1. ANCIENT EGYPT

2. EGYPTIAN CLASS AND CULTURE Egyptian society was a THEOCRACY, meaning that religion and government often went hand in hand. Egyptians had more than 1,500 gods and goddesses, but more often, the worship of specific gods and goddesses was confined to specific locations. Each town or city could have its own god or goddess that they worshipped as the benefactor of their location.

3. Origins of Egyptian Beliefs At a very early time in their history, the ancient Egyptians began to create myths as a means of explaining natural phenomena. Because the forces of nature seemed immutable and eternal, they chose familiar and fixed images to represent them in their stories. The images that were more easily adapted came from the animal kingdom. The Egyptians observed that animal behavior was predictable in the wild, and moreover, once falcon looked like another falcon, as one generation of lions seemed very nearly like the next (Mercatante ix).

4. Egyptian Religion and Society Egyptians felt that morals and ethics were integral to the survival of their culture. Some inscriptions found on tombs illustrating this belief system include: –“I gave bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked.” –“I oppressed no orphan.” –“I took no advantage of the widow.” Sound familiar?...

5. Religion played such an integral part in the existence of their civilization that most of the ancient Egyptians names we know actually come from priests of many different religious cults. There were three religious centers in Egypt: Heliopolis, Memphis and Hermopolis (An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology 97). The Heliopolitan cosmology was the most important and most widely accepted.

6. The Egyptian Creation Deities

7. The Egyptian Creation Story

8. WHO’S WHO IN EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY

9. Osiris God of the Nile flood, vegetation, corn, the moon, the dead and renewal of life: often depicted as a mummy sprouting corn. Osiris was murdered by his brother, Seth, who was jealous of his power and success. Seth was further upset by Osiris when he slept with his wife, Nephthys. Osiris’ child with Nephthys is Anubis – the god of the dead.

10. The Lord of the Underworld… To get even, Seth made a coffin-box that would fit only Osiris. Once Osiris was in the box, Seth sealed it and sent it down the Nile. Isis found Osiris and brought him back to life by forcing air back into his body with her wings. He was revived just long enough to impregnate Isis with their son Horus, and then he died again. Angered by being thwarted, Seth wanted to make sure Isis could not revive Osiris again. Seth cut Osiris’ body into 14 pieces and scattered them throughout Egypt. Isis was able to find all of the pieces except for Osiris’ phallus. She mummified the remains. Osiris was revived, but as he was no longer fertile, he was made the lord of the dead.

11. Isis Isis is the most significant goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. She is the mother of god, a healer, and goddess of magic and sex. The blue dress of Mary, the symbolism of the crescent moon and association of the sea were all attributes first given to Isis by the Roman Cult of Isis. She is the great lady of the Underworld, who assisted in transforming the bodies of the blessed dead into those wherein they were to live in the realm of Osiris, her name was Ament, i.e., the "hidden" goddess.

12. The Ultimate Mother In fact, at a comparatively early period in Egyptian history, Isis had absorbed the attributes of all the great primitive goddesses, and she was even identified as the female counterpart of the primeval abyss of water from which sprang all life. It is manifestly impossible to limit the attributes of Isis, for we have seen that she possesses the powers of a water goddess, an earth goddess, a corn goddess, a star goddess, a queen of the Underworld, and a woman, and that she united in herself one or more of the attributes of all the goddesses of Egypt known to us.

13. Nephthys Sister and wife of Seth; sister and lover of Osiris Mother of Anubis Nephthys is the personification of darkness and of all that belongs to it, and that her attributes were rather of a passive than active character. She was the opposite of Isis in every respect; Isis symbolized birth, growth, development and vigor, but Nephthys was the death, decay, diminution and immobility.

14. The “Other” Sister Isis and Nephthys are associated inseparably with each other, even as were Horus and Set, and in all the important matters which concern the welfare of the deceased they acted together, and they appear together in bas-reliefs and vignettes. Isis, according to Plutarch, represented the part of the world which is visible, while Nephthys represents that which is invisible, and we may even regard Isis as the day and Nephthys as the night. Isis and Nephthys represent respectively the things which are and the things which are yet to come into being, the beginning and the end, birth and death, and life and death.

15. Seth Set was also known by the names of Sutekh, Setesh, Seteh. He is known as a god of evil, chaos, the desert and foreigners. He is guilty of killing and dismembering his brother, Osiris. He fought his nephew, Horus, who sought to revenge his father. There is some speculation that Seth was homosexual, and several stories center around him being outwitted due to his sexual preferences. Seth was the god of Lower Egypt, and his fight with Osiris became integrated into the mythology when Upper Egypt took over Lower Egypt.

16. Horus Only child of Isis and Osiris –Sometimes said to be the husband of Isis –Sometimes said to be the resurrected form of Osiris. This really depends on what time period you are looking at. Had one of his eyes gouged out by Seth during the battle for Osiris’ revenge –Since one eye is now inferior to the other, the eyes of Horus are said to be the sun and the moon. Is able to defeat Seth, thereby becoming the ultimate ruling god of Egypt.

17. Anubis Is the only child of Nephthys and Osiris. His birth is what starts the conflict between Osiris and Seth. Anubis is often depicted with the head of a a jackal. His primary responsibility is to guide souls through the underworld to the Scales of Judgment.

18. Works Cited Book of the Dead, The: The Hieroglyphic and English Translation of the Papyrus of Ani. Edited E.A. Wallis Budge. New York: Random House, 1960. Budge, E. A. Wallis. Egyptian Religion: Ideas of the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt. New York: Gramercy Books, 1959. Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Gods of the Egyptians: Studies in Egyptian Mythology, Vol. 2. New York: Dover Publications, 1969. Davis, Kenneth C. Don’t Know Much About Mythology: Everything You Need to Know About the Greatest Stories in Human History but Never Learned. New York: Harper Press, 2005. Leitch, Aaron. “The Egyptian Creation Epic”. Theology Website. 25 August 2008. >http://www.theologywebsite.com/etext/egypt/creation.shtml Mackenzie, Donald A. Egyptian Myths and Legends. New York: Gramercy Books, 1980. Mercatante, Anthony S. Who’s Who in Egyptian Mythology. New York: Crown Publishers, 1978. Shapiro, Max. S. and Rhoda A. Hendricks. Mythologies of the World: A Concise Encyclopedia. New York: Doubleday, 1979.