depicted in art by the Ramesside period occasionally as a tetracephalic ram deity.