I recently started reading an electronic copy of László Török’s Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region between Ancient Nubia and Egypt, 3700 BC – 500 AD, and I was shocked at how shoddy it was. Letters and punctuation were missing on almost every page, and the letter f was frequently replaced with an ß! See, for example, this excerpt from page 179:
A signi cant process of change seems to have started in the second half of the Nineteenth Dynasty period. Merenptah s (1213 1203) rst viceroy, Mesui, was probably buried at Aniba (see above), discontinuing (at least for one generation) the traditional Theban burial of the viceroys.
The book wasn’t published by CreateSpace or Publish America. It was the work of Brill, a 300-year-old Dutch publisher that specializes in academic texts. I’m usually rather fond of Brill. A lot of their titles are available in digital form through Brill E-Books, and since UW-Madison subscribes to this service, I can access them for free.
I’m hopeful that the problems with Between Two Worlds are an aberration since I’ve downloaded other Brill e-books, and they’ve been fine. Still, a cockup of this magnitude is a huge embarrassment for such a prestigious publisher, and I hope they’ll fix it at some point.
I felt a little rush of joy this evening when the following headline appeared in my Twitter feed: “A book of ancient Egyptian spells has been translated.” Naturally, I clicked through, but I was swiftly disappointed. A glance at the article revealed that the book in question has nothing to do with ancient Egypt. It’s actually about a Coptic spellbook from 700 or 800 AD!
Calling a Coptic manuscript ‘ancient Egyptian’ is like calling Dante’s Divine Comedy a work of ancient Roman literature. It’s a lazy attempt at shorthand that ultimately obfuscates rather than enlightens since Coptic civilization had little in common with its pharaonic predecessor.
I’ve discovered that Hollywood is planning to make an epic fantasy movie set in ancient Egypt. Entitled Gods of Egypt, it will star some big names, including Nikolaj Coster-Wald, Gerard Butler, and Geoffrey Rush. At first, I was cautiously excited; naturally, the idea of an epic fantasy movie set in Egypt should be right up my alley. But when I read the synopsis on IMDB, my heart sank: “Set, the merciless god of darkness, has taken over the throne of Egypt and plunged the once peaceful and prosperous empire into chaos and conflict.”
“SethAndHorusAdoringRamsses” by Chipdawes – public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
From an Egyptological perspective, characterizing Set as an evil god is highly problematic. Although he’s often referred to as a ‘god of chaos,’ that’s a modern gloss on his character. It’s true that he was demonized in the Late Period, but in earlier times he was a much more ambivalent figure. For much of Egyptian history, his cult flourished in the Delta region and at Ombos. Several pharaohs were named after him, such as Seti I, whose name literally means ‘man of Set’ (ordinary people also incorporated Set’s name into their own as well). There are also a number of depictions of Set crowning the king alongside Horus (the one on the right is taken from Ramesses II’s small temple at Abu Simbel). Set also had a reputation for martial prowess, which is why he is often shown at the forefront of Re’s solar barque, spearing the evil snake-creature Apep.
However, he definitely had a darker side. As early as the Pyramid Texts, he was described as the murderer of his brother Osiris, and there are references to him fighting Horus (who can be either his brother or his nephew, depending on the text!) for the throne of Egypt. An extended narrative of Set’s struggle with Horus for the throne of Egypt can be found in the Contendings of Horus and Set, which was written in the New Kingdom. There, Set is portrayed as a violent buffoon who is easily tricked by Horus into building a boat out of stone. When the gods finally decide to award the throne to Horus, Set is compensated by being given dominion over the desert. He still retained Re’s favor, as well.
Set defending Re from Apep by An unknown workman – Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Set didn’t become a totally evil figure until the Late Period, at which point he replaced Apep as the embodiment of evil. It’s not entirely clear why he fell from grace, but Herman te Velde has suggested that his demonization was due to Egypt’s conquest by outsiders such as the Assyrians and the Persians. Set was historically seen as the patron of foreigners, and their subjugation of Egypt might have made Set’s cult less attractive.[note]H. te Velde, Seth: God of Confusion (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 138-140.[/note]
Unfortunately, it’s the negative characterization of Set that seems to prevail in popular culture today. Writers often cast him as the Egyptian version of the Christian Devil, despite the anachronistic nature of such an approach. Rick Riordan is one of the few authors who has demonstrated an awareness of Set’s nuanced nature.
The fact that the team behind Gods of Egypt has chosen such a hackneyed and inaccurate approach makes me doubt the quality of the rest of their research. I fear their depiction of Egypt will be little more than a bunch of people with tea towels on their heads running around a set that’s festooned with a random assemblage of Egyptianesque artifacts. Oh, and apparently most of them will be white for some unfathomable reason (perhaps the casting directors are disciples of Sir Flinders Petrie!).
I just learned that John Baines retired at the end of last year. Baines was Professor of Egyptology at The Queen’s College, Oxford, and he’s something of a living legend in the Egyptological community. A professor by 30, he went on to have a distinguished scholarly career, as his list of publications vividly demonstrates.
Baines’ work has been invaluable to me over the years. He co-authored The Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt, which was one of the first scholarly books about Egypt that I ever owned. Although it’s outdated in places, it still provides a solid overview of Egyptian civilization, and it’s a must have for any Egyptophile (though, sadly, it seems to be out of print). Baines has also made a major contribution to the study of literacy in ancient Egypt, and his 1983 article on the subject is still widely cited. His most recent book is about elite culture, and I plan to read it in the near future.
Baines is also a really nice guy. Many years ago, I emailed him with some questions about Egypt. I was so young that I didn’t have my own email address, and I had to send it using my mom’s account (and I think I’ve just dated myself!). I can only vaguely remember the questions; I believe I asked him something about priestly celibacy and Egypt in the Greco-Roman period. But he wrote back with detailed, helpful answers, and I’ve always appreciated his willingness to answer questions from a random American kid.
The Egyptians would have called Baines “a good scribe and an exceedingly wise man,” and his successor will have some big shoes to fill. I hope he has a long and happy retirement, and with any luck, we’ll be reading his work for many years to come.
The list of pharaohs has just gotten a bit longer. The University of Pennsylvania has uncovered the tomb of a pharaoh named Woseribre Senebkay, who apparently ruled as part of a previously unknown dynasty based out of Abydos. This news has made it into the mainstream media, but I highly recommend reading the official Penn Museum announcement. A lot of the mainstream coverage has been sort of silly (such as this gem from the Daily Pennsylvanian: “Most tombs have unadorned walls, stripped of their decorations by ancient plunderers”.[note]Tomb walls were decorated with frescoes and carvings. Not exactly something a tomb robber would make off with![/note]).
As is so often the case, the tomb was plundered in antiquity, so there isn’t a lot of bling left. Poor Senebkay even suffered the indignity of having his mummy torn apart by grave robbers. Judging from the remains of his canopic chest (which had the name of a previous royal owner covered over with gilding!), it seems that his burial may have featured a lot of ‘recycled’ material.
Senebkay reigned c. 1650 BCE during a time scholars call Second Intermediate Period. The SIP was a time of political fragmentation and disorder, and we don’t really have a firm grasp of the chronology. Until now, Senebkay was pretty much unknown to history, though the Turin King List contains two fragmentary references to kings with similar throne names.
The Turin King List. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Although Senebkay styled himself ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’ in his tomb, he was probably little more than a local potentate whose domain was limited to Abydos and its environs. In his time, the Delta was under the control of foreign kings who belonged to a group called the Hyksos (a word that’s derived from the Egyptian Ḥq3-ḫ3st, or ‘Rulers of Foreign Lands’), while Thebes was ruled by a dynasty that would eventually expel the Hyksos and reunify Egypt. The presence of reused material suggests that he might have been comparatively poor, though it’s also possible that he simply died before he had time to acquire his own funerary equipment.
This discovery just goes to show that, despite all the advances that Egyptology has made over the past 200 years, there are still gaping lacunae in our understanding of Egyptian history.
The Demonology Project has come up with a cool way to promote themselves over the festive season: the Demon Advent Calendar. Each day, they’ll post a different Egyptian demon, and they’re certainly drawing from eclectic sources. Day 1 featured “He Who Drives Off Those Who Would Demolish” from the Book of Two Ways, while Day 2 featured an unnamed man-eating hippo demon from a magician’s wand in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This is a great example of how academic projects can engage with the public in a fun and interesting manner. One of my big gripes about the Academy is its tendency to ignore the little people outside the ivory tower, so I’m always happy when I see academics bucking that trend. I also like that the Demonology Project hasn’t felt the need to dumb things down. They provide just the right amount of info to get the point across without burying non-specialists in a bunch of extraneous details.
Now if only the Demon Advent Calendar came with chocolate… 🙂
One of the problems I’ve had to face when writing the Khamtir books is the issue of pharaonic names.
Egyptologists usually refer to a king by his birth name plus an ordinal number to differentiate him from similarly named kings (e.g. Ramesses II). This convention is also used in a lot of historical fiction set in ancient Egypt, but I’ve been reluctant to follow suit. For starters, it would cause confusion since the three kings who play a role in my novels would all be called ‘Ramesses.’ Also, there is an increasing amount of evidence that suggests that their reigns overlapped to some degree. In my books, I use the chronology proposed by Ad Thijs. He believes that the reigns of Ramesses IX and Ramesses XI may have overlapped, and when Ramesses IX died, Ramesses X replaced him on the throne and ruled alongside Ramesses XI for a brief period of time. Once Ramesses X was dead, Ramesses XI was finally in control of the entire country. Trying to use ordinals in these circumstances would be rather nonsensical.
The birth name (left) and throne name (right) of Tutankhamun. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Confusion aside, the ‘birth name plus ordinal’ system is also anachronistic. Although Egyptian kings had five names, their prenomen (also known as their ‘throne name’) and their nomen (also known as their ‘birth name’) were used the most. So the main pharaoh in my books, Ramesses XI, would have been known to his contemporaries as ‘Menmaatre – Setepenptah’ (which can be translated as ‘The Justice of Re Endures – Chosen of Ptah’) and ‘Ramesses – Khaemwaset – Meryamun – Netjerheqaiunu’ (which translates as ‘Re has fashioned him – He Appears in Waset – Beloved of Amun – Divine Ruler of Iunu’). It has been theorized that a king’s names served as a sort of ‘vision statement’ for his reign. Some kings even changed them as their reign wore on, perhaps to reflect changing circumstances.
When I need to refer to Ramesses XI in dialogue or narration, I use the first part of his throne name: ‘Menmaatre’ (though I may opt to use the abbreviated form ‘Menmare’ instead). It’s not difficult to pronounce, so it shouldn’t be a stumbling block to anyone. If I need to be very formal, I’ll add the second part (known as the epithet), but I decided to translate it in order to avoid overloading the reader with strange words. 🙂 I know of at least one author who actually translates the entire royal name, but in that case, the king was only mentioned in passing in a short story. Referring to ‘King The Justice of Re Endures’ throughout an entire novel would get old quickly!
Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently, a group of hackers forced the owners of Egyptological, an online publication dedicated to Egyptology, to take the site down after it came under sustained attack. Although no details have been confirmed, it’s been speculated that the hackers view Egyptology-related sites as “a form of political threat.”
This is one of those times where I feel like I’ve stumbled into Bizarro World. How on earth is an Egyptological journal a political threat? It discussed people and events that have been dead and done for millennia, for crying out loud! It’s hardly a hotbed of sedition.
What makes this doubly sad is that Egyptological was a neat project. It offered both a journal of original academic research and a magazine aimed at the general public. The best part is that both were available to everyone, free of charge. It was a great example of how the web can help spread academic knowledge beyond the confines of the ivory tower.
Fortunately, the people behind Egyptologicalhaven’t thrown in the towel. They’ve rebuilt the site with a new web host, and most of their back issues are available once more. Even better, they’re planning to come out with a new issue in the coming weeks. Let’s hope their troubles are finally at an end.
Ramesses III made headlines recently when a team of scientists revealed that a CT scan of his mummy indicated that his throat had been slashed.
The head of Ramesses’ mummy. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Egyptologists have long suspected that his reign might have ended in some form of skullduggery. Thanks to a remarkable set of papyri, we know that one of his junior queens, Tiye, tried to instigate a coup in order to place her son Pentawere on the throne. The conspiracy seems to have been quite wide-ranging, and it included a number of palace officials as well as a military officer from Nubia. Ultimately, they were tried by a special commission of judges, and most of the conspirators were either forced to commit suicide or executed.
Unfortunately, the trial records don’t say whether the plot against the king was successful. Until now, many Egyptologists believed that the king survived for at least a little while since the trial records imply that he was the one who ordered the judges to investigate the matter. But the forensic evidence makes it clear that he would have died almost instantly.
The scientists may also have identified the body of the luckless Prince Pentawere. Genetic testing revealed that the mummy known as Unknown Man E is probably a son of Ramesses III. Unknown Man E has long been a puzzle ever since he was discovered among the cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahri in the late 19th century. Found in an unmarked coffin, his body had been wrapped in sheepskin, which the Egyptian considered ritually impure. His body hadn’t been properly mummified, and his tortured expression suggested that he died in incredible agony. Recent examination of his mummy has found marks on his neck that could be evidence of strangulation (although we know Pentawere was condemned by the court, we don’t know how he actually met his end).
While none of this provides conclusive proof of Pentawere’s identity, the circumstantial evidence is certainly compelling. Though I do think it is curious that they bothered to save his body at all. Not only that, but they also took the time to move it to a safe place when the royal necropolis was dismantled in the 21st dynasty. I would have thought that regicide would be so awful that they would have wanted to destroy his body so that he couldn’t have any kind of afterlife. Then again, since he didn’t receive a proper burial and there was nothing to perpetuate his name, his posthumous existence would have been a bleak one!
If you’re looking for a good book about ancient Egyptian religion, you should pick up Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods by Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks. It’s not new, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now. And I’m sure glad I did: it’s probably one of the best general reference books I’ve ever read.
Originally published in French, the book treats the Egyptian gods as if they were an ethnic group being studied by anthropologists. At first, I thought that sounded like a gimmick, but it’s a surprisingly effective approach. But where the book really shines is its use of primary sources. The authors draw upon some very obscure texts, which allows them to provide a level of detail that you rarely see in general reference works. Unfortunately, many of these texts are only available as hard-to-find French translations, so accessing them can be almost impossible unless you can consult a dedicated Egyptological collection and are reasonably proficient at reading French. But thanks to this book, the general English-speaking public can at least get a glimpse of them.
Codex Lochianus 