The Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt
Joyce A. TyldesleyThe Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt Quotes
You can find The Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt quotes, The Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt book quotes, the most impressive sentences and paragraphs on 1000Kitap.Seth spoke. The chest was a game: the climax of the evening’s entertainment. Whoever could lie down inside the chest could keep it. There was a scramble as Seth’s allies rushed forward and attempted to squeeze their bulky bodies into the narrow space. But none fitted. Then the slender Osiris, his perceptions blunted by the wine, stepped forward to take his turn. He lay down in the chest. It was a perfect fit, as Seth knew it would be – he had secretly measured his brother’s body weeks before. Before Osiris could sit up to claim his prize Seth slammed the lid shut and bolted it. The elaborately decorated chest, tailored exactly to Osiris’ measurements, had become his coffin. Seth coated the coffin in lead, then dragged it to the Nile and threw it in. Caught by the current, the coffin slowly sailed northwards into the great green sea.
The Deceased speaks: What will be the duration of my life?
Atum speaks: You shall be for millions on millions of years, a lifetime of millions of years. I will despatch the Elders and destroy all that I have made; the earth shall return to the Primordial Water, to the surging flood, as in its original state. But I will remain with Osiris. I will transform myself into something else, namely a serpent, without men knowing or the gods seeing …
Realizing that the new capital city of Alexandria needed a patron deity, Ptolemy summoned the Egyptian priest Manetho of Sebennytos and the Greek priest Timotheos of Athens, and invited them to design a new god with no pre-existing allegiance to either a city or a dynasty, and no powerful, long-established priesthood. Such a god, if he appealed to both Egyptians and Greeks, might go some way towards uniting Alexandria’s religiously mixed population.
The result was Serapis, a combination of Osiris and the Greek Dionysos, Hades (god of the underworld), Asklepios (god of medicine), Helios (the sun god) and Zeus (king of the gods). An anthropomorphic deity – animal and animal–human hybrid gods being unacceptable to non-Egyptians – Serapis personified divine kingship, healing, fertility and the afterlife. His name was derived from the name of the Memphite god Osor-Apis, himself a fusion of Osiris and the deceased Apis bull, and he borrowed heavily from their mythology. Serapis was married to the universally popular Isis who, as the wife of Osiris, was already acceptable to both Greeks and Egyptians. The triad of Serapis, Isis and their son Harpocrates quickly came to be associated with the ruling Ptolemaic dynasty. While the native Egyptians showed little interest in their new god, Serapis enjoyed a huge success throughout the Greek and Roman worlds.
The water of life which has food for all,
It is thirst for me...
It comes to him who is on earth,
I thirst with water beside me …
In the beginning nothing existed but the deep, dark waters of Nun. There was no land and no sky. No gods, no people, no light and no time. Only the endless, motionless waters. But deep within the still waters of Nun there floated a perfect egg. And trapped within that perfect egg was a solitary spark of life. Suddenly, inexplicably, the egg cracked open. Life broke free of its confining shell and, with a surge of energy, a mound rose out of the waters. Seated on that mound was the god Atum. Atum had created himself. He now shone as the sun, bringing light to his new-born world.
Already it was recognized that the king was the only mortal capable of communicating with the gods. In theory, this meant that only he could make the regular offerings that were necessary to please the gods and prevent Egypt from disintegrating into chaos. The king was therefore the head of every cult: to him fell the awesome responsibility of ensuring that all necessary rituals were performed properly and at the correct time. In recognition of this, temple walls show the king, and the king alone, making offerings and standing beside the gods. In practice, as the king quite clearly could not be present at every ceremony in every temple, it was accepted that he could be assisted or replaced by a non-vocational priesthood drawn from the educated elite.
Back in Ptolemaic Alexandria, all queens felt a close bond with Isis. Cleopatra III and Cleopatra VII, two particularly strong queens who ruled on behalf of fatherless sons, even proclaimed themselves her living incarnation. Cleopatra VII is rumoured to have dressed as Isis when she sailed to Tarsus for her first, fateful meeting with Mark Antony. As Mark Antony considered himself the living Dionysos(Osiris), one of the many recognized consorts of the Hellenistic Isis, her choice of costume was particularly apt.
The tongue is a scale that will always betray men’s deficiencies.
The archaeological bias that has seen the preservation of many of Egypt’s desert graves but the almost complete loss of her mud-brick domestic architecture means that our evidence will always veer towards the mythology of death. More particularly, it will veer towards the mythology of death accepted by those wealthy enough to invest in a decorated tomb.
This principle was accepted in the living Egypt, where knowledge of a name conferred authority over the name’s owner, and where the memory of a name might prevent the Second Death if all other earthly trace of the deceased had vanished.