Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt

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The key event in the journey is the meeting of Ra and Osiris. In the New Kingdom, this event developed into a complex symbol of the Egyptian conception of life and time. Osiris, relegated to the Duat, is like a mummified body within its tomb. Ra, endlessly moving, is like the ba, or soul, of a deceased human, which may travel during the day but must return to its body each night. When Ra and Osiris meet, they merge into a single being. Their pairing reflects the Egyptian vision of time as a continuous repeating pattern, with one member (Osiris) being always static and the other (Ra) living in a constant cycle. Once he has united with Osiris' regenerative power, Ra continues on his journey with renewed vitality. [65] This renewal makes possible Ra's emergence at dawn, which is seen as the rebirth of the sun—expressed by a metaphor in which Nut gives birth to Ra after she has swallowed him—and the repetition of the first sunrise at the moment of creation. At this moment, the rising sun god swallows the stars once more, absorbing their power. [91] In this revitalized state, Ra is depicted as a child or as the scarab beetle god Khepri, both of which represent rebirth in Egyptian iconography. [98] End of the universe [ edit ] Over time, the Egyptians developed more abstract perspectives on the creation process. By the time of the Coffin Texts, they described the formation of the world as the realization of a concept first developed within the mind of the creator god. The force of heka, or magic, which links things in the divine realm and things in the physical world, is the power that links the creator's original concept with its physical realization. Heka itself can be personified as a god, but this intellectual process of creation is not associated with that god alone. An inscription from the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070–664 BC), whose text may be much older, describes the process in detail and attributes it to the god Ptah, whose close association with craftsmen makes him a suitable deity to give a physical form to the original creative vision. Hymns from the New Kingdom describe the god Amun, a mysterious power that lies behind even the other gods, as the ultimate source of this creative vision. [71] Geraldine Pinch’s Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt is another great introduction to ancient Egyptian mythology and religion. Much like Wilkinson’s The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, its structure consists of a few chapters that provide a general introduction to the topic, followed by an extensive “encyclopedia” with alphabetized entries.

The title gives the content away. It is indeed a comprehensive overview of the origins and roles of Egyptian gods and goddesses, having been worshipped for more than three-fifths of history as it is known. This book analyzes hundreds of gods and goddesses that helped to make Egypt the most theocratic society in ancient history, according to their evolution, worship, and final demise. The deities range from household names like Bes and Taweret to supreme beings like Amun and Re. The culture of Ancient Egypt is a must for anyone who wants to increase their cultural knowledge. We invite you to consult our Egyptian mythology books in PDF, a free collection that will allow you to take an entertaining walk through thousands of years of this great civilization. There are so many books available on ancient Egyptian mythology and religion, especially introductions written for beginners, that it can sometimes seem that they’re more numerous than grains of sand in the Egyptian desert. Trying to sift through them all to determine which ones are the most worthy of spending your hard-earned money on can be a daunting task. In the hopes of helping people to skip over the bad, mediocre, unreliable, or outdated books on the subject and get right to the good stuff, I’ve compiled this list of the 10 best books on ancient Egyptian mythology and religion (last updated April 2015). Egyptologists in the early twentieth century thought that politically motivated changes like these were the principal reason for the contradictory imagery in Egyptian myth. However, in the 1940s, Henri Frankfort, realizing the symbolic nature of Egyptian mythology, argued that apparently contradictory ideas are part of the "multiplicity of approaches" that the Egyptians used to understand the divine realm. Frankfort's arguments are the basis for much of the more recent analysis of Egyptian beliefs. [41] Political changes affected Egyptian beliefs, but the ideas that emerged through those changes also have deeper meaning. Multiple versions of the same myth express different aspects of the same phenomenon; different gods that behave in a similar way reflect the close connections between natural forces. The varying symbols of Egyptian mythology express ideas too complex to be seen through a single lens. [28] Sources [ edit ]

Hornung discusses the words the ancient Egyptians used for divinity and what they can tell us, the practice of fusing two or more deities together into one, the gods as upholders of the cosmos and enemies of chaos, the relationship between the gods and humanity, polytheism and monotheism (as the title implies), and much more. Personally, I was especially intrigued by his discussion of the great physicist Niels Bohr’s concept of “complementarity” in relation to the Egyptian gods and goddesses. The Egyptians also performed rituals for personal goals such as protection from or healing of illness. These rituals are often called "magical" rather than religious, but they were believed to work on the same principles as temple ceremonies, evoking mythical events as the basis for the ritual. [48] Wilkinson presents all of this in very clear, simple, and jargon-free prose that should be perfectly comprehensible to any layperson. It’s extremely newbie-friendly. Erik Hornung’s Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many is widely considered to be the standard book on ancient Egyptian theology, and with very good reason.

Deities are at the core of any mythology. They are supernatural gods and goddesses whose experiences provide moral lessons to modern generations. The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day as translated by Raymond Faulkner and Ogden Goelet The Egyptians' vision of time was influenced by their environment. Each day the sun rose and set, bringing light to the land and regulating human activity; each year the Nile flooded, renewing the fertility of the soil and allowing the highly productive agriculture that sustained Egyptian civilization. These periodic events inspired the Egyptians to see all of time as a series of recurring patterns regulated by maat, renewing the gods and the universe. [2] Although the Egyptians recognized that different historical eras differ in their particulars, mythic patterns dominate the Egyptian perception of history. [61]

Fiction

However, Pinch’s book has some key differences in emphasis when compared to Wilkinson’s. Whereas Wilkinson’s focus is mostly on the deities, with everything else structured around that central concern, Pinch explores other aspects of the topic in more depth (and the gods in proportionately less depth). In the introductory chapters, Pinch devotes considerably more space to the history of ancient Egypt and to that civilization’s view of time. Discussions of the narratives of Egyptian mythology occur in that section. Pinch’s encyclopedia covers much more than just the gods – symbols, places, concepts, etc. – but, accordingly, covers fewer deities. A fantastic choice for students and those new to mythology overall, World Mythology: An Anthology of Great Myths and Epics (3rd Edition) is the book to have. Rosenberg has impressively gathered more than 50 epic legends from around the world. The audience will be able to learn about cultures across Greece, Rome, the Middle East, the Far East and Pacific islands, the British Isles, Northern Europe, Africa, and the Americas through a handful of their most treasured myths.

The first thing you need to know about Egyptian mythology is: no, aliens did not build the pyramids. Please stop taking the TV show Ancient Aliens seriously. And please stop jokingly asking every anthropologist or archaeologist you meet if aliens built different monuments. They will say no and then walk away before you raise their blood pressure further. It’s not funny or original. The second thing you need to know is that the civilization of Ancient Egypt spanned nearly 3,000 years, from about 3100 BCE to 332 BCE (depending on who you ask). That’s a lot of history, and a lot of mythology. For reference, there is less time between Cleopatra and the first iPhone (2,049 years) than there is between Cleopatra and the building of the pyramids (2,421 years). All around Egypt, there are monuments to illustrate the depth and complexity of Egyptian mythology. Richard Wilkinson writes and depicts them with stunning color images of ancient sculptures, paintings, and carvings.

And there you have it! The 25 best mythology books! What are your favorite myths?

The book provides insight into the fundamental principles behind the ancient Egyptian belief systems, their perspectives on the afterlife, mummification, good and evil, justice, the connection between spiritual and material worlds, time, and monuments like the pyramids. It also describes how their world view and perspectives evolved through time. Jan Assmann’s The Mind of Egypt takes up the ambitious task of presenting an intellectual history (or “history of ideas”) of ancient Egypt – that is, it describes the ideas through which the ancient Egyptians perceived their world, and how those ideas and perceptions changed over time. And it succeeds brilliantly. What else would you expect from the author of The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (#3 above)? 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 perspective, enriching the Egyptians' understanding of the gods and the world. Wilkinson, Richard H. (1993). Symbol and Magic in Egyptian Art. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-23663-1.

Ra, with the sun disk above his head, on the boat with which he traversed the sky and the underworld in his daily round The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by DayThe Complete Papyrus of Ani Featuring Integrated Text and Full-Color ImagesForeign nations are associated with the hostile deserts in Egyptian ideology. Foreign people, likewise, are generally lumped in with the " nine bows", people who threaten pharaonic rule and the stability of maat, although peoples allied with or subject to Egypt may be viewed more positively. [60] For these reasons, events in Egyptian mythology rarely take place in foreign lands. While some stories pertain to the sky or the Duat, Egypt itself is usually the scene for the actions of the gods. Often, even the myths set in Egypt seem to take place on a plane of existence separate from that inhabited by living humans, although in other stories, humans and gods interact. In either case, the Egyptian gods are deeply tied to their home land. [58] Time [ edit ]