Death as an Enemy
Oct. 16th, 2017 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetI started this blog by reading an entire book and taking notes as I went along; I'd like to return to that process, at least more often, rather than quite so much scattershot stuff. So let's have a look at Jan Zandee's overview of thinking about death in Ancient Egypt.
He opens Chapter One by describing the two different ways in which the Ancient Egyptians thought about death. The "monistic view" is this: "Death is considered the necessary condition for eternal life... plants and crops mature and die down, but they spring up again from the seed which has been put into the earth and has died. After each setting the sun rises in the East through its own spontaneous power. This resurrection from death points to the fact that the secret of spontaneous life lives under the earth in the realm of the dead." This concept contrasts with the "dualistic view", in which "death is considered the enemy of life". Although Ancient Egyptian religion takes the monistic view, the dualistic view still crops up: the Egyptians enjoy life and want a long one. The various netherworld texts describe dangerous place where the soul risks complete destruction.
In the earliest writings about the afterlife, the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts, only the king can ascend to heaven; the ordinary people stay in the lightless subterranean realm, where no-one eats, drinks, or has sex: "He who formerly walked on the earth, now walks with his feet against the bottom of the flat disk of the earth, as it were against a ceiling, head down." Spells in various texts help the deceased ward off this doom, and the similar topsy-turvy fate of having to eat excrement. Later, this condition is reserved for the damned.
Next: "Views based on direct observation of death as a physical phenomenon." Should be fun.
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Zandee, J. Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions. (Studies in the Histories of Religions, Supplement to Numen, V). Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1960.
He opens Chapter One by describing the two different ways in which the Ancient Egyptians thought about death. The "monistic view" is this: "Death is considered the necessary condition for eternal life... plants and crops mature and die down, but they spring up again from the seed which has been put into the earth and has died. After each setting the sun rises in the East through its own spontaneous power. This resurrection from death points to the fact that the secret of spontaneous life lives under the earth in the realm of the dead." This concept contrasts with the "dualistic view", in which "death is considered the enemy of life". Although Ancient Egyptian religion takes the monistic view, the dualistic view still crops up: the Egyptians enjoy life and want a long one. The various netherworld texts describe dangerous place where the soul risks complete destruction.
In the earliest writings about the afterlife, the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts, only the king can ascend to heaven; the ordinary people stay in the lightless subterranean realm, where no-one eats, drinks, or has sex: "He who formerly walked on the earth, now walks with his feet against the bottom of the flat disk of the earth, as it were against a ceiling, head down." Spells in various texts help the deceased ward off this doom, and the similar topsy-turvy fate of having to eat excrement. Later, this condition is reserved for the damned.
Next: "Views based on direct observation of death as a physical phenomenon." Should be fun.
__
Zandee, J. Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions. (Studies in the Histories of Religions, Supplement to Numen, V). Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1960.
