Egypt's Sunken Treasures

Preparing to write my usual book report thing on Egypt's Sunken Treasures, I stopped short at the first paragraph of the introduction (written by Manfred Clauss):

"Nothing had so strong an influence on the thoughts and actions of the men and women of antiquity as the concept of supernatural powers. Religious ideas helped them to understand the world around them; they were dominated by fear through religion and thus made tractable; hope of a better life after death and divine retribution consoled them." (My emphasis)

How true is this? To what extent was an ancient society such as Egypt organised along religious lines, and to what extent practical or political lines - the temple alongside the palace? Was offending the local deity a more immediate danger than that posed by the police officer, the tax collector, or a crocodile? Or is this an artificial division, since these could be seen as agents of divinity? How was terror of the divine used in propaganda at different levels of the hierarchy - not just the king's boasts to foreign lands, but to peasants, artisans, and nobles? Without dismissing the obviously huge significance of religion in all walks of Egyptian society, the picture of Egyptians "dominated by fear" just doesn't match my mental picture of them.

Egypt's Sunken Treasures 2

The most important part of this enormous book are the photos - especially those of the eponymous treasures being brought up by divers from Herakleion, Canopus, and Alexandria - but here are some notes from the text:

• The gods' attributes suggest the early settlement of the Nile and the ancientness of their worship: "like the Bedouin, the Egyptian gods hold a staff, goddesses hold a reed; their crowns are made of rushes, often they wear nothing other than a few ostrich plumes or the horns of the animals that are holy to them."
  
  
• Oddly, the Hathor crown worn by Isis is described as including a lunar disc, rather than a solar one. (p 105)
  
  
• Herakleion, the sunken city, is named for Herakles, whose mythology included exploits in Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia; one story had him killing the Egyptian tyrant Busiris, who sacrificed all strangers to Zeus. The truth of the tale was disputed amongst the ancients, but the human sacrifice of foreigners might have had a basis in fact: "Until the abolition of this practice in the sixth century BC, it happened that troublemakers were condemned to be burned alive at one of the numerous sanctuaries where a reproduction of the mummified corpse of Osiris at the point of resurrection was watched over and tended while being burned alive [sic - during the execution, presumably]. The fact of redness was for men, as for animals, a mark of their genetic kinship with Seth and Apopi. As a consequence, Greek pirates - blond or red-haired - who presented this mark underwent this death sentence, which was theologically based and ritualised." The king Busiris could be per-Osiris - one of the temples where this ritual was carried out.
  
  
• From the fifth century BCE, Amun was identified with Zeus, Mut with Hera, and Khonsu with Herakles. The authors describe this as "disconcerting", since the deities have, "at first sight", nothing in common. The child Khonsu, mummified, shown as large as an adult but wearing a sidelock, is "Chons in Thebes Neferhotep"; as a falcon-headed man with the lunar disc for a hat he is "Horus (!), master of joy". "The god identified with Herakles [must have been] 'Chons the child', one of those specifically childlike aspects in which all Egyptian gods were doubled by a Harpokrates, a 'child Horus'", with Khonsu's version being recognisable by the hem-hem and nemes headdresses. The authors explain the identification of Herakles and Khonsu as stemming from their similar origins - the god Amun took the form of the pharaoh to impregnate the royal wife with the next, divine pharaoh, and Zeus took the form of Amphitryon to impregnate Alcmena with the demigod Herakles.
  
  
• I found a couple of examples of Khonsu being given the epithet "Horus, master of joy", such as at Qasr el Aguz.
  
  
• Two statues from Alexandria, a snake and an ibis, probably represent "gods that were particularly venerated by the Alexandrians": Agathodaimon and Thoth, "alias Hermes Trismegistos". The "good genie" Agathodaimon was worshipped from the city's founding by Alexander. "When a shrine was erected small snakes would appear and would then scatter through the city, where the Alexandrians would protect and honour them. The origin of this seems to be linked to the Egyptian serpent Schai, a very popular protector god [whose] partner goddess Renenutet, having been assimilated into Isis Thermoutis - Isis in the form of a uraeus - often appeared alongside Agathodaimon on reliefs." Which may also have contributed to an assimilation of Agathodaimon and Sarapis. (p 204)
  
  
• In their statues etc the Ptolemies had themselves presented according to Egyptian artistic conventions, though occasional Greek details crop up to lend authenticity to the portrait. The first queen "to be represented in the round in a pharaonic style" was Arsinoe II. "His Majesty ordered her [Arsinoe II's] statue to be erected in all the temples - which was acceptable to their priests - because these intentions were known to the gods and her kind deeds to all men." - Mendes Stela (The "queen-wives" continued to be represented like throughout the dynasty, all with "impersonal but splendid" anatomy, much as women in Egyptian art had always been portrayed with "perfect shapes clad in a tight dress". (p 160) Conversely, Isis was represented in the form of a Ptolemaic queen (p 170). Arsinoe II "was especially considered as a notable earthly manifestation of Aphrodite" (and given the epithet "Zephyritis"), "took an active interest in the navy and maritime routes" and according to her cult was "adored" by admirals, sailors, and "indigenous oarsmen" (p 172).
  
  
• In the Arsinoeion in Alexandria, "an engineer had planned to put in place an iron statue which was supposed to have floated in the air by virtue of a magnet"!
  
  
• In one area, divers found the remains of nine "decapitated and mutilated sphinxes" - "the result of vigorous dry blows applied with blunt instruments. This was the normal treatment meted out by Christians to deprive the demons that the pagan gods embodied" of their senses and their ability to move. (I wonder: did this idea, that there were spirits in the statues, originate with the Christians or come from the Egyptian concept of gods inhabiting their representations?) (p 170)
  
  
• From Isis' temple at Narmouthis (p 210):
  
  All mortals who live on the infinite earth,
  Thracians, Greeks and barbarians too,
  Utter your beautiful name, honoured by all,
  Each in his own tongue, each in his own country.
  The Syrians name you Astarte, Artemis, Nanaia,
  And the people of Lykia Leto, sovereign.
  The men of Thrace name you Mother of the Gods,
  The Greeks Hera, enthroned on high, or even Aphrodite,
  Hestia the benevolent, Rhea, or Demeter.
  But the Egyptians call you Thioui, because you, and you alone,
  Are all the goddesses that people know by other names.
  
  (Various sources give "The Unique" for Thioui.)