Books on the Egyptian religion?

[Anonymous No.15163444]

Whether philosophical or religious I don't care, I just want to know about it.

I heard Uždavinys is good for the mysticism of Egypt.

[Anonymous No.15163556]

I don't mean to hijak your thread OP, but have any anons here read the Book of the Dead? i was wondering if it is basically just an index of spells to use in the afterlife or whether it has more on mythology and the religion of Ancient Egypt?

[Anonymous No.15163578]

>>15163556
Doesn't matter, that general direction is useful anyway.

[Anonymous No.15164248]

I'm an Egyptologist so maybe I can help out
>>15163444
There are various aspects of Egyptian religious beliefs and practice. For mortuary customs, Wolfram Gratjeski's Burial Customs in Ancient Egypt is great, J. Allen's "Reading the Pyramids" and it's critique by H. Hays "Unreading the Pyramids" is brilliant for understanding tombs and the Pyramid texts. Information on specific tombs are provided by J. Romer's "Valley of the Kings", and a general series of essays are provided in T. Wilkinson et al's "The Egyptian World".
Other Egyptologists with popular published works on the matter are S. Ikram, I. Shaw, L. Meskell and K. Spence.
Beyond that, reading the texts themselves are brilliant. "The Book of the Dead: Complete Papyrus of Ani" is my copy, the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts excerpts and other works of Egyptian literature such as "The Debate Between a Man and his Soul" shed light on the Egyptian's conception of their own mortality.
>>15163556
It details the journey of the Dead individual into the afterlife via a narrative which mentions spells and incantations for things such as Not Dying a Second Time, Protection Against Serpents, Bringing a Ferryboat into the God's Domain etc etc.

[Anonymous No.15164534]

>>15164248
Oh cool! i'm not OP, but i was wondering how much of Egyptian religion and mythology was influenced by earlier/other civilizations in the fertile crescent like the Mesopotamians? I know some of Greek myth and philsophy was influenced by Egypt (with some Greek gods simply being Egyptians gods, like IRIS), but i don't know where Egyptian religion and culture derived from, or whether it was completely endogenous. Also, there was a short time where Egyptian religion became monotheistic, wasn't there? How did that come about? It seems like a radical turn from pantheism and unlike any other religion i can think of.

[Anonymous No.15164615]

>>15164534
The Egyptian pantheon expanded with foreign influence with Mesopotamia (Such as the goddess Astartes) overtime as Egyptian foreign policy extended towards Asia, however the vast majority of Egyptian deities were endogenous to their local cities (And were probably derived from the significance of certain aspects of wildlife, e.g. Hathor and Khnum from the importance of cattle to early state formation and their associations with creation and fertility.
Of course with the Greeks and Romans the religion was syncretised like you mentioned.

The "monotheism" which took place under Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten was very complex and we can't reconstruct the beliefs of that period with the archaeological record available unfortunatley. We do know that Akhenaten closed down temples to gods other than the Aten during his reign and promoted the worship of the sun-disc chiefly in his new capital city of Akhetaten (Modern day Amarna). It is worth noting however that the championing the primacy of one god over the others was not new to Egypt, even if Akhenaten's reign was more extreme. The influence of individual gods was based around the significance of their associated city. Ancient Abydos was the "birthplace" of the Osirian cult, prominant in the Early dynastic Period. Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) was a highly influential centre during the predynastic period (pre 3000BC) and cult centre of Horus. Thebes was the centre of the Amun cult, which grew to unprecendented significance from during the 2nd Intermediary period and New Kingdom onwards when Thebes overthrew foreign 'Hyksos' domination.
Complicating things further, Nubia was greatly associated with Amun and Osiris, both being considered the birthplaces of the gods. This is tied in with foreign policy too: It provided a religious justification for expansion southwards. Cultural entanglement theory leads us to believe that both Egypt and Nubia influenced eachother immensely, which extended to mortuary beliefs and practices.

Anything else you'd like to know? I'm currently writing an essay on this subject right now so I'd be happy to answer any anon's questions

[Anonymous No.15164629]

>>15164534
>>15164615
I forgot to mention; it is extremely unlikely that the religious views of the average ancient Egyptian changed at all during Akhenaten's reign. After his death, his name and legacy was struck from the monumental record, his beliefs criticized by the ruling class of own successor Tutankhamun, and his reign associated with misfortune and chaos wherein Egypt was abandoned by the gods.

[Anonymous No.15164655]

>>15164615
>Anything else you'd like to know?
What's up with the weird imagery in freemasonry that seems egyptian? could there be a millennia spanning occult secret society founded in ancient egypt?

[Anonymous No.15164676]

>>15164655
I honestly don't know. A lot of the Gnostic / hermetic cults that arose in the first centuries AD were based in Alexandria. They could just as easier have been greekaboos but weren't because they were fucking based

[Anonymous No.15164712]

>>15164248
Have you read Before the Philosophy? What are academic opinions on it?

[Anonymous No.15164720]

>>15164615
Thanks for the answer, Egyptanon.
have you ever played Pharaoh (1999)?

[Anonymous No.15164721]

>>15164655
I don't know much Egypt really but (as anon mentioned), Freemasonry has its origins in Rosicrucianism which has its origins in Hermeticism, which, of course, is Egyptian-inspired/Egyptboo.

[Anonymous No.15164729]

Good thread

[Anonymous No.15164760]

>>15164729
It's a good board honestly.

[Anonymous No.15164835]

>>15164720
No problem! I haven't but I have played Children of the Nile which was very fun

[Anonymous No.15164871]

>>15164835
Talk about the system of Atenism and was King David a contemporary to that pharaoh who made it the state religion?

[Anonymous No.15164878]

>>15164712
I haven't. The Cambridge school as a rule prefers newer academic studies than ones made during and just after the 'Heroic Age' of Egyptology. This is simply because our views of Egypt and the archaeological evidence has changed so significantly that older texts are now largely inaccurate.
Concepts of the older Egyptologists such as the "Democratisation" of the afterlife and the "Dynastic race" theory are examples of these. I have read Guenon though

[Anonymous No.15164907]

Is there any book displaying similarities and connections with Chrisitianity be it in liturgy, mythopoesis or any other aspect?

[Anonymous No.15164938]

>>15164871
Akhenaten died in 1335BC, several centuries before David I believe.
In all honestly I we don't have an extensive record of it considering he was damnatio memoriae'd after his death and the was made extinct by Pharaoh Horemheb. I can point you towards the Hymn to the Aten however. From my translation it reads as a celebratory text of praise similar to what you would expect for a sun god like Ra (The 1st person narrative brings into question whether it was Akhenaten himself who composed it). The worship was more akin to Henotheism than true monotheism.
I remember for my university interview I tried to link Akhenaten;s idea for the worship of the Aten to the migration of a Scythian predecessor to the Hebrews who were forced out of Egypt and later settled in Western Europe using Nennius' account. This theory however is extremely fringe, and looking back on it, it places far too much credit on early medieval texts. I'm only an undergraduate however- If you want a scholar far better than I's take on Atenism, I'd point you to the works of Barry Kemp and Bruce Trigger.

[Anonymous No.15164949]

>>15164938
Sorry: *the worship of the Aten was made extinct

[Anonymous No.15166181]

>>15164938
thanks, i'll look into that.

[Anonymous No.15166530]

>>15164248
>>15164615
>>15164878
>>15164938
Absolutely based and glad you're on this board.

[Anonymous No.15166804]

>>15164248
>the Pyramid Texts
best version/translation of these?
i'm a poor so i can only get one book rn and want a general mythology/religious primary text with a good introduction to walk me through

[Anonymous No.15167030]

Thoughts on Omm Seti?

[Anonymous No.15167591]

>>15166804
Here's a free PDF of J.P. Allen's translations and commentary.
I know it sounds like a cop out but I'd very much recommend you start with a book on broader Egyptian society to get a foundational context for what you read. I'd suggest T. Wilkinson et al's The Egyptian World, or B. Kemp and B. Trigger's Ancient Egypt: A Social History (Even if Trigger's prose is rather dry) for more focus in relation to the historical record.
My essays by Allen and H.Hays above are more academic analysis's of the texts themselves, and can be found here:
Allen:
>https://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/documents/ALLEN,ReadingaPyramid.pdf
And Hays' critique
>https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/16157/Hays+2009d+Unreading+Pyramids.pdf?sequence=2

[Anonymous No.15167602]

>>15167591
Sorry, here's Allen's full translation:
>https://www.siamcostumes.com/cutters_guides/pdf/the-ancient-egyptian-pyramid-texts-james-p-allen.pdf

[Anonymous No.15167675]

>>15167030
Never heard of her before, but just read her wikipedia
>"There, she eventually met E. A. Wallis Budge, who was taken by her youthful enthusiasm and encouraged her in the study of hieroglyphs."
This made me smile

It's easy to call her crazy and I sincerely doubt she was an Egyptian without suspending disbelief, but it sounds like she was ahead of her time in regards to archaeological phenomenology: Where we try to put ourselves into the heads of past people to attain perspective of past experience- a respected method. She was certainly on the autistic spectrum but then again you kind of have to be with this stuff.

[Anonymous No.15168138]

>>15164878
What are your thoughts on Algis Uzdavinys?

[Anonymous No.15168282]

Ancient Egyptian Readings - Wim Van Den Dungen
Uzdavinys - Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth
Everything by Jan Assman
Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many
The Way of Hermes
Asclepius: A Secret Discourse of Hermes Trismegistus

[Anonymous No.15168506]

What a great thread.

[Anonymous No.15168527]

>>15163556
All of this was protemporallly retroactively refuted by Mani (pbuh).

[Anonymous No.15168990]

>>15168138
Not him but Uzdavinys is a hack. Reads like he fried his brain on too many drugs.

[Anonymous No.15169861]

bump

[Anonymous No.15169872]

>>15168990
>Not him but...
So your opinion is worthless. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.15169918]

>>15164248
What was your education like? North American archaeologist asking

[Anonymous No.15169927]

>>15163444
read MahaPrajnaParamita-Sastra

[Anonymous No.15170234]

I bought this book but haven't read it yet. Is it good?

[Anonymous No.15170333]

>>15164655
It's been very common for esoteric works and movements throughout history to have borrowed a lot from Egypt even if just the imagery. By using this imagery they (now continue to) think they have a connect to the "true" perennial source of religious truth or whatnot. Often they claim it goes back to Abraham as well.

[Anonymous No.15171544]

>>15164248
>>15164615
Hey anon, how much do you know about egyptian urbanism and water mangement systems?

[Anonymous No.15172155]

>>15169872
I haven't read his works but from what I gather he's just another traditionalist philosopher. I'd welcome your input if you've read a deep conclusion that he came to but although I have read into elements of Hermeticism, I just don't have the knowledge to support or refute him until I progress into the study of Coptic. Do be careful thought considering the absolutely agonising amount of disinformation about Egypt out there- most of it peddled from misconceptions made by 19th and early 20th century archaeologists.
>>15170234
I own a book similar to this one. It's fine for getting an outline of mythology and learning the lore. Academically speaking however I think you can obtain a deeper understanding of mythology by looking at the cultural/behavioral circumstances of the people that followed these beliefs.
>>15171544
Beyond my lectures I've read D. Brewer, T. Smith and Hurst's writings on the Egyptian economy but I'm by no means all knowing. Is there anything you want to know?
>>15169918
I'm completing my undergraduate specialisation in Egyptology under the Archaeology course at Cambridge University. Yourself? I've always envied American archaes for having some of best living archaeologists still working over there. I'd love to meet K.V. Flannery.

[Anonymous No.15172273]

>>15164655
The west has been enamored with egypt since the greeks. Not a big suprise. Thoth and all that two. Exotic mysticism and mystery to it.

[Anonymous No.15172319]

>>15172155
>Is there anything you want to know?

Stuff like how cities were generally laid out, average population sizes, site expanses, and how complex/involved any irragative, freshwater, and drainage/anti flood systems were or anything else involving water mangement systems. If you know stuff about adminstrative structure and complexity or any intellectuslism that'd be fun too.

I do a lot of posts and infodumps on Mesoamerican history (Aztec, Maya,. Olmec, etc) and while I think pissing contests about if X or Y was more advanced are dumb, invariably people try to make comparisons and I'd like to be able to give more educated and informed replies: My knowledge on egypt is pretty surface level, more or less just what I learned in school and from general history reading.

As an example, In the context of the sort of disscusions I mention for example, people will often label Mesoamerican socities as "stone age", and while I think the entire "Age" label; system is dumb for this sort of thing, I often end up making a rebuttal pointing out that (to my knowledge) the largest Bronze age city was Uruk and it covered 4 square kilometers and had 40,000 people vs Mesoamerican cities in both the Mesoamerican Classical and Postclassical periods where cities got much larger and more populated then that (albiet of less density as a result): But I'd like to verify that Uruk was indeed the largest Bronze age city and that there weren't larger ones in egypt at the time. Again, similar comparsions get made either by others or by me for those other societial elements I mention above such as water mangenemtnn systems, goverment complexity, intellectual practices, etc.

Again, I want to stress though that I'm asking not because I want to be able to go HA THE MAYA WERE BETTER or anything like that, but just to be able to make better comparsions to other people about them and how they compare to other socities. Ideally, I wouldn't need to, but unfortunately it's necessary as a result of most other people's ignorance abnout mesoamerican socities at best requring me to compare them to other cultures just as an example, or at worst to refute somebody else claiming that they are barbarian savages.

[Anonymous No.15172363]

>>15168282
Based af list

[Anonymous No.15172366]

>>15172319
Sure. I'll have to get back to you in 2 hours or so though because I have a hieroglyph lecture coming up. I'll give the best relatively brief explanation I can.
Funny enough I was going to excavate a classic Maya site in Belize this summer! Unfortunately it's gotten corona'd but maybe next year.

[Anonymous No.15172396]

>>15172319
Bro, I think it's pretty stupid to compare egypt and mesoa-merica.

[Anonymous No.15172403]

>>15172366
What is a good university pathway for someone interested in these things? Is it worth switching for at all, if one is already doing STEM?

[Anonymous No.15172421]

>>15172403
>What is a good university pathway for someone interested in these things?
The academy is not for interests. It's for becoming a proper cog in a capitalist machine. Don't worry, you'll be rewarded for disregarding your passions.

[Anonymous No.15172422]

>>15172155
>>15172366
We're the Egyptians black africans?

[Anonymous No.15172913]

>>15172366
Sure. Also, you don't need to worry about being brief: I've made like 15 post long dumps on Aztec geopolitics before, the more detailk you can do the better.

Though, if you don't wanna spend that amount of time/effort, that's totally understandable.

Also if you are an actual practicing archeologist, then, I actually might also have some career questions, since i'm trying to decide if I wanna pursue that/museum science/archival shit: If you are up for that, shoot me an email at [e-mail] just specifying you were from this thread, and I'll get back to you when I can (I am bad about replying to emails quickly though there since it's a throwaway I use for 4chan stuff; so if you do take me up on this, use an email you'll check long term)

>>15172396
As I said, I agree: I honestly hate having to partake in X vs Y comparsions and debates but even if I try to avoid it, other people instigiate them.

Even avoiding that/putting that aside, though, most people know NOTHING about Mesoamerican socities, even if they are otherwise informed on ancient an classical old world ones, so me just knowing more about Old World civilizations in general helps me to be able to make better examples and comparsions.

[Anonymous No.15172951]

>>15172913
Based Mesoamerican anon

[Anonymous No.15172957]

>>15172913
>>15172366
>>15172396
>I've made like 15 post long dumps on Aztec geopolitics before

For those curious: https://pastebin.com/VqW97h93

My overall directory of prior dumps and resources and shit is here, too https://pastebin.com/p42q14Ff

Anyways heading to bed but looking foward to reading your info tommorow anon

[Anonymous No.15173173]

>>15163556
The "Book of the Dead" is more a genre than a text. Wealthy egyptians collected spells, advice, and secrets that they thought might be useful to them after crossing, thus there are many books 'of the dead.'

[Anonymous No.15173580]

Besides history books, what are the best fictional books/plays about ancient egypt?

I'm gonna write a play about Egypt for my theatre group but not sure for what age specifically

[Anonymous No.15173742]

>>15172319
So this may take a while, but I’ll do my best to address the matter of Urbanism and Irrigation, starting with the practice of Agriculture and animal husbandry. I’ll keep posting throughout the day.

Agriculture in Egypt had been first developed from between 8000-5000BC. Coinciding with climate change which turned the previously green savannah into a desert with only the narrow Nile corridor, Egyptian agriculture was heavily reliant on inundations and water basins of considerable size variation.

The convex nature of the Nile's flood meant that irrigation agriculture was a matter of constructing chequer-pattern channels where flood water could be contained during the flood and channeled to plots that required more water and drained. Shadufs (Wooden pulley deviced used to extract water) would be invented only more towards the New Kingdom, so for most of Egyptian history water was carried via containers. The Nile floods were variable and measured according to a series of ancient Nilometer devices (Which were used by the administrative bureaucracy to assess taxation levels based on predicted harvests until the New Kingdom- where taxes became a pre-assessed quantity). The flood height of the Nile over a certain period was famously stable however, although over flooding and low niles weren’t uncommon. The Palermo stone provides a list of flood readings based on the regnal year of Egyptian kings.

Agriculture is best divided between the Farming of cereals, vegetables and legume, Horticulture and Animal Husbandry. Farming was carried out on plots of land, which were owned either by the state (Crownlands), were temple property, or private landlords. Owned land was typically spatially varied, as to minimise losses if a certain area of the valley was heavily affected by the flood. The most typical crops grown along the nile were in descending order of commonality: Emmer wheat and barley, lentils and other vegetables (Leeks, radishes, herbs etc). Wheat comprised the two staples of the Egyptian diet: Bread and beer, which was used in payment until the introduction of coinage as currency towards Ptolemaic Period. With the addition of fish and occasionally red meat, the Egyptian diet was perfectly capable of nourishing a working male. According to Butzer’s calculations, from the predynastic period to the Roman, the fertile conditions of the Nile created an economy where there was a surplus 5 times greater than what the Egyptian population could consume annually. This enabled a redistributive economy that could feed craft specialists, soldiers, priests, nobles and the massive bureaucratic scribal class and produce monumental architecture.

[Anonymous No.15173753]

>>15173742
(Cont)
Animal husbandry is one of the oldest practices in Egypt behind prostitution and self-aggrandisement. From 16,000 BC high-status graves are known to have been marked with the horns of aurochs and other cattle, and the significance of cattle pervaded into Pharaonic Egypt with the worship of bovine goddesses like Hathor, who represented fertility no doubt linked to the sustenance derived from cattle farms. There were three types of cattle in Egypt, however milk was a relative rarity in the Egyptian diet. Goats, sheep and pigs were all farmed as well, and were more cost-efficient. Geese, pidgeons, ibis and chickens and ducks were at the very least tamed. Animals were tended towards the desert edges or in areas with insufficient water for agricultural production.

Sources:

>D. Brewer “Agriculture and Animal Husbandry” in T. Wilkinson et al; (2007) The Egyptian World
>K. Butzer (1976) Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt. A Study of Cultural Ecology
>H.E. Hurst (1952) The Nile
And of course my lecturers.

I think next I can go into urban settlements. However you should note that we have very few large scale settlement remains in the archaeological record. Amarna will be a great case study however for an urban landscape.

[Anonymous No.15173782]

>>15173580
There's a lot of Literature by Egyptians themselves which would work remarkably as stage plays.
The Shipwrecked sailor is about an Egyptian official who gets castaway on a magical island and talks to a talking snake about life, before being rescued.
The Tale of Wenamun is about a priest that buys into Egyptian state propaganda and demands tribute from the city of Byblos before being laughed down as he realises Egypt is a shadow of what it once was
The Debate between a Man and his Ba (Soul) is a fantastic ""monologue"" as an Egyptian comes to grips with his depressing reality and contemplates suicide or living on.
All and more(Except possibly Wenamun) can be found in J. Allen's Middle Egyptian Literature

[Anonymous No.15173839]

>>15172422
The 25th dynasty Pharaohs were black Nubians, the Egyptian army from the Middle Kingdom had its bulk formed of Nubian archers, and black Nubians held positions of regional power and authority throughout Egyptian history. However, the bulk of Egypt's population was North African, and they depicted themselves as such pictorially with reddish skin for men and yellow skin for women. Even today Egypt's population is largely the same as what it once was, with only 20% of the population having a detectable link to the Arabian people. I know your post was a joke but ethnic identity is a really interesting topic in Egyptology. You'll be happy to know though that not a single Egyptologist in Cambridge I'm aware of believes they were even mostly "black" however. If you want to read a great article on the subject here's a citation to an article on an ethnically black official Hekanefer who depicted himself as ethnically Egyptian in his tomb paintings:
>Smith, S.T., 2015. Hekanefer and the Lower Nubian princes: Entanglement, double identity or Topos and Mimesis. Fuzzy Boundaries. Festschrift für Antonio Loprieno, 2, pp.767-779.

[Anonymous No.15173903]

>>15173782
Thanks so much anon, I'll check it out

[Anonymous No.15173929]

>>15172155
Uzdavinys came from the traditionalists, but 'broke' from them. As much as he might cite them he critiques them.

[Anonymous No.15174025]

Why are all Egyptologists so weird? I studied archaeology in college and even among weird archaeologists, Egytologists were weird. Do you have any stereotypes about archaeologists who study other cultures?

[Anonymous No.15174212]

>>15173929
What does he critique them for? From what I've read he loves Frithjof Schuon (known child molester) and translated his works.

[Anonymous No.15174321]

>>15174025
Yeah but at least we're not boring asf like Anglo-saxon archaeologists. Americanologists are pretty nice. I think everyone else gets memed into doing bioanth and they lose their souls as soon as they have to work with statistics 24.7

[Anonymous No.15175649]

>>15173753
Due to the annual possibility of the Nile overflooding, Egyptian settlements were located on land above the level of the Nile which were largely safe from environmental calamity. The Nile is a meandering river however, and as a natural preservation process the vast majority of settlement remains have been destroyed from erosion. In predynastic times, settlements were based around the desert edge, whilst from the Old Kingdom onwards the necessity of space demanded that towns be built closer to the riverbank.

Towns can be divided between those which are ‘naturally’ grown and royal foundations created by the ruling class, usually for the purpose of establishing a monumental centre and location for the mortuary cult- (Akhetaten, Deir el Medina, “Pyramid towns (devoted to the construction of pyramids” these have survived better, being located towards the desert. This has caused an archaeological bias towards thinking of Egypt in terms of a desert society where death was at the centre. What survives today is only a small fraction of what was built in the pharaonic period. The population of Egypt has been estimated by Butzer to have reached 816,000 by the start of the 1st Dynasty (~3000 BC), 1.6 million towards the end of the Old Kindom, 1.9 million during the Middle kingdom, 3 million around the peak of the New Kingdom and towards 5 million by the time of the Roman conquest.

The economy of these towns was somewhat variable, with certain urban hubs being the centre of specific industries. The Faience industry for example was centred at Lisht during the Middle Kingdom, whilst Amarna and Qar were became the main (discovered) areas for faience and glass production. Specialist towns such as Deir el Medina were dedicated to the production of tombs like those in the Valley of the Kings and were comprised of a highly literate population engaged in both labour tied to the state and private enterprise. Professions were hereditary for the majority of Egyptian history, including the filling of administrative positions. These administrative positions were wide ranging, with translations revealing titles from “Overseer of construction projects”, “Overseer of the treasurey” “King’s seal bearer” “Mayor of the city” “Royal scribe” “Soul priest” “Servant of the God” and over a thousand others. By the New Kingdom, the concept of “Temple economy” takes hold, where, similar to pre-reformation Tudor England, around a 1/3rd of all land was owned by the temple priesthood, which owned and leased land to its inhabitants.

[Anonymous No.15175666]

>>15175649
The silent power struggle between the King and the priesthood is a highly nuanced issue, and I can recommend the work of B. Trigger: “A Social History in Ancient Egypt” to understand this shifting relationship overtime. The pharaoh, as the son of Osiris and living embodiment of Horus was the only person able to commune directly with the gods. All of Egypt was in theory his by right, but he relied upon priests to act in his stead, the bureaucracy to be his eyes and the armed forces to smite his enemies. From here we could more productively go into specific examples, such as the administration and mining expeditions, the Egyptian army, or Kingship as an ideological concept.
For further reading I'd recommend:
>B. Kemp on Akhetaten/Amarna
>K. Spence on Architecture
>The Letters of Heqanakhte