Think Like an Egyptian (39 page)

A well-documented oracle was a portable statue of the dead king Amenhetep I in the village of necropolis workmen at Deir el-Medina. Villagers would consult the statue by presenting a written question—“Shall I buy this bull?”—to which the statue would give a silent answer by moving forward or backward, guided by the men who carried it on their shoulders. The oracle helped solve crimes in the village, by picking out in a similar way one name from a list of the villagers as it was read out. It could, on occasion, deliver a more complicated verdict, read aloud by a living scribe. The priests (who were some of the senior workmen) and scribes were part of the same small village community. The oracle’s authority rested upon a communal agreement to accept the verdict delivered and the divinity of the statue. The sage Amenemope warned against abusing the practice: “Do not falsify the oracle on papyrus and so harm the plans of god. Do not assume for yourself the power of god as though there were no fate and destiny.”

Occasionally the verdict of an oracle was challenged. In one case a man from western Thebes, accused of theft, refused to accept the decision of his local oracle, tried another, and then returned to the first (with a similar indication of his guilt each time). A thrashing finally drew out a confession.

 

 

 

 

A loaf placed upon a mat is the hieroglyph for “offering place” or “altar,”
htp (hetep).
Slabs of stone carved with this shape were commonly placed in temples and in tomb-chapels, and here the priests or the relatives of the dead would make their offerings. The largest known is a set of four made of alabaster, each measuring four meters, which stood in the 5th Dynasty sun-temple of King Neuserra at Abu Ghurab, in a courtyard where offerings could be presented to the visible sun.

Standard offerings included “bread and beer, oxen and fowl, alabaster (unguent jars) and linen, all things good and pure on which a god might live.” They were grouped under the heading: “What comes forth from the voice” (conventionally translated as “invocation offerings”). The implication is that, although at the outset financial provision was made to supply a cult with real offerings, reciting the list aloud was a sufficient substitute if the supply failed. Some tombs actually invite passersby to recite the offering prayer, pointing out that “it is a recital without expense.” In the tombs of the rich and especially in the larger temples, the offerings were more extensive and lists specified the different varieties and amounts of each commodity. The offerings for a one-day festival in a Theban temple included 1,034 loaves of ten different shapes and sizes and 90 jugs of beer of two strengths (which together required 15 sacks of grain), 1 ox, 5 ducks, 3 geese, 2 jars of wine, 5 baskets of incense, 5 baskets of fruit, 10 bouquets of flowers, and 10 bunches of flowers. These cases reflected the income of real commodities which properly established cults derived from their estates and which must, in practice, have far exceeded what was contained in the lists. Much of it was used to pay for the services of the priests. All temple income and property, which might include transport boats, could be grouped together as “god’s offerings.”

The word “offering table” derives from a common word that meant generally “to be pleased,” “be happy with,” and which could become the transitive “to pacify,” “to make content.” The suggestion is that Egyptians were hoping to bring contentment to their gods through their gifts, as in the statement “incense of the temple, with which every god is made content.” The same word also meant “to rest” or “be at peace,” when referring to the dead, and was used to describe the stars and sun when they set.

 

 

 

 

The possibility of chaos was never far away in ancient Egypt. Enemies threatened at the borders, and Egyptians could face sickness and ill luck in their lives. The king sought to protect Egypt by wise and just government (enshrined in the concept of “Maat”; see no. 58, “Truth”) by performing pious acts for the gods and going to battle to defeat enemies, while the gods constrained the quarreling divine pair Horus and Seth. At the personal level, Egyptians created a world of medico-magical thought and practice to manage dangers, primarily from the intrusion of malevolent forces into their lives. This field of knowledge drew upon conventional Egyptian religion, especially the myths surrounding Ra, Horus, and Osiris, as well as medical knowledge. One of the medical papyri illustrates how complementary these two aspects were by pairing “amulet man” (a word derived from “protection”) with “doctor,” both as professional colleagues and as opponents; for one source of fear was the power of another’s magic. So there were recipes to avert “the craft of amulets.” An accusation leveled at conspirators against Rameses III suggests they had made “potions for laming human limbs.” The hieroglyph for protection shows a simple sheet of bound reeds folded over and tied, such as was carried by a herdsman as a temporary shelter. The sign writes the more general word,
s3 (sa),
“protection.”

A collection of spells to protect mother and child illustrates the unease with which people regarded their world. One of them reads: “A protective spell for guarding the limbs, to be recited over a child when the sunlight rises. You rise, Ra, you rise. Have you seen the dead who has come against her [the name of the child is inserted here] to lay a spell on her, laying plans to seize her from her [the mother’s] embrace?” The mother or amulet man would then speak the words of Ra: “I shall not give you, I shall not give your charge to a male or female robber from the West. My hand is upon you, my seal as your protection!” The seal was a concoction of “magic” ingredients: “a pellet of gold, 40 pellets of bread, and a carnelian seal-stone [bearing] a crocodile and a hand. To be strung on a strip of fine linen, made into an amulet, placed around the neck of the child. Good!” In later periods dangers were written on strips of papyrus, blessed by the gods in a special ceremony, tightly rolled inside little cylinders, and given to young children. The dangers included blindness, the collapse of a wall, the evil eye, magical books, angry gods and goddesses, and even gods “who seize someone instead of someone [else].” Outside the walls of the temples, the gods were not to be trusted (see no. 53, “Spirit”).

A special grouping of household gods and potentially dangerous magical creatures could, nonetheless, be enrolled on one’s side. Pictures of some occur lightly incised on curving knife-shaped “wands” made of ivory. They include the household deities Bes and Taweret (manifested as a standing hippopotamus who guarded mothers and babies), a cat biting a serpent, a crocodile, a tortoise, and a falcon-headed griffin with a winged human head on its back. A few wands bear the words: “protection by night and day” or “words spoken by these protective figures: we have come to spread protection over this child.” The points of the knives are sometimes worn away on one side, suggesting they were used to draw magic circles on the floor, perhaps around where people slept. Presumably a high infant mortality rate made children the special focus of magic and amulets. Among the things that people bought and sold at Deir el-Medina were “amulets for birth” or “birth charms,” valued between one and three deben, about the price of a pair of sandals.

 

 

 

 

Egyptian myth describes how, as an episode in their conflict, Seth ripped out the eye of Horus, often conceived as a falcon-god. The god Thoth then reconstituted the mutilated eye, and it became known as the “sound” or “uninjured” eye. In this myth, Egyptians voiced their fear of destructive forces, and their longing for the triumph that would overcome chaos, a triumph of making something whole, complete. The hieroglyph depicts the eye of Horus (drawn as a human eye) adorned by the plumage that grows below the eye of a falcon. It writes the word
w
d
3t (wedjat),
which is derived from a common word, “to be whole,” “sound,” or “prosperous.” The symbol promoted well-being in ancient Egypt, for the living and the dead. The shape was a popular amulet made in faience (the Egyptian blue-glazed compound) or stone, and strung on necklaces or placed among the spread of amulets wrapped into mummies. Laid in rows, they included figures of Anubis, Horus, Isis, and Maat (see no. 58, “Truth”), scarab beetles (see no. 77, “To come into existence”), the heart (see no. 75), the Djed-pillar (see no. 59, “To be stable”), and the mason’s square, a symbol of correctness. The wedjat design is found on finger rings and on the thin metal plates that covered the incision in the human body through which the embalmers extracted the internal organs.