Property of Sekhmet

Two Old Kingdom engraved blocks return home - on one of which is the head of a lioness-goddess with a cobra for a hat.

Genes reveal grain of truth to Queen of Sheba story

Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing - proto-Elamite

Here follow my (idiosyncratic as ever) notes from C.J. Bleeker's Hathor and Thoth.

Firstly - general stuff about Egyptian religion:

"S. Morenz, for example, has pointed out that the Egyptian language has no words for 'belief', 'religion', and 'piety'... apparently the Egyptians had not yet attained that stage of self-reflection in which general concepts are formed, and furthermore it would seem that the structure of their religion differed from that of ours." (p3) Their knowledge - of all kinds - was more about "know-how" than abstract philosophy. (p6) Religious thought was conservative, with basic ideas surviving for millennia. (p 8) By contrast with Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, "The ancient religions were not founded, but sprang forth as it were, from the life of the common people." Rather than "prophetic pronunciations", knowledge of the gods came through their manifestations in nature. (p 11) Unlike other cultures of the time, the Egyptians had an "intimacy" with and "affinity" for their gods, identifying with them and expecting to "partake of the divine life" after death. (p 19-20)

The religious literature comes in these flavours:

• hymns
  
• rituals
  
• funerary texts
  
• spells
  
• books of wisdom
  
• legends

As Bleeker points out, these mostly have "a cultic significance" - there's no formal doctrine or theology. Because of this, our understanding relies on "many scattered allusions in the texts". This problem is referred to throughout the book - some familiar legends have been stitched together from bits, rather than occuring in a single story, like a Greek myth. (4-5)

Oh cool - the pyramid is a model of the primeval mound which rose above the formless waters, from which Re organised the world. (16-17)

ETA: "Egyptian gods are not distinguised by any individual features" - you can only tell them apart by their animal heads and/or their attributes, such as headdresses and staffs.

ETA ETA: "In Egypt the saying was that in the primordial age the creator 'knotted' the world, ie, the two lands, meaning he created and planned them. The knot and woven fabric are tokens of integral life and wisdom." (p 59)

__
Bleeker, C.J. Hathor and Thoth: Two Key Figures of the Ancient Egyptian Religion. Leiden, Brill, 1973.