Flame Tree Studio - Egyptian Myths (The Worlds Greatest Myths and Legends)

This is a FLAME TREE Book

Publisher & Creative Director: Nick Wells

Contributors, authors, editors and sources for this series include:

Loren Auerbach, Norman Bancroft-Hunt, E.M. Berens, Katharine Berry Judson, Laura Bulbeck, Jeremiah Curtin, O.B. Duane, Dr Ray Dunning, W.W. Gibbings, H. A. Guerber, Jake Jackson, Joseph Jacobs, Judith John, J.W. Mackail, Donald Mackenzie, Chris McNab, Professor James Riordan, Sara Robson, Rachel Storm, K.E. Sullivan, Epiphanius Wilson, E.T.C. Werner.

FLAME TREE PUBLISHING

6 Melbray Mews, Fulham, London SW6 3NS, United Kingdom

First published 2018

Copyright 2018 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd

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PRINT ISBN: 978-1-78664-764-1

EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-78755-628-7

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Contents

Series Foreword

Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Culture

Creation Stories

Solar Myths

Theological Debates

Osiris, God of Death and Rebirth

Myth and Magic

Thoth the Intellectual God

Mighty Goddesses

Animals in Myth

Burial Rites and Practices

Life, Death and Resurrection

Ancient Egyptian Literature

Thoth, the Scribe of the Gods

Earliest Writing Materials

The Pyramid Texts

The Book of the Dead

Books of the Dead of the Graeco-Roman Period

Tales from the Pyramid Texts

The Opening of the Mouth Ceremony

The Presentation of Offerings

A Hymn to Nut, the Sky Goddess

A Hymn to Ra, the Sun God

The Power of the King in Heaven

The Majesty of King Pepi

Spells from the Books of the Dead

Hymn to Osiris from the Papyrus of Ani

Hymn to Osiris from the Papyrus of Hunefer

Address and Litany from the Papyrus of Ani

A Funerary Hymn to Ra

A Prayer for Forgiveness of Sins

A Prayer for the Weighing of the Heart

A Declaration Before Judgment

Spells for Preservation and Everlasting Life

Spells to Make Reptiles Powerless

The Book of Breathings

The Book of Traversing Eternity

The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys

The Festival Songs of Isis and Nephthys

The Book of Making Splendid the Spirit of Osiris

Tales of Ancient Egyptian Magicians

Ubaaner and the Wax Crocodile

Tchatchamankh and the Gold Ornament

The Magician Teta

The Story of Rut-Tetet and the Three Sons of Ra

The Egyptian Story of the Creation

The British Museum Papyrus

How Ra Came Into Being

Legends of the Gods

The Destruction of Mankind

The Legend of Ra and Isis

The Legend of Horus of Behutet

The Legend of Khnemu and the Seven Years Famine

The Legend of the Wanderings of Isis

The Legend of the Princess of Bekhten

Historical Literature

Extract from the Palermo Stone

Edict against the Blacks

Inscription of Usertsen III at Semnah

Campaign of Thothmes II in the Sudan

Capture of Megiddo by Thothmes III

Summary of the Reign of Rameses III

The Invasion and Conquest of Egypt by Piankhi

Autobiographical Literature

The Autobiography of Una

The Autobiography of Herkhuf

The Autobiography of Ameni Amenemhat

The Autobiography of Thetha

The Autobiography of Aahmes, surnamed Pen-Nekheb

The Autobiography of Tehuti, the Erpa

The Autobiography of Thaiemhetep

Tales of Travel and Adventure

The Story of Sanehat

The Story of the Educated Peasant Khuenanpu

The Journey of the Priest Unu-Amen into Syria

Fairy Tales

The Tale of the Two Brothers

The Story of the Shipwrecked Traveller

Egyptian Hymns to the Gods

Hymn to Amen-Ra

Hymn to Amen

Hymn to the Sun-god

Hymn to Osiris

Hymn to Shu

Moral and Philosophical Literature

The Precepts of Ptah-hetep

The Maxims of Ani

The Talk of a Man Who Was Tired of Life with His Soul

The Lament of Khakhepersenb

The Lament of Apuur

Egyptian Poetic Compositions

Song of the Harper

Series Foreword

Stretching back to the oral traditions of thousands of years ago, tales of heroes and disaster, creation and conquest have been told by many different civilizations in many different ways. Their impact sits deep within our culture even though the detail in the tales themselves are a loose mix of historical record, transformed narrative and the distortions of hundreds of storytellers.

Today the language of mythology lives with us: our mood is jovial, our countenance is saturnine, we are narcissistic and our modern life is hermetically sealed from others. The nuances of myths and legends form part of our daily routines and help us navigate the world around us, with its half truths and biased reported facts.

The nature of a myth is that its story is already known by most of those who hear it, or read it. Every generation brings a new emphasis, but the fundamentals remain the same: a desire to understand and describe the events and relationships of the world. Many of the great stories are archetypes that help us find our own place, equipping us with tools for self-understanding, both individually and as part of a broader culture.

For Western societies it is Greek mythology that speaks to us most clearly. It greatly influenced the mythological heritage of the ancient Roman civilization and is the lens through which we still see the Celts, the Norse and many of the other great peoples and religions. The Greeks themselves learned much from their neighbours, the Egyptians, an older culture that became weak with age and incestuous leadership.

It is important to understand that what we perceive now as mythology had its own origins in perceptions of the divine and the rituals of the sacred. The earliest civilizations, in the crucible of the Middle East, in the Sumer of the third millennium bc , are the source to which many of the mythic archetypes can be traced. As humankind collected together in cities for the first time, developed writing and industrial scale agriculture, started to irrigate the rivers and attempted to control rather than be at the mercy of its environment, humanity began to write down its tentative explanations of natural events, of floods and plagues, of disease.

Early stories tell of Gods (or god-like animals in the case of tribal societies such as African, Native American or Aboriginal cultures) who are crafty and use their wits to survive, and it is reasonable to suggest that these were the first rulers of the gathering peoples of the earth, later elevated to god-like status with the distance of time. Such tales became more political as cities vied with each other for supremacy, creating new Gods, new hierarchies for their pantheons. The older Gods took on primordial roles and became the preserve of creation and destruction, leaving the new gods to deal with more current, everyday affairs. Empires rose and fell, with Babylon assuming the mantle from Sumeria in the 1800s bc , then in turn to be swept away by the Assyrians of the 1200s bc ; then the Assyrians and the Egyptians were subjugated by the Greeks, the Greeks by the Romans and so on, leading to the spread and assimilation of common themes, ideas and stories throughout the world.