Notes from the World's End Library
I've been doing some reading in the Library between our revisitations, and I've decided that it'd be wise to share my book learnings with the rest of the class, so to speak. Here's the Katie's Notes version of what I've been studying. Bear in mind, of course, that Khemet is a different country, with different developmental paths, and some or all of this may not apply. Then again, many of the gods, at least, seem similar...
Egypt was first occupied around 700,000 BC by settlers whose only tool was the hand axe. This was the period of the Neanderthals; gradually, around 50,000 BC, when the climate was suspected to be more temperate, Neanderthals developed simple surgery techniques, were known to care for injured and elderly, and buried the dead in ritualistic fashion. The fact that these remains are buried in what is now desert regions indicates that the climate must have been more temperate during the Middle Paleolithic period.
Around 30,000 BC, the Late Paleolithic period, modern humans replaced the Neanderthals, and the level of the Nile began to decline. The people of Egypt lived in or near the swampy areas along the banks of the Nile for the most part, and lived on mollusks and fish, cooked on clay hearths, and made grindstones to process wild cereal grains. Hunting with bows and arrows was developed at around 15,000 BC. The Nile reached its lowest point somewhere between 10,000 and 5,000 BC. This is also the period at which pottery and cattle farming was developed.
The Egyptian civilization's history is intimately associated with the Nile - it is the longest river in the world. Its main branch, the White Nile, flows north from Lake Victoria in east-central Africa 3,470 miles to the Mediterranean Sea on Egypt's northern border. Starting in Ethiopia, another river, the Blue Nile, joins the White Nile in Khartoum, Sudan, and the rivers merge and flow into Egypt.
The Blue Nile swells due to spring monsoons and melting snow from Ethiopia, causing the Nile to rise, overflow its banks, and deposit fresh, rich topsoil on the plains on either side of the river, allowing Egypt to grow abundant varieties of crops in times when other civilizations were lucky to maintain one consistently.
The annual flooding was amazing to the Egyptians, who had no explanation for the river's swelling or change in color (from red to green). The silt suspended in the water made the Nile's rivers appear red, while the slow moving vegetation on top transformed it to green. It was a natural occurrence, but the Egyptians viewed it as the work of the gods, and began to notice consistencies in their environment that matched these natural patterns. They noticed a certain star (Sothis) that rose on the horizon just before the flooding began. They observed the sun - which rose daily from the east, traveled across the sky, and descended amidst a fireball of colors in the west, as predictable asever, day after day. The sun god Re was one of Egypt's most ancient deities.
Although Egypt is a vast country, most of the population lived near the banks of the river. Their lives revolved around the Nile, and the seasons of the year were determined by it. Our 365 day calendar comes from the Egpytians, but they only count three seasons - 1) inundation, when the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded the land; 2) emergence, when the waters receded; 3) summer, the dry season. Each season had four months of 30 days each. At the end of the year, five extra days were added to make the 365 days of the year - these were later used to celebrate the birthdays of Isis and her siblings. Inundation was Egypt's most unusual season, for it could change the very appearance of the land - a time when the fields were under water, and little work could be done. Emergence was the season for planting, and the crops were harvested during the summer.
The food staples of the early Egyptians were bread and beer - a phrase which held the same meaning to them as 'meat and potatoes' does to us today, as a generic term for 'good food'. One common funerary prayer begins: "May the king make an offering to Osiris, Lord of the West. May he give bread and beer, cattle, geese, oxen, and all things good and pure on which the gods live." The long growing season allowed the Egyptians to grow a variety of crops, the most important being 'emer' (wheat) and onions. Meat was reserved for the upper classes, but everyone had bread, beer, and onions, as well as fish from the Nile.
Year after year the Nile rose, the crops were abundant, and the Egyptians were secure in the belief that this was the way their world was supposed to be. This idea was expressed in the notion of 'divine order' - the way the gods wanted things to be - and was encouraged by Egypt's geographical isolation from its neighbors. Egypt is surrounded by desert to the west and east (to the west, all the way to the Libyan border; to the east, all the way to the Red Sea). To the south, the way was blocked by near-impassible boulders in the river; to the north was the Mediterranean Sea, which formed a psychological barrier, as the Egyptians never really developed sailing skills or ventured out onto the open seas if they could avoid it. They developed navigational skills on the smooth-flowing Nile, where they could sail south with the prevailing winds or north with the current. Military expeditions in later centuries took Egyptians to other lands where they returned with great riches, but it was always clear to them that their homeland was a paradise on Earth.
Soon after recorded history began, when the Egyptians began to write in heiroglyphs, their burial ceremonies became more elaborate. Early burials were performed in shallow pit graves in the desert, and the hot, dry sand preserved the bodies naturally. As their mythology and religion developed and became more elaborate, however, so too did their burials. To prevent wild animals from digging up the burials, shallow pit graves were replaced with brick-lined tombs; bodies were covered with animal skins and placed placed on woven mats. The brick structures became more elaborate and varied with the status of the deceased. Because these bodies were now in tombs without the benefit of the natural drying process of the hot sand, they began to rot and decay. While the natural preservation of the hot sand in the desert may have spawned the idea of mummification, Egyptian religion required it, so burials in these tombs forced the Egyptians to devise a means of preserving the dead.
Central to the religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians was the myth of Isis and Osiris, in which Isis’s husband, Osiris, is killed by their evil brother Set. Set tricks Osiris into climbing into a box, seals him into it, then drowns him by throwing the box into the Nile. Isis, the bereaved wife, searches for and finds the body of her dead husband and is determined to give him a proper burial on Egyptian soil. It is from this myth that the crucial elements of Egyptian funerary practices derived. Like all myths, this one revealed important truths about nature, the universe, and life after death, and many beliefs of the ancient Egyptian funerary cult can be derived from it. The chest that exactly fit Osiris was the precursor of the
anthropoid coffin, which is shaped like the deceased and is intended to protect the body. The importance of a proper burial on Egyptian soil is emphasized by the efforts that Isis made to find the body of her husband, and to make sure thatit was complete, so that when she spoke her magic words, Osiris would resurrect in the Netherworld. He kept the same body after death that he had during life, so mummification was essential if the deceased was to resurrect and spend eternity in the Netherworld. Here we see a myth answering important questions about life after death.
Mythology, religion, and to some extent philosophy went hand in hand in the ancient world, but the Egyptians did not make a clear distinction between them. All three kinds of thinking try to answer questions about the universe, the nature of humans, and life after death. Mythology answers these questions with stories about the lives of the gods that are not meant to be taken literally. Myths take place in what is sometimes called “primordial time,” the time before time began, before calendars and clocks existed. Religion, on the other hand, answers the same kinds of questions but takes place in chronological time. The biblical story of Moses and the Exodus, for example, presents Moses as a historical character who actually lived on Earth at a particular time.
Philosophy, like religion and mythology, also attempts to answer questions about the nature of the universe, but unlike religion, which requires only faith,or mythology, which is not to be taken literally, philosophy requires proof. We know the ancient Egyptians had a rich mythology and a complex religion, but there is debate about whether they engaged in philosophical thinking. There are no philosophical papyri and no texts carved on temple walls that present carefully reasoned philosophical arguments. Of the three kinds of thinking that deal with basic questions about humans and the universe, this book is about mythology. As you will see, there is an overlapping between religion and mythology because mythology inevitably deals with the gods.
The reader shouldn’t be surprised to read different myths giving different answers to the same questions. In Heliopolis, for example, the priests told one story of how the world was created, and in Memphis they told quite a different story. These myths sometimes competed, but the people didn’t believe both versions: They tended to believe the version from their hometown.
Egypt was first occupied around 700,000 BC by settlers whose only tool was the hand axe. This was the period of the Neanderthals; gradually, around 50,000 BC, when the climate was suspected to be more temperate, Neanderthals developed simple surgery techniques, were known to care for injured and elderly, and buried the dead in ritualistic fashion. The fact that these remains are buried in what is now desert regions indicates that the climate must have been more temperate during the Middle Paleolithic period.
Around 30,000 BC, the Late Paleolithic period, modern humans replaced the Neanderthals, and the level of the Nile began to decline. The people of Egypt lived in or near the swampy areas along the banks of the Nile for the most part, and lived on mollusks and fish, cooked on clay hearths, and made grindstones to process wild cereal grains. Hunting with bows and arrows was developed at around 15,000 BC. The Nile reached its lowest point somewhere between 10,000 and 5,000 BC. This is also the period at which pottery and cattle farming was developed.
The Egyptian civilization's history is intimately associated with the Nile - it is the longest river in the world. Its main branch, the White Nile, flows north from Lake Victoria in east-central Africa 3,470 miles to the Mediterranean Sea on Egypt's northern border. Starting in Ethiopia, another river, the Blue Nile, joins the White Nile in Khartoum, Sudan, and the rivers merge and flow into Egypt.
The Blue Nile swells due to spring monsoons and melting snow from Ethiopia, causing the Nile to rise, overflow its banks, and deposit fresh, rich topsoil on the plains on either side of the river, allowing Egypt to grow abundant varieties of crops in times when other civilizations were lucky to maintain one consistently.
The annual flooding was amazing to the Egyptians, who had no explanation for the river's swelling or change in color (from red to green). The silt suspended in the water made the Nile's rivers appear red, while the slow moving vegetation on top transformed it to green. It was a natural occurrence, but the Egyptians viewed it as the work of the gods, and began to notice consistencies in their environment that matched these natural patterns. They noticed a certain star (Sothis) that rose on the horizon just before the flooding began. They observed the sun - which rose daily from the east, traveled across the sky, and descended amidst a fireball of colors in the west, as predictable asever, day after day. The sun god Re was one of Egypt's most ancient deities.
Although Egypt is a vast country, most of the population lived near the banks of the river. Their lives revolved around the Nile, and the seasons of the year were determined by it. Our 365 day calendar comes from the Egpytians, but they only count three seasons - 1) inundation, when the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded the land; 2) emergence, when the waters receded; 3) summer, the dry season. Each season had four months of 30 days each. At the end of the year, five extra days were added to make the 365 days of the year - these were later used to celebrate the birthdays of Isis and her siblings. Inundation was Egypt's most unusual season, for it could change the very appearance of the land - a time when the fields were under water, and little work could be done. Emergence was the season for planting, and the crops were harvested during the summer.
The food staples of the early Egyptians were bread and beer - a phrase which held the same meaning to them as 'meat and potatoes' does to us today, as a generic term for 'good food'. One common funerary prayer begins: "May the king make an offering to Osiris, Lord of the West. May he give bread and beer, cattle, geese, oxen, and all things good and pure on which the gods live." The long growing season allowed the Egyptians to grow a variety of crops, the most important being 'emer' (wheat) and onions. Meat was reserved for the upper classes, but everyone had bread, beer, and onions, as well as fish from the Nile.
Year after year the Nile rose, the crops were abundant, and the Egyptians were secure in the belief that this was the way their world was supposed to be. This idea was expressed in the notion of 'divine order' - the way the gods wanted things to be - and was encouraged by Egypt's geographical isolation from its neighbors. Egypt is surrounded by desert to the west and east (to the west, all the way to the Libyan border; to the east, all the way to the Red Sea). To the south, the way was blocked by near-impassible boulders in the river; to the north was the Mediterranean Sea, which formed a psychological barrier, as the Egyptians never really developed sailing skills or ventured out onto the open seas if they could avoid it. They developed navigational skills on the smooth-flowing Nile, where they could sail south with the prevailing winds or north with the current. Military expeditions in later centuries took Egyptians to other lands where they returned with great riches, but it was always clear to them that their homeland was a paradise on Earth.
Soon after recorded history began, when the Egyptians began to write in heiroglyphs, their burial ceremonies became more elaborate. Early burials were performed in shallow pit graves in the desert, and the hot, dry sand preserved the bodies naturally. As their mythology and religion developed and became more elaborate, however, so too did their burials. To prevent wild animals from digging up the burials, shallow pit graves were replaced with brick-lined tombs; bodies were covered with animal skins and placed placed on woven mats. The brick structures became more elaborate and varied with the status of the deceased. Because these bodies were now in tombs without the benefit of the natural drying process of the hot sand, they began to rot and decay. While the natural preservation of the hot sand in the desert may have spawned the idea of mummification, Egyptian religion required it, so burials in these tombs forced the Egyptians to devise a means of preserving the dead.
Central to the religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians was the myth of Isis and Osiris, in which Isis’s husband, Osiris, is killed by their evil brother Set. Set tricks Osiris into climbing into a box, seals him into it, then drowns him by throwing the box into the Nile. Isis, the bereaved wife, searches for and finds the body of her dead husband and is determined to give him a proper burial on Egyptian soil. It is from this myth that the crucial elements of Egyptian funerary practices derived. Like all myths, this one revealed important truths about nature, the universe, and life after death, and many beliefs of the ancient Egyptian funerary cult can be derived from it. The chest that exactly fit Osiris was the precursor of the
anthropoid coffin, which is shaped like the deceased and is intended to protect the body. The importance of a proper burial on Egyptian soil is emphasized by the efforts that Isis made to find the body of her husband, and to make sure thatit was complete, so that when she spoke her magic words, Osiris would resurrect in the Netherworld. He kept the same body after death that he had during life, so mummification was essential if the deceased was to resurrect and spend eternity in the Netherworld. Here we see a myth answering important questions about life after death.
Mythology, religion, and to some extent philosophy went hand in hand in the ancient world, but the Egyptians did not make a clear distinction between them. All three kinds of thinking try to answer questions about the universe, the nature of humans, and life after death. Mythology answers these questions with stories about the lives of the gods that are not meant to be taken literally. Myths take place in what is sometimes called “primordial time,” the time before time began, before calendars and clocks existed. Religion, on the other hand, answers the same kinds of questions but takes place in chronological time. The biblical story of Moses and the Exodus, for example, presents Moses as a historical character who actually lived on Earth at a particular time.
Philosophy, like religion and mythology, also attempts to answer questions about the nature of the universe, but unlike religion, which requires only faith,or mythology, which is not to be taken literally, philosophy requires proof. We know the ancient Egyptians had a rich mythology and a complex religion, but there is debate about whether they engaged in philosophical thinking. There are no philosophical papyri and no texts carved on temple walls that present carefully reasoned philosophical arguments. Of the three kinds of thinking that deal with basic questions about humans and the universe, this book is about mythology. As you will see, there is an overlapping between religion and mythology because mythology inevitably deals with the gods.
The reader shouldn’t be surprised to read different myths giving different answers to the same questions. In Heliopolis, for example, the priests told one story of how the world was created, and in Memphis they told quite a different story. These myths sometimes competed, but the people didn’t believe both versions: They tended to believe the version from their hometown.