preventing a man’s decapitation in the realm of the dead:
“I am a Great One, the son of a Great One. I am a flame, the son of a flame to whom was given his head after it had been cut off. The head of Osiris shall not be taken from him, and my head shall not be taken from me. I am knit together, just and young, for I indeed am Osiris, the Lord of Eternity.”
At one time, these spells and rituals had been for the exclusive use of the pharaohs. But The Book of the Dead became everyman’s chance at eternity, and copies of it eventually came to be buried with any Egyptian who could afford one. (See below, What was the “weighing of the heart”?)
The many centuries of burials, tombs, temples, palaces, monuments, and statuary left behind by the Egyptians—all with elaborately carved accounts of kings, extolling their achievements—constitute a rough form of the first recorded history. This awesome collection of antiquities documents an Egypt which had a highly developed, unique mythology more than five thousand years ago. This vast record shows that the Egyptians believed from the earliest times that the gods had a profound impact on the shaping of their world and civilization. But the focal point of this complex religion evolved into a near obsession with life after death.
Long before Christianity and its hope of resurrection was born, Egyptian religion was the first to conceive of life after death. At the heart of this religion—and at the center of Egyptian government and society itself—were Egypt’s extraordinary gods, a pantheon of breathtaking imagination and totality that found expression in every aspect of the Creation—animal, human, plant, and stone. The beginnings of Egyptian mythology and the elaborate stories of these gods go far back in time, before history, to the time when the first Egyptians imagined Creation.
M YTHIC V OICES
All manifestations came into being after I developed…no sky existed no earth existed…I created on my own every being…my fist became my spouse…I copulated with my hand…I sneezed out Shu…I spat out Tefnut…Next Shu and Tefnut produced Geb and Nut…Geb and Nut then gave birth to Osiris…Seth, Isis and Nephthys…ultimately they produced the population of this land.
Extracts from the Papyrus Bremner-Rhind
How does “creation by masturbation” work?
In the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew Bible offers two versions of the Creation. The first is the Seven Day account, in which God speaks and creates the universe. The second tells the story of Adam and Eve and is set in the Garden of Eden. These two biblical accounts differ substantially in details, facts, and style. They were probably composed centuries apart and only merged later on by the early Jewish editors who first compiled the writings that would become the Books of Moses, or the first five books of the Bible. But these two separate and distinct stories have been viewed as one by Jews and Christians for centuries. Raised on a Sunday-school or Hollywood version of biblical events, and not having read the Bible for themselves, many people are not even aware of the fact that two Creations exist.
Ancient Egypt goes Genesis several times better. There are at least four significantly different Egyptian versions of Creation, some with overlapping details and characters. Each of these Creation stories was connected to a prominent Egyptian city, and each emerged at different times in Egypt’s long history. Just as the two Creation stories in Genesis reflect different writers working at different times, the various Egyptian Creation accounts developed over the immense prehistoric time frame that has to be reckoned with whenever talking about Egypt. Early in its history, Egypt had been divided into forty-two separate administrative districts called nomes , and each had its own deity. Every town or village also had a temple, often devoted to a localized god, so the number of Egyptian deities grew to the
“I am a Great One, the son of a Great One. I am a flame, the son of a flame to whom was given his head after it had been cut off. The head of Osiris shall not be taken from him, and my head shall not be taken from me. I am knit together, just and young, for I indeed am Osiris, the Lord of Eternity.”
At one time, these spells and rituals had been for the exclusive use of the pharaohs. But The Book of the Dead became everyman’s chance at eternity, and copies of it eventually came to be buried with any Egyptian who could afford one. (See below, What was the “weighing of the heart”?)
The many centuries of burials, tombs, temples, palaces, monuments, and statuary left behind by the Egyptians—all with elaborately carved accounts of kings, extolling their achievements—constitute a rough form of the first recorded history. This awesome collection of antiquities documents an Egypt which had a highly developed, unique mythology more than five thousand years ago. This vast record shows that the Egyptians believed from the earliest times that the gods had a profound impact on the shaping of their world and civilization. But the focal point of this complex religion evolved into a near obsession with life after death.
Long before Christianity and its hope of resurrection was born, Egyptian religion was the first to conceive of life after death. At the heart of this religion—and at the center of Egyptian government and society itself—were Egypt’s extraordinary gods, a pantheon of breathtaking imagination and totality that found expression in every aspect of the Creation—animal, human, plant, and stone. The beginnings of Egyptian mythology and the elaborate stories of these gods go far back in time, before history, to the time when the first Egyptians imagined Creation.
M YTHIC V OICES
All manifestations came into being after I developed…no sky existed no earth existed…I created on my own every being…my fist became my spouse…I copulated with my hand…I sneezed out Shu…I spat out Tefnut…Next Shu and Tefnut produced Geb and Nut…Geb and Nut then gave birth to Osiris…Seth, Isis and Nephthys…ultimately they produced the population of this land.
Extracts from the Papyrus Bremner-Rhind
How does “creation by masturbation” work?
In the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew Bible offers two versions of the Creation. The first is the Seven Day account, in which God speaks and creates the universe. The second tells the story of Adam and Eve and is set in the Garden of Eden. These two biblical accounts differ substantially in details, facts, and style. They were probably composed centuries apart and only merged later on by the early Jewish editors who first compiled the writings that would become the Books of Moses, or the first five books of the Bible. But these two separate and distinct stories have been viewed as one by Jews and Christians for centuries. Raised on a Sunday-school or Hollywood version of biblical events, and not having read the Bible for themselves, many people are not even aware of the fact that two Creations exist.
Ancient Egypt goes Genesis several times better. There are at least four significantly different Egyptian versions of Creation, some with overlapping details and characters. Each of these Creation stories was connected to a prominent Egyptian city, and each emerged at different times in Egypt’s long history. Just as the two Creation stories in Genesis reflect different writers working at different times, the various Egyptian Creation accounts developed over the immense prehistoric time frame that has to be reckoned with whenever talking about Egypt. Early in its history, Egypt had been divided into forty-two separate administrative districts called nomes , and each had its own deity. Every town or village also had a temple, often devoted to a localized god, so the number of Egyptian deities grew to the
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