Egyptian mythology
Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which express the steps of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The emotions that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptian religion. Legends appear frequently in Egyptian scripts and art, mainly in short stories and in religious material such as hymns, ritual texts, funerary texts, and temple decorations.
These sources rarely contain a complete account of a myth and often describe only brief fragments inspired by the cycles of nature. The Egyptians saw time in the present as a series of recurring patterns, whereas the earliest periods of time were linear. Myths are set in these earliest times, and myth sets the pattern for the cycles of the present.
Attending events repeat the events of myth, and in doing so renew ma’at, the fundamental order of the universe among the most important episodes.
Egyptian mythology.
From the mythological past are the creation myths, in which the gods form the cosmos out of primordial chaos; the stories of the reign of the sun god Ra upon the earth; and the Osiris myth, concerning the struggles of the gods Osiris, Isis, and Horus against the disruptive god Set.
Events from the present that might be regarded as myths include Ra’s daily journey through the world and its otherworldly counterpart, the Duat.
Recurring themes in these mythic episodes include the conflict between the upholders of maat and the forces of disorder, the importance of the pharaoh in maintaining ma’at, and the continual death and regeneration of the gods. The details of these sacred events differ greatly from one text to another and often seem contradictory. Egyptian myths are primarily metaphorical, translating the essence and behavior of deities into terms that humans can understand. Each variant of a myth represents a different symbolic attitude, improving the Egyptians’ understanding of the gods and the world.
The function of Egyptian mythology.
Mythology profoundly influenced Egyptian society, It motivated or influenced many religious rituals and provided the ideological basis for kingship.
Scenes and symbols from myth appeared in art in tombs, temples, and amulets.
In literature, myths or elements of them were used in stories that range from humor to allegory, demonstrating that the Egyptians adapted mythology to serve a wide variety of purposes.
The development of Egyptian myth is difficult to trace so Egyptologists must make educated guesses about its earliest phases, based on written sources that appeared much later, one clear power of myth is the Egyptians’ natural surroundings.
Each day the sun rose and set, obtaining light to the land and regulating human activity; each year the Nile flooded, renewing the fertility of the soil and allowing the highly productive farming that sustained Egyptian civilization. Thus the Egyptians saw water and the sun as symbols of life and thought of time as a series of natural cycles. This orderly pattern was at constant risk of disruption: unusually low floods resulted in famine, and high floods destroyed crops and buildings.
The hospitable Nile valley was surrounded by harsh desert, populated by peoples the Egyptians regarded as uncivilized enemies of order.
For these reasons, the Egyptians saw their land as an isolated place of stability, or maat, surrounded and endangered by chaos. These themes—order, chaos, and renewal—appear repeatedly in Egyptian religious thought.
The sources that are available range from solemn hymns to entertaining stories. Without a single, canonical version of any myth.
The Egyptians assumed the broad habits of myth to fit the various purposes of their writings, and Most Egyptians were illiterate and may therefore have had an elaborate oral tradition that transmitted myths through spoken storytelling.
Susanne Bickel suggests that the existence of this tradition helps explain why many texts related to myth give little detail: the myths were already known to every Egyptian.
Very little evidence of this oral tradition has survived, and modern knowledge of Egyptian myths is drawn from written and pictorial sources. Only a small proportion of these sources have survived to the present, so much of the mythological information that was once written down has been lost. This information is not equally abundant in all periods, so the beliefs that Egyptians held in some eras of their history are more poorly understood than the beliefs in better-documented times.
Religious sources.
Temples whose surviving remains date mostly from the New Kingdom and later, are another consequential origin of the myth. Many temples had a per-ankh, or temple library, storing papyri for rituals and other uses.
Some of these papyri contain hymns, which, in glorifying a god for its actions, often refer to the myths that define those actions. Other temple papyri describe rituals, many of which are based partly on myth, Scattered remnants of these papyrus collections have survived to the present.
It is possible that the collections included more systematic records of myths, but no evidence of such texts has survived. Mythological texts and illustrations, similar to those on temple papyri, also appear in the decoration of the temple buildings.
The elaborately decorated and well-preserved temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods (305 BC-AD 380) are an especially rich source of myth. Many gods appear in artwork from the Early Dynastic Period To the Egyptians, the most important human maintainer of ma’at is the pharaoh.
In myth, the pharaoh is the son of a variety of deities, As such, he is their designated representative, obligated to maintain order in human society just as they do in nature and to continue the rituals that sustain them and their activities.
(c. 3100–2686 BC), but little about the gods’ actions can be gleaned from these sources because they include the tiniest writing. The Egyptians started using writing more extensively in the Old Kingdom, which emerged as the first major source of Egyptian mythology: the Pyramid Texts. These texts are a collection of several hundred incantations inscribed in the interiors of pyramids beginning in the 24th century BC. They were the first Egyptian funerary texts, intended to ensure that the rulers buried in the pyramid would pass safely through immortality.
Many of the incantations allude to myths related to the afterlife, including creation myths and the myth of Osiris. Many of the texts are likely much older than their first known written copies, and they, therefore, provide clues about the early stages of Egyptian religious belief.
The Pyramid Texts developed into the Coffin Texts, which contain similar material and were available to non-royals. Succeeding funerary texts. Such as the Book of the Dead in the New Kingdom and the Book of opening mouth from the Late Period (664–323 BC), and after, developed out of these earlier collections.
The New Kingdom also saw the development of another type of funerary text, containing detailed and cohesive descriptions of the nocturnal journey of the sun god.
Texts of this type include the Imidwat, the book of the Gates, and the book of Caverns. For the Egyptians, the most significant human maintainer of ma’at is the pharaoh, and In myth, the pharaoh is the son of a variety of deities.
As such, he is their designated representative, bound to maintain order in human society just as they do in nature and to continue the rituals that sustain them and their activities. The Egyptian word is written m3ˁt, often rendered ma’at or maat, which refers to the fundamental order of the universe in Egyptian belief.
Established at the creation of the world, ma’at distinguishes the world from the chaos that preceded and surrounds it. Ma’at encompasses both the proper behavior of humans and the normal functioning of the forces of nature, both of which make life and happiness possible. Because the actions of the gods govern natural forces and myths express those actions, Egyptian mythology represents the correct functioning of the world and the sustenance of energy itself.
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