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More notes from Clark's Myth and Symbol
Jun. 30th, 2010 07:19 pmClark translates the name of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad as "Nothing, Inertness, Infinity and Invisibility or Darkness". Which is pretty cool.
Gengen-wer! An old favourite. "There was another version of the myth [of the cosmic egg] in which the egg was laid by a goose, the Great Primeval Spirit. This bird was 'the Great Cackler' [I prefer the translation 'the Great Honker', lol] whose voice broke the silence - 'while the world was still flooded in silence.'" (p 56)
"In a Nile hymn the annual inundation of the Nile is said to be: 'The flood of the eye of Atum when the water rises and the overflow appears,' from which it seems that the eye of Atum makes the waters active." (Coffin Texts, IV, 140d)
Things of interest for later follow-up:
• The identification of Tefnut with Maat in Coffin Text 80. And the story of the Eye searching for the lost Shu and Tefnut, I think from the same spell (and/or the Bremner Rhind Papyrus). Looks like there's some relevant stuff in Assmann's The Search for God in Ancient Egypt.
• Clark gives "Pyramids Texts 581 ff" as the reference for "an allusion to a lost legend that Nut rebelled against her mother 'while still in the womb' - the lines are "O Nut! ... you waxed mighty in the belly of your mother Tefnut before you were born... you stirred in the belly of your mother in your name of Nut, you are indeed a daughter more powerful than her mother."
• "The texts of the Old Kingdom contain echoes of a mass slaughter of the denizens of the Abyss [the Cannibal Hymn] or of the defeat of a monster of chaos [G. Posener, 'Le légende de la mer insatiable', Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves, XIII, Brussels, 1953, 461 ff.]." (p 74)
Gengen-wer! An old favourite. "There was another version of the myth [of the cosmic egg] in which the egg was laid by a goose, the Great Primeval Spirit. This bird was 'the Great Cackler' [I prefer the translation 'the Great Honker', lol] whose voice broke the silence - 'while the world was still flooded in silence.'" (p 56)
"In a Nile hymn the annual inundation of the Nile is said to be: 'The flood of the eye of Atum when the water rises and the overflow appears,' from which it seems that the eye of Atum makes the waters active." (Coffin Texts, IV, 140d)
Things of interest for later follow-up:
• The identification of Tefnut with Maat in Coffin Text 80. And the story of the Eye searching for the lost Shu and Tefnut, I think from the same spell (and/or the Bremner Rhind Papyrus). Looks like there's some relevant stuff in Assmann's The Search for God in Ancient Egypt.
• Clark gives "Pyramids Texts 581 ff" as the reference for "an allusion to a lost legend that Nut rebelled against her mother 'while still in the womb' - the lines are "O Nut! ... you waxed mighty in the belly of your mother Tefnut before you were born... you stirred in the belly of your mother in your name of Nut, you are indeed a daughter more powerful than her mother."
• "The texts of the Old Kingdom contain echoes of a mass slaughter of the denizens of the Abyss [the Cannibal Hymn] or of the defeat of a monster of chaos [G. Posener, 'Le légende de la mer insatiable', Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves, XIII, Brussels, 1953, 461 ff.]." (p 74)
