Days of the Pharaohs

Ancient Egypt Remedies for helping women in childbirth

2011-10-29T08:00:00.000+01:00

Ancient Egypt Remedies for helping women in childbirth

In real life, Egyptian midwives seem to have used both medical and magical methods to speed up labour. Medical remedies included swallowing a mixture of honey and fenugreek, or a vaginal suppository whose ingredients included incense, beer and fly dung. Spells of the second millennium BC for helping women in childbirth involve a variety of magical techniques, most of them similar to those used for treating diseases and minor accidents.

Identification with deities is often at the centre of these spells. The person helping the mother sometimes takes the role of Horus.

This could indicate that the helper was a male doctor, but cross-sexual identification is quite common in funerary literature and may have been in everyday magic too. The parturient woman is normally identified with either Isis or Hathor. In myth, Isis gave birth to a posthumous son after an unusually prolonged pregnancy. This made her an obvious model for women suffering from a long and difficult labour. One spell describes the trials of Isis and threatens the gods with cosmic disaster if they do not allow both Horus and the child of the human mother to be born.

In a spell from the same collection (Papyrus Leiden 1348), the patient is identified with Hathor. The last line of the spell affirms that it is Hathor, Mistress of Dendera, who is giving birth.

This refrain was probably chanted over and over again, giving psychological support to the mother.

Another of these spells depicts Horus comforting a distraught husband whose pregnant wife has cried out for a dwarf statue made of clay. Horus knows that this 'amulet of health' is to be fetched from Hathor, Mistress of Dendera. The dwarf is almost certainly Bes, who features prominently in the two Birth Houses attached to the Hathor temple at Dendera

A spell to 'bring down' the womb or the placenta, is to be said four times over a dwarf of clay tied to the suffering woman's head. The spell says that the 'good dwarf is sent to assist at the birth by Ra himself.

It is quite likely that dwarf amulets were obtainable from the Hathor temple at Dendera. Large quantities of votive objects were manufactured there for dedication in the temple during the mid-second millennium BC. Visitors may also have been able to procure the protection of the goddess and her helpers by buying amulets to take home with them.

Some columns of the Graeco-Roman Period temple at Dendera bear deep grooves. These were probably made to obtain particles of stone from the sacred fabric which could be drunk in water or incorporated in amulets. The crypts of the present temple are still visited by local women who desire to have children. Hathor, Lady of Dendera, retains a reputation for helping women with fertility problems some 1700 years after her cult is supposed to have died out.

The oracular decrees worn as amulets were also obtained from temples

A decree by Min and Isis promises the wearer that she will conceive healthy male and female children and that she will have an easy and joyful delivery. In another decree, a triad of gods undertakes to protect the wearer from miscarriage, from having twins, which was regarded as unlucky or particularly hazardous, and from any death or sickness while giving birth.

Love, sex and birth in Ancient Egypt Papyrus

2011-10-29T07:58:00.000+01:00

Love, sex and birth in Ancient Egypt Papyrus

Two curious fertility figurines from tombs at Beni Hassan are made of knotted string.

They were probably the physical component of spells involving the tying of magical knots. One seventeenth century BC pottery fertility figurine has an iron ring fitted tightly around its thighs.

Iron was a rare material at this date and the ring is almost certainly a magical binding device. The purpose of this charm may have been to prevent miscarriage by keeping the womb closed until the baby was due.

Alternatively, this figurine could be the relic of a malicious act of magic.

The iron ring might be there to prevent someone from giving birth easily. Without knowing what words were spoken to activate the figurine, its purpose must remain ambiguous.

As the time for the birth approached, the expectant mother was isolated from the rest of the household, or at least from its adult males.

One spell for 'hastening birth' summons Hathor to bring the sweet north wind to the pavilion in which the birth is taking place. Painted ostraca show women suckling children in an airy pavilion whose columns are wreathed with columbine or bryony

This is a specially constructed 'House of Birth'. Temples of the first millennium

BC have stone versions of these temporary structures. These Mammesi or Birth Houses were shrines to celebrate the birth of a god.

Many urban Egyptians will not have had the space to construct a garden pavilion, so part of the house had to be set aside for women and children. Some of the houses in the workmen's village at el-Amarna had an upper room decorated with protective figures of Bes and Taweret.

In the artisans' village at Deir el-Medina, many houses had a room with a bed-shaped altar and wall paintings showing naked women, Bes and Taweret. The outer areas of temple Birth Houses are decorated with the same apotropaic figures used in household magic.

In Papyrus Westcar, the sun god Ra sends five deities to assist a woman called Rudjedet to give birth to triplets who are destined to be rulers of Egypt. Isis, Nephthys, the frog goddess Heqet, and the birth goddess Meskhenet disguise themselves as dancers.

The ram god Khnum accompanies them as their porter. The deities' first act is to close or seal the room in which the birth is to take place. This probably echoes the standard practice of creating a protective zone around the mother. It also insulated the rest of the household from the demons and ghosts who might be attracted by the danger and pollution of childbirth.

The expectant mother was probably naked except for her protective amulets. Her hair might be bound up in the way depicted on some fertility figurines and birth arbour ostraca

Like the figurines, the ostraca were probably intended to promote a successful birth by showing the image of the desired 'happy event'. Many of the figurines have a cone of scented fat surmounting the hair. The application of such a cone seems to be mentioned in a birth spell of around the sixteenth century BC.

The woman sat on a birthing stool, or squatted braced against two or four 'birth bricks'. She was attended by female relatives and perhaps by a midwife. Little is known about the status of midwives.

They may have been local 'wise women'; women given the title of'nurse'; or members of a musical troupe of Hathor or one of the other goddesses associated with love, sex and birth.

In Papyrus Wesfcar, Rudjedet's husband seems to recognize the four goddesses as potential midwives because they are carrying the menit necklaces and sistra that are the insignia of dancers or priestesses of Hathor.

Spells sometimes refer to four protective goddesses who are linked with the four birth bricks. In Papyrus Westcar, Meskhenet probably transforms herself into the birth bricks or birth chair, while Isis places herself before the mother and Nephthys behind her. Heqet 'hastens the birth', perhaps by the recitation of spells.

Ancient Egypt Magic therapy techniques to enjoying sex and orgasm

2011-10-21T09:00:00.002+01:00

AncientEgyptMagic therapy techniques to enjoying sex and orgasm

One case is described in detail on a funerary stela ofthe first century BC

The Lady Taimhotep was married at the age offourteen to the High Priest of Ptah at Memphis.She bore him three daughters but the couple wanted a son. They prayed togetherto the deified Imhotep

The god appeared to the High Priest in a dreamand promised that he should have a son if he refurbished the sanctuary ofImhotep's temple. The High Priest carried out the work and made offerings.Imhotep caused Taimhotep to conceive a male child, who was named after the god.She died four years later at the age of thirty.

Earlier in time, the major deities of thestate-run temples were not so accessible. Women prayed to the traditionaldeities of household shrines, such as Taweret and Hathor. Appeals for helpmight also be made to the family ancestors. Some Letters to the Dead of thelate third and early second millennia BC ask for the birth of children, orspecifically for a son.

Such pleas might also be inscribed on figurinesof a naked woman holding a child. These figurines would have been placed in theouter areas of tombs. The dead were probably being asked to intercede with thegreat gods, rather than to make things happen through their own powers. Oneinscribed figurine asks for 'a birth for your daughter'.

To reinforce the request, the figurine is inthe form of the desired outcome — a young mother or nurse with a thrivingchild.

These 'fertility figurines', which were used atmost periods of Egyptian history, can be made in stone, pottery, faience orwood.

The woman is usually naked except for amuleticjewellery such as cowrie-shell girdles and Horus falcon or crescent moonpendants. Some figures also display amuletic tattoos or body paintings. Aminority have brightly-patterned dresses of the kind worn by priestesses anddancers who served the cult of Hathor.

The genitals may be shown below the dress to emphasizethe sexuality of these figures.

In some examples of the second millennium BC,the lower legs are omitted

This could either be to curtail the figurine'spower to leave a tomb, or because it was thought important to include only the partsof the body needed for the conception and rearing of children.

The woman sometimes suckles or holds a child,or is lying on a model bed with a baby beside her. The baby may be female ormale, since children of both sexes were desired to make up the ideal Egyptianfamily.

Fertility figurines have been found in bothchild and adult, male and female burials, and in the outer areas of familytombs.

They were also kept in house shrines. In thesecond millennium BC they were dedicated in temples to Hathor, and in the firstmillennium BC to Isis. Placing the figurinesin the vicinity of a higher power, such as a deity or a transfigured spirit,charged them with heka to act as fertility charms at all stages from conceptionto the rearing of infants.

Ancient Egypt Magic therapy techniques to sexual turmoil

2011-10-21T08:59:00.000+01:00

AncientEgyptMagic therapy techniquesto sexual turmoil

The arrival of the beloved acts like an amulet (wedja) and restores the young man to health. Inanother poem from the same papyrus (ChesterBeatty /), the young man complainsthat the girl has lassoed him with her hair, caught him with her eye,restrained him with her necklace and branded him with her seal. These metaphorsare all equivalent to magical techniques.

Many cultures have thought the ability of awoman to throw a man into sexual turmoil to be akin to sorcery. This may partlyexplain the aggressive tone of some love charms directed at women. A raresecond millennium BC example has already been mentioned

With this spell the woman is to be reduced tofollowing the man like a cow follows her calf. Love charms are very common inthe Graeco-Egyptian papyri

Even those written in Greek involve Egyptiandeities. Isis was regarded as the paradigm offaithful love. Spells promise to make a woman love the client as devotedly as Isis loved Osiris. If the woman in question was alreadymarried, or fond of someone else, the spell would make her hate her presentpartner as fiercely as Isis hated Seth.

In some spells from the Graeco-Egyptian papyri,the procedure ends with the magician or his client anointing his penis with aspecially prepared ointment and having intercourse with the woman.

Since the couple are already sleeping together,the primary purpose of the spell is to keep the woman faithful. The client canthen be sure that he is the father of any children she may bear.

Under Egyptian law a man was obliged to dividehis property between the children of his wife, so marital fidelity was an issueof financial as well as emotional importance.

Some funerary spells promise that a man will beable to have sex with his wife and beget children after death.

Spell 576 of The Coffin Texts is a more generalspell for enjoying sex in the afterlife. The rubric to the spell suggests thatit may have been adapted from an 'aphrodisiac' used in life.

The spell is to be spoken over an amuletic beadof carnelian or amethyst placed on the man's right arm. The wording of thespell implies that not only will the man be able to have intercourse as oftenas he wants, but that he will always give his partneran orgasm.

Magico-medical texts from the twentieth centuryBC down to the fourth century AD contain herbal remedies for impotence and proceduresto test a woman's ability to conceive. Comparatively few spells that promise tomake a woman conceive are recorded.

It may have been felt that only a deity couldcreate life in the womb. From at least the fifteenth century BC, childlesswomen or couples are known to have visited temples to pray for help.

The most important ancient Egypt books4/10

2011-05-16T15:31:00.000+01:00

The most important ancient Egypt books4/10

After many hard days of search and research for most important and unique information included in ancient

Egypt

available books we found only 10 books we can tell you that we trust this will be helpful and trustable to reading in

The Tutankhamun Affair

At the beginning of the 20th century, a young unknown pharoah remained, beneath his golden mask, in the darkness of a tomb deep in the Valley of the Kings. His name was Tutankhamun.

He had lain undisturbed for a thousand years until two men, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, discovered the tomb and wrested him from obscurity in an attempt to solve his riddle.

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Christian Jacq tells the incredible true story of the strange curse of Tutankhamen which was to cause havoc among its unfortunate victims for the next half-century.

The most important ancient Egypt books3/10

2011-05-16T15:29:00.000+01:00

The most important ancient Egypt books3/10

After many hard days of search and research for most important and unique information included in ancient

Egypt

available books we found only 10 books we can tell you that we trust this will be helpful and trustable to reading in

Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt

This book is not intented as a general public introduction to the religion of ancient

Egypt

and that's why many newcomers in Egyptology became dissapointed or were at a lost. The speech of the author is not easy to follow if one is not well embebed into the ancient system of thought. None the less, there are plentiful of original research in this book that I should recommend it to anyone who wants to get deeper into Egyptian mythology.

Clark did touch on a good amount of details that were interesting and helpful about the religion of ancient

egypt

, I had a problem with his writing style. It can get convoluted and unclear at times, going back and forth frequently on a topic, and cutting to the next idea rather bluntly.

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In other words, he'll be talking about a specific subject and all of a sudden, the next paragraph will be on something new with hardly any transition, much less a smooth one. The first few chapters are the worst "mumbo-jumbo," which can make it a little hard and frustrating to get into the book (something any author would want to avoid, I'm sure). I realize the religion itself is one of the most complicated religions, but I'm convinced there has to be a better/ simpler way to explain its myths to beginners. However, if you don't mind re-reading some things and taking notes, the book should be a good addition to your reading list, but ONLY as an addition.

The most important ancient Egypt books2/10

2011-05-16T15:27:00.000+01:00

The most important ancient Egypt books2/10

After many hard days of search and research for most important and unique information included in ancient

Egypt

available books we found only 10 books we can tell you that we trust this will be helpful and trustable to reading in

The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife

Ancient Egyptians held a rich and complex vision of the afterlife and codified their beliefs in books that were to be discovered more than two millennia later in royal tombs. Erik Hornung, the world's leading authority on these religious texts, surveys what is known about them today.

The contents of the texts range from the collection of spells in the Book of the Dead, which was intended to offer practical assistance on the journey to the afterlife, to the detailed accounts of the hereafter provided in the Books of the Netherworld. Hornung looks closely at these latter works, while summarizing the contents of the Book of the Dead and other widely studied examples of the genre.

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For each composition, he discusses the history of its ancient transmission and its decipherment in modern times, supplying bibliographic information for any text editions. He also seeks to determine whether this literature as a whole presents a monolithic conception of the afterlife. The volume features many drawings from the books themselves--drawings that illustrate the nocturnal course of the sun god through the realm of the dead. Originally published in German and now available in a fluid English translation, this volume offers an accessible and enlightening introduction to a central element of ancient Egyptian religion.

The most important ancient Egypt books1/10

2011-05-16T15:25:00.000+01:00

The most important ancient Egypt books1/10

After many hard days of search and research for most important and unique information included in ancient Egypt available books we found only 10 books we can tell you that we trust this will be helpful and trustable to reading in

Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt

John Anthony West's revolutionary reinterpretation of the civilization of Egypt challenges all that has been accepted as dogma concerning Ancient Egypt. In this pioneering study West documents that: Hieroglyphs carry hermetic messages that convey the subtler realities of the Sacred Science of the Pharaohs.

Egyptian science, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy were more sophisticated than most modern Egyptologists acknowledge. Egyptian knowledge of the universe was a legacy from a highly sophisticated civilization that flourished thousands of years ago. The great Sphinx represents geological proof that such a civilization existed.

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This revised edition includes a new introduction linking Egyptian spiritual science with the perennial wisdom tradition and an appendix updating West's work in redating the Sphinx. Illustrated with over 140 photographs and line drawings.

Ancient Egypt Fertility Magic guide

2011-05-13T21:56:00.000+01:00

Ancient Egypt Fertility Magic guide

Block from a tomb at Giza, c. 2300 BC. In the middle of a procession of female dancers and young boys stands a figure masked like Bes who holds a scourge and a hand-shaped wand. This unusual scene has variously been interpreted as a puberty ritual, a harvest festival, or a protective rite.

In Egyptian religion, the fertility of animals and crops was chiefly associated with male deities, such as Osiris, Amun-Min and the earth god Geb, but human fertility was more the domain of goddesses, such as Hathor, Isis, and Heqet. A snake goddess called Renenutet was linked to both human and crop fertility'.

Renenutet is often shown suckling a divine or royal child and was revered as 'the nourisher of children'. She was also the 'Lady of Granaries'. Renenutet was honoured in shrines set up in granaries and in the fields at harvest time.

Agricultural fertility, especially the production of cereal crops, was one of the main concerns of the state religion. The blessing of the gods was asked on the fields, and the first fruits of the harvest seem to have been offered in local temples. The king took part in rites to make the Nile rise and the crops grow. The state cults included gods such as Min and Amun-Min whose festivals promoted both crop and animal fertility.

In the early third millennium BC, an ithyphallic statue of Min was yearly carried out of his temple to tour and bless the fields.

This ceremony was later reduced to a symbolic visit to a temple lettuce garden.1 If this was a general pattern, it seems that the agricultural rites of the state cults became increasingly remote from the peasants who actually worked in the fields.

The peasant farmers must have turned to beliefs and practices of their own. In this area, magic and religion are particularly hard to separate.

In the vicinity' of Akhmim, where the god Min had his ancient cult centre, crude phallic figurines are still set up in fields.

This custom is likely to go back to ancient times and the figures may be derived from the ithyphallic image of Min. They are probably used today because their sexuality is thought to stimulate crop growth and because an erect penis is thought to frighten away the afrits who threaten crops.

Some Egyptian paintings of the sixteenth—fourteenth centuries BC show objects resembling 'corn-dollies' in reaping and threshing scenes.

In modern Egypt, these objects are known as 'corn-brides'. They are plaited in traditional shapes from the first corn of the harvest.

After being placed on the winnowed heaps of grain, they are hung up in houses and shops to bring good luck and prosperity until the next harvest.

The Ancient Egyptian 'corn-brides' were probably used in a similar way.

Only a few spells relating to crop production have survived. This isprobably because most of the magic used by peasants in the fields belonged to an oral tradition. The rubric to one short spell describes how to set up a 'scarecrow' consisting of a cake stuck on a branch.

The words summon Horus to frighten off plundering birds. Two spells to be cast over a field invoke a group of deities, including a divine herdsman, the Canaanite god Hawron, to protect cattle from attacks by wild animals.

Funerary stela of Taimhotep, wife of the High Priest of Ptah at Memphis, 1st century BC. The inscription relates how she and her husband prayed to the god Imhotep for a son. She is shown (top right) adoring six deities: Sokar-Osiris, Apis-Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Horus and Anubis.

Spells to help and protect animals are better attested than those concerned with crops. A veterinary papyrus of around 1900 BC is mainly concerned with diseases of cattle. Its remedies are chiefly of a practical nature, but herdsmen seem to have had something of a reputation for magic. A story in which a chief herdsman meets a goddess or demon beside a lake refers to the herders' knowledge of 'water charms'. Simple spells for getting cattle safely across water and 'warding off the crocodile by the herdsmen' are recorded in some tombs of the third millennium

BC.

Tomb scenes which show cattle being taken across a canal can include a figure making a special protective hand gesture.

The gesture some-rimes has a caption explaining 'This is protection'. It is also made in scenes of animals giving birth

In desert hunting scenes of the late third and early second millennia BC, the same gesture is made by the man handling the hunting dogs. In each case, the gesture seems intended to protect animals in time of crisis. The hand gesture was no doubt reinforced by a simple spoken formula. Amulets based on this gesture were worn in the third millennium BC, so it was used to protect humans in crisis too.

An enigmatic tomb relief featuring a masked-figure with a hand- shaped wand may show a rite to protect children at the crisis-point of puberty. The masked figure, who is holding a scourge as well as a hand-wand, is probably playing the role of the lion-dwarf later known as Aha or Bes. A few canvas Bes masks have survived

The person playing Bes stands in the middle of a group of dancing children.

He is shown as the same size as the children, but may have been an adult dwarf. First in line come girls wearing kilts and long pigtails. Next are five naked boys waving sticks or plants of some kind

At the end of the row a group of boys is trying to escape from a hut.

This hut game has been interpreted as a puberty ritual, similar to those found in some recent African cultures.

The scene has also been viewed as the prelude to a circumcision ceremony. The circumcision of young men is shown in a few tombs of this period. Others assume that there must be a connection with the reaping scene immediately below and identify the event as a fertility dance taking place during a harvest festival.

These ideas need not be contradictory. The protection of children and crops were both in the sphere of the harvest goddess, Renenutet. A ceremony to prepare boys for life as sexually mature adults could well have been planned to coincide with harvest time.

The fertility of crops, animals, and humans were of equal and inter- locking importance.

The ancient Egyptian peasant hoped that his fields would produce enough crops to feed his family, that his livestock would reproduce themselves to provide meat, milk and working animals, and that he would have enough sturdy children to help work his land and look after him in old age. These were literally matters of life and death to the poorest sector of the population.

Most official Egyptian texts play down the importance of the family and emphasize the role of king and state in caring for everyone.

In reality, ancient Egypt was not a welfare state and the family was a vital economic unit. Instruction Texts mention the moral duty to look after dependent relatives and the importance and prestige of having many children.

The artisans at Deir el-Medina, who lived in a community which was supported by the state to a remarkable degree, gave great prominence to fertility deities, symbols and amulets in their homes.

In agricultural communities, human fertility is likely to have assumed even greater importance. Even the poorest peasant would probably have tried to purchase magical assistance in the crisis of infertility.

Nowadays, we tend to think of infertility in terms of failure to conceive, or to carry a child to term. In ancient times, death in childbirth and infant mortality were even greater threats to fertility.

Human fertility encompassed the successful conception, birth and rearing of children.

Much effort was directed at achieving this goal.

According to Clement of Alexandria, one of the six books of medicine kept in Egyptian temples dealt with gynaecological problems. This is confirmed by the fact that a surprisingly high proportion of all the surviving magic medical papyri either include, or consist of, gynaecology and obstetrics.

The oldest such collection dates to around the nineteenth century BC.

The magico-medical papyri contain pregnancy tests and remedies for impotence, sterility, miscarriage and difficult labour, as well as spells to promote milk supply and protect newborn babies. Even family planning is included, which fits with the general concern for the health of the mother shown in these papyri.

The threats to human fertility mentioned in the magico-medical papyri are of four kinds. The first is natural causes; that is, anything not attributed to a specific supernatural being or force.

Failure to conceive and difficult labour are often mentioned without any cause being given.

The second threat is from deities and demons. Among deities, Seth was associated with miscarriage and abortion. Many demons were held to be dangerous to a pregnant woman or a small child. One spell is designed to prevent a female demon from creeping in at night and kissing a young child.

The implication is that the demon's kiss would kill the child. The third threat is from the dead

One spell promises to control any male or female dead person who might give a woman mastitis and prevent her from feeding her child. Female ghosts seem to have been particularly feared. It may be that women who had died in childbirth, or without having any children, were thought to be jealous of successful births.

The fourth source of threat is ill-disposed living persons. Foreign sorcerers and sorceresses are listed as potential dangers, but it is some-times explained that they are demons in disguise.

A few spells mention protection against any noble or common women who might harm a newborn child. It is not certain whether this refers to female ghosts, to demons masquerading as humans or to ordinary women who possessed the Evil Eye. In modern Egypt and

Sudan

, protection from the Evil Eye is one of the main reasons given for keeping a mother and child in isolation for up to forty days after the birth.

A supernatural threat called for a response that invoked or manipulated supernatural powers. For problems which seem to be attributed to natural causes, a range of options was available.

One might be described as the 'medical option'. Herbal remedies, such as taking honey and fenugreek to 'loosen a child in the womb', were often resorted to.

Practices such as testing a woman's fertility by placing a cut onion in her vagina and then trying to smell it on her breath may sound bizarre, but were based on what the Egyptians believed to be the facts of anatomy.

They thought that in a fertile woman there was a link between the mouth and the 'open womb'.

As well as the medical option, there were the 'religious' and the 'magical options'. These are often difficult to distinguish.

The religious option involved supplication to a deity, and perhaps a visit to a temple and the dedication of offerings.

The magical option might also involve deities and lesser supernatural beings, but treated them in a different way.

Divisions between religion, magic and medicine which seem obvious to us would not necessarily have been meaningful to ancient Egyptians.

It was not essential to choose only one of these options.

Many Egyptians will have utilized the resources of religion, magic and medicine during their attempt to raise a family.

Most marriages in ancient Egypt were probably arranged between the parents of the young couple. However, the sexes were not strictly segregated and some marriages seem to have been based on mutual attraction.

Several anthologies of love poetry survive from the later second millennium BC. In these poems the lovesick often appeal to the goddess Hathor to grant them their beloved.

The favour of this goddess is obtained by prayer and offerings in the conventional religious manner, but magic is also mentioned. In the poems, the power of love is compared with the power of heka.

A poem written on a pot (Cairo Vase) describes how a young girl's love acts as a water-charm to keep her suitor safe as he swims across a crocodile-infested river to meet her. A poem on papyrus describes lovesickness as a condition that doctors and magicians are powerless to cure.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS George Andrew Reisner (1867–1942)

2011-05-12T03:48:00.000+01:00

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS George Andrew Reisner (1867–1942)

A leading twentieth-century archaeologist, Reisner, an American, excavated at Giza where he uncovered the Old Kingdom nobles’ tombs, the Valley Temple in Mycerinus’s pyramid complex, and the intact tomb of Queen Hetepheres. He also led the Archaeological Survey of Nubia (1907–1908), established a basis for Nubian prehistory, and explored the pyramids and sites in the Sudan, thus expanding knowledge of the Kushite rulers who conquered Egypt in Dynasty

He worked at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, and later held the professorship of Egyptology at Harvard University (1914–1942). He was also curator of Egyptian antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942)

2011-05-12T03:47:00.000+01:00

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942)

Petrie, who received no formal education, was taught surveying and geometry by his father.

He ﬁrst visited Egypt in 1880 to survey the Great Pyramid at Giza and then excavated for the Egypt Exploration Fund from 1884 to 1886. His considerable talent and ability were recognized by the novelist Amelia B. Edwards, one of the founders of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now known as the Egypt Exploration Society).

She endowed the ﬁrst chair in Egyptology in Britain, which was held by Petrie from 1892 until 1933.

Petrie developed the principles of scientiﬁc archaeology and made many famous discoveries, including the existence of a predynastic culture in Egypt, the royal jewelry of the Middle Kingdom, and Tell el-Amarna, the capital city of King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV).

Petrie was the author of more than 1,000 books, reviews, and articles.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Giuseppe Passalacqua (1797–1865)

2011-05-12T03:45:00.000+01:00

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Giuseppe Passalacqua (1797–1865)

Born in Italy, Passalacqua became an excavator and a collector after an unsuccessful stint as a horse dealer, the business that had originally taken him to Egypt. His excavations at Deir el-Bahri, on the west bank of Thebes (Luxor), from

1822 to 1825, revealed the tombs of priests and priestesses of Amun.

When he offered to sell his collection, drawn from Thebes and other sites, to the French government, it was rejected, but most of it was then acquired by Frederick William IV, ruler of Prussia, for Berlin’s Egyptian Museum. Passalacqua became conservator of the Egyptian collections at the Berlin museum in 1828 and spent the rest of his life there, organizing the material he had excavated.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Gaston-Camille-Charles Maspero (1846–1916)

2011-05-11T10:40:00.002+01:00

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Gaston-Camille-Charles Maspero (1846–1916)

A French Egyptologist of Italian parentage, Maspero ﬁrst led an archaeological expedition to Egypt in 1880. The next year, he succeeded Auguste Mariette as director of both the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the National Antiqui-ties Service. He further developed Mariette’s work, expanding the excavation and temple restoration programs and continuing the organization and cataloging of the collections in the Cairo museum.

He is particularly noted for publishing the ﬁrst edition of funerary spells known as the Pyramid Texts.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS François-Auguste-Ferdinand Mariette (1821–1881)

2011-05-11T10:39:00.002+01:00

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS François-Auguste-Ferdinand Mariette (1821–1881)

Mariette became professor of Egyptology in Boulogne, France, in 1843 and ﬁrst went to Egypt in 1850 in order to obtain manuscripts for the Louvre in Paris. On this visit, he became interested in archaeology and made the spectacular discoveries at Saqqara that launched his career as an excavator. In total, he uncovered some 7,000 principal monuments.

He persuaded the Egyptian ruler, Sa‘id Pasha, to establish the world’s first National

Antiquities Service and a national museum, and became director of both institutions.

This first museum became the nucleus of the purpose-built Egyptian Museum in Cairo (opened in 1902), where in 1904, as a mark of honor, Mariette’s own sarcophagus was eventually moved to a final resting place in the forecourt. His career marked the end of indiscriminate treasure seeking, and he is credited with establishing the basis of modern archaeology in Egypt.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Walter Bryan Emery (1903–1971)

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NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Walter Bryan Emery (1903–1971)

Inspired as a youngster by public lectures given in Liverpool, England, by the Egyptologist John Garstang (1876–1956), Emery ﬁrst went to Egypt in 1923. He became the director of excavation at North Saqqara in 1935 and there under- took one of his major projects, the almost complete excavation of the site’s Dynasty 1 cemetery.

This was of great signiﬁcance because until then, only William M. Flinders Petrie and Emile Amélineau (1850–1916) had carried out any major studies of this important period. Emery’s work revealed new information about the art, architecture, and technology of these early times.

He was appointed to the Edwards Professor-ship at University College London in 1951. As ﬁeld director of the Egypt Exploration Society, he resumed excavations in the Archaic necropolis at Saqqara in 1952. In 1964, he began an unsuccessful search for the tomb of Imhotep, architect of the Step Pyramid, but discovered a series of vast catacombs that contained the burials of thousands of mummiﬁed animals.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Bernardino Michele Maria Drovetti (1776–1852)

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NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Bernardino Michele Maria Drovetti (1776–1852)

An Italian diplomat who fought in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army in Italy, Drovetti rose to become French consul general in Egypt (1811–1814). An interest in Egyptology led him to build up an impressive collection of antiquities, employing local agents to excavate sites or purchase objects from other excavators.

His ﬁrst collection, rejected by the king of France, was bought instead by the king of Sardinia and entered the Egyptian Museum of Turin. His second collection was bought for the Louvre in Paris, and Berlin’s Egyptian Museum acquired his third collection.

Difficult and sometimes unscrupulous, Drovetti was often in conﬂict with the contemporary collector Henry Salt, whose agent, Belzoni, managed to remove part of a massive statue of Ramesses II from Luxor to the British Museum in London, despite the attempts of Drovetti’s agents to foil the plan.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Howard Carter (1874–1939)

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NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Howard Carter (1874–1939)

An English artist who received his archaeological training from William M. Flinders Petrie, Carter ﬁrst worked in

Egypt

in 1891.

He was engaged at various sites by the Egypt Exploration Fund, and from 1904, he supervised Theodore Davis’s excavations in the Valley of the Kings. In 1909, he began to work in the Theban necropolis for Lord Carnarvon, and from 1917, he explored the Valley of the Kings on behalf of his patron, searching for an intact royal tomb. He was unsuccessful until November 1922 when he discovered the virtually complete tomb belonging to King Tutankhamun.

Carter and his team took ten years to prepare, pack, and transport the spectacular tomb contents to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823)

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NOTABLE ARCHAEOLOGISTS Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823)

An Italian sailor who traveled to England where he became a weight lifter at Sadler’s

Wells Theatre in London, Belzoni also designed hydraulic displays for public entertainment in

England

Later, on his travels in Europe, he was encouraged to take his expertise to

Egypt

to construct irrigation equipment.

Although this venture was unsuccessful, he came to the notice of the diplomat and collector of antiquities, Henry Salt, who employed him to augment his collection.

Belzoni enjoyed a spectacular and successful career as an archaeological excavator. Among the important monuments he discovered was the Tomb of Sethos I. A full-scale reproduction of two of the tomb chambers, a large model of the complete tomb, and associated antiquities were displayed to the public in the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, in 1821.

A controversial excavator, with scant regard for careful methodology, Belzoni nevertheless made some notable discoveries that entered major museum collections in Europe. His talent for publicity also introduced Egyptology to a new, wider audience.

How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 7/7

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How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 7/7

Gold cylindrical pendant with granular decoration, c. 1900—1800

BC. These containers were used to hold written amulets or small objects used in protective rituals.

Amulets continued to be extremely popular with the living and the dead while

Egypt

was under Greek rule. These amulets are purely Egyptian in type but are found in a greater range of materials. Some of the finest specimens are in glass

In Roman Egypt, precious and semi-precious stones were frequently used to make amulets and many foreign motifs were introduced

Written amulets, in a variety of languages, were very popular. Some were long and complex; others consisted of a few divine names.

A simple anti-headache remedy was to write the sacred name Abrasax on a piece of red parchment and apply it like a plaster to the head. Abrasax or Abraxas is a common divine name on amuletic gemstones.

He was a solar deity found in Gnostic texts and is usually depicted with snakes for feet and the head of a cock. Many other divine beings from a whole range of cultures appear on these gems

These gems might be used on their own or set in jewellery. Some spells in the Graeco-Egyptian papyri describe the procedures for dedicating an amuletic ring. An amulet had to be 'consecrated' like a holy statue.

A ring for gaining success and favour was to be made with a heliotrope engraved with a device of a scarab shown inside a snake swallowing its own tail. This snake is known as Ouroboros and was symbol of totality. The names of the divine scarab and snake were to be written in hieroglyphs on the reverse of the stone.

The consecration involved reciting a complex invocation to Egyptian, Greek and Jewish deities. This was to be done three times a day for fourteen days, while pouring libations and perfumes. On the last day a black cock was to be sacrificed and cut open and the engraved gem left inside it for twenty-four hours. All this would finally result in the amuletic gem being 'made alive'.

The Graeco-Egyptian papyri also describe the type of temporary amulet to be worn by a magician during dangerous rites. A complex spell for invoking and controlling a deity advises the magician to take a linen cloth from a temple statue of Harpocrates. This may mean a piece of linen soaked in water poured over a Horus cippus or other magical temple statue.

The magician was to write on the cloth in myrrh ink a formula which identified him with Horus. Then he must take a long-lasting herb, roll the cloth round it, and tie it seven times with threads of Anubis.

This amulet was to be worn around the neck during the rite to protect the magician's whole body.

In a Demotic spell to summon the dead, it is the child medium who is protected by an amulet consisting of four white, four green, four blue, and four red threads woven into a band. This was stained with the blood of a hoopoe and attached to a winged scarab wrapped in fine linen.

Amuletic bracelets of multicoloured threads are still worn in Egypt today. A knotted leather string with a few scarabs and shapeless amulets may not look impressive sitting in a museum case, but it could be the only tangible remains of a complex rite.

How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 6/7

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How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 6/7

Necklace from a burial at Hu, c. 2000—1800 BC. Among the amethyst and carnelian beads are several amulets, including two small hippopotamus heads in

felspar and a carnelian snake's head pendant.

The amulet may be linked to menstrual blood and its place in the creation of human life. Spell mentions the power of the blood of Isis, but promises general protection for the deceased. The spell is to be said over a red jasper tyet amulet anointed with the sap of a particular herb, strung on a pith cord, and placed at the throat of the deceased. The magic of Isis will then protect his limbs and the ways through the underworld will be open to him. The text ends with a warning that the spell should be kept secret and a promise that it really works. Such endorsements are common in the magico-medical papyri.

Spell, for protecting the deceased in the bark of the sun god, claims to be a very secret text originally written by Thoth for Osiris.

This text, which may have been adapted from a temple ritual, was to be copied in ink made from myrrh and burned tamarisk onto a strip of the finest linen. This was to be placed as an amulet at the throat of the deceased. Written amulets have occasionally been discovered on mummies dating from the first millennium BC. A scrap of papyrus inscribed with a spell from The Book of the Dead was found at the throat of a High Priest of Amun buried at Thebes.

The use of divine decrees as amulets is peculiar to the late second/early first millennia BC. These decrees were issued in the name of deities who gave oracles

When a child was born, a god or goddess might be asked to declare its fate in life.

The result was recorded in writing. The papyrus was rolled up and placed in an amulet case or bag to be worn by the recipient. The children named in the decrees are more often female than male, which fits the general pattern of woman needing amulets more than men.

The surviving divine decrees are all similar in wording and uniformly favourable.

The child is promised long life, good health and ample possessions. Such things might be requested of a god in any religious text, but the amuletic decrees also portray the dark and dangerous aspects of the Egyptian pantheon. They promise to protect the child against harmful manifestations of deities such as Isis and Thoth, as well as against demons, foreign sorcerers and the Evil Eye.

Particularly dreaded were Sekhmet and her son Nefertem. The amuletic decrees claimed to be able help their owners to cheat fate. Any divine messengers coming to kill or injure the owner of the amulet would be persuaded or tricked into attacking a substitute.

Among the favours promised by the divine oracles is the provision of sa amulets. One decree for a boy from the Memphis area promises an amulet to protect his body on any kind of journey. Another decree, probably from Thebes, promises a girl sa amulets for her physical protection. Amulets could probably be bought from temple workshops and blessed by the gods to charge them with divine heka.

An Instruction Text of the late first millennium BC (Papyrus Insinger) avers that amulets and spells only work through the hidden power of god acting in the world.

Figures of deities, divine symbols and objects used in temple rituals dominate the amulets of the later first millennium BC

The bizarre composite deities illustrated in magical papyri also occur in the form of faience amulets. Some amulets, particularly those with feline elements, seem to have been given as New Year gifts.

Charming faience cats and kittens evoke Bastet as the bestower of fertility

The popularity of other feline amulets, such as figures of the lioness- headed goddess Sekhmet , was probably linked to an increasing fear of the 'Demon Days' and 'The Books of the End of the Year'

It is not always easy to deduce the specific use of an amulet in magic.

Lions have no connection in myth or reality with killing snakes, yet a first millennium BC spell to close the mouths of snakes is to be said over a faience lion threaded on red linen. This amulet was to be applied to a man's hand and served as a protection for his bedroom.

The strength and ferocity of the lion made it a general symbol of protective power which might be used in a variety of specific ways.

Amulets played an increasing role in funerary religion during the first millennium BC;. Decorated tombs were rare for much of this period, but elite burials had elaborate coffins and large numbers of specially-made amulets. These amulet sets carried out many of the functions of grave goods.

How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 5/7

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How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 5/7

Amuletic bangle in gold and silver, c. 2000-1800 BC. The protective symbols include wedjat eyes, djed pillars and ankh signs. Also shown are a turtle, snakes, baboons, falcons, hares and the horned mask of the goddess Bat.

The first half of the second millennium BC saw a great expansion of amulet types. Much amuletic jewellery of fine quality survives from this period. Cylindrical cases just large enough to hold a folded scrap of papyrus were made in precious materials These may have contained written amulets to be hung at the throat to perpetuate a spell.

Solid 'dummy' cases are also known. The shape alone was presumably enough to evoke the power of written magic.

Texts of this era begin to describe the use of specific amulets. Some of the passages in The Coffin Texts which mention amulets seem to be adapted from everyday magic. A papyrus now in Berlin describes how to make an amulet (wedja) for a baby. The spell is to be said over gold and garnet beads and a seal with the image of a hand and a crocodile.

Such seals do survive. The hand and the crocodile will slay, or drive off, any hostile spirits who approach the baby. The seal and the beads are to be strung on linen thread and hung at the baby's throat.

Many of the strings of beads and seals found in children's graves had probably been used in a spell of this sort, but with tragic lack of success.

A concern for the safety of pregnant women and young children is also apparent in the jewellery of royal and court ladies of this era.

Gold reef-knot bangles and gold and amethyst 'cowrie shell' girdles were precious versions of the fertility charms of ordinary women.

The difference in status between a princess and peasant was unimportant compared with the shared joys and dangers of producing children.

Some amuletic jewellery of this era shows the same range of creatures and symbols as the apotropaic wands.

A gold and silver ornament, perhaps designed to be placed around a child's neck, is decorated with baboons, hares, hawks, snakes, a turtle, two finger amulets, the symbol of the goddess Bat, wedjat eyes and ankh and djed signs

Its purpose was probably to place the wearer within a protective circle.

From the late eighteenth to the early sixteenth centuries BC,

Egypt

underwent another period of political disunity.

The north of the country came under foreign rule. A few foreign motifs find their way onto the bases of scarabs and seals of this date, but jumbled hieroglyphs are more characteristic.

These seals were probably worn on cords around the neck when not in use. Animals, particularly lions, leopards and cats, are very prominent in the amuletic jewellery of this period.

By 1500 BC, Egypt was united again and had acquired an empire in the Near East. During the prosperous two hundred years that followed, most jewellery seems less amuletic than before. Taweret was as popular as ever, and Bes amulets might show him dancing and playing musical instruments. Amuletic rings in cheap materials were produced on a large scale.

A gold ring of the fourteenth century BC has a bezel in the form of a frog

This probably represents Heqet, a goddess of birth.

The scorpion incised on the base may be to protect a child against real scorpions, or may represent the scorpion goddess Serqet who helps the Divine Mother and her child in magical texts.

From the twelfth century BC onwards,

Egypt

faced difficulties abroad and ordinary people were probably less prosperous.

Evidence for every-day magic increases at this period Amulets of gods in human or semi-human form become more common. Protective headrests and cippus amulets suggest that people felt insecure even in their own homes.

A spell of this period for dispelling night-terrors is to be recited over a drawing of various deities made on linen.

This linen amulet was to be applied to the sleeper's throat until it calmed him.

Some of the finest illustrated copies of The Book of the Dead date between the thirteenth and eleventh centuries BC

The passages in The Book of the Dead which deal with the use of amulets are rather different in character from most of the text.

They are similar to spells from everyday magic which concern the application of amulets against diseases or as night protection.

The amulets mentioned in The Book ofthe Dead consist of objects in particular materials, or of drawings or writings on linen or papyrus. Spell is for a tyet amulet

This type of amulet is associated with Isis. Its shape and colour are both relevant to its meaning.

The shape has been interpreted as a girdle tie or as a sanitary towel. It is normally made in a red stone such as carnelian or jasper.

How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 4/7

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How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 4/7

Multiple wedjat eye amulet in green and black faience, mid 1^st millennium BC. The two pairs of divine eyes are separated by papyrus columns which symbolize growth and vitality.

Amulets were important to the Egyptians at all periods, but fashions in amulets changed. The use of amulets in Egypt goes back to the time before literacy. Around 4000 BC;, objects which archaeologists have classed as amulets start to occur in graves. It is impossible to be sure what such objects meant to the grave-owner. Among the earliest man-made amulets are small hippopotamus pendants in shell, ivory or stone

In later times, the female hippopotamus was a common amulet associated with the protection of pregnant women and young children.

At this early period, the aggressive male hippopotomi were still hunted for meat and ivory, so it is just as likely that the pendants were charms to secure success and safety in the hunt.

Graves of the late fourth millennium BC contain a slightly greater variety of amulets in a much wider range of materials.

These include bird, lion and claw shapes. The unification of Egypt around 3100 BC, and the creation of a court culture, does not seem to have had an immediate effect on everyday beliefs. The same range of amulets continued in ordinary graves, but animal pendants in fine goldwork have survived from elite burials of the early third millennium BC.

Inscribed seals became more important as literacy spread.

During the Pyramid Age (c..2700—2200 BC), there was a great flowering of Egyptian sculpture. Magnificent statues were made and detailed reliefs were carved to decorate royal burial complexes, temples of the sun god and the tombs of favoured officials. Few of the people depicted in these statues or reliefs wear much in the way of amulets.

The full range of amuletic jewellery is not in fact shown in painting or relief at any period. Art in tombs and temples was intended to evoke a perfect world in which there would be none of the crises or terrors that required the use of amulets.

If the scenes of daily life in tombs of the third millennium BC are taken at face value, you would imagine a culture with few religious observances or superstitions. The contents of humbler graves, on the other hand, suggest a complex system of beliefs in which amulets were highly important.

Women and children of this period were buried with cords strung with beads, seals and amulets.

These amulets are often tiny, but they are made in a wide range of materials, including gold, glazed steatite, alabaster and carnelian. They may be in the form of parts of the human body, such as a leg, a fist or an open hand; or of creatures such as falcons, frogs, scorpions and ibises

It is unclear if these creatures should be interpreted so early as the animal forms of deities. A scorpion amulet might be either the goddess Serqet, or simply an image of a venomous insect used to repel danger.

The ibis is more likely to be a form of Thoth, and some amulets of this period definitely show supernatural beings, such as the Heh gods and the Aker. In Egyptian myth, the Heh gods helped Shu to separate the earth and sky

A Heh figure was used in the hieroglyphic script to write the word for a 'million' or 'very many'. This amulet was worn to procure many years of life, on earth and in the hereafter. The Aker was an earth god, usually shown as a double lion or sphinx

This god guarded the entrance to the underworld and is frequently mentioned in The

Pyramid Texts and The Coffin Texts. People who were not wealthy or important enough to own funerary texts in hieroglyphs still wore amulets derived from them. This suggests that Egyptian theology reached beyond the court elite.

In the twenty-second century BC, the country broke up under rival dynasties. This momentous political change does not seem to have had much economic or cultural effect on the lives of ordinary people.

Amulets in precious materials were still common. The number of amulet types definitely based on the iconography of Egyptian gods increased. The composite form of Taweret, the mask of the goddess Hathor and the type of lion-dwarf later known as Bes are the most notable of these.

Amuletic strings still included models of parts of the body. The standard explanation is that these amulets were to ensure the continued use of various limbs and organs in the afterlife.

Since many of these strings were worn in life, they may also have had a function in everyday magic. The fist, hand, and finger amulets probably derive from magical protective gestures. It is possible that the foot amulet was associated with trampling enemies

How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 3/7

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How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 3/7

Steatite figure of a young girl holding a kohl pot, 19th-18th centuries BC. She wears a cowrie-shell girdle and has a fish amulet suspended from her plait.

Many amulets are closely related to the hieroglyphic script. This script is made up of signs which represent sounds (logograms), and signs which represent ideas (ideograms).

The ankh sign writes the word for life. The ankh as an amulet bestows or lengthens life.

The origins of this famous symbol are much debated. One suggestion is that it represents a penis sheath.1 If this is correct, the meaning of this symbol would be derived from the image itself.

Others maintain that the ankh represents a sandal strap, an object whose name happened to resemble the word for life. If this is the true explanation, the power of this symbol as an amulet would derive entirely from its written meaning.

An abbreviated writing of the standard Egyptian wish for 'life, prosperity, health' appears on pendants and scarabs. It had achieved the status of an amuletic formula.

A jumbled selection of common hieroglyphic signs often appears on the base of scarabs and other types of seal. At least among the illiterate, the hieroglyphic script was thought to have an amuletic power in itself, distinct from its specific meaning.

Many seals inscribed with royal names and titles were used as amulets. Some were old seals from documents, jars or boxes; others were specially made to be strung as beads.

The reused seals may have been valued because they had been in contact with a royal document or object. Anything associated with royalty would have heka and the name was a powerful aspect of the personality. This was particularly true of a king's prenomen or throne name, which acted as a kind of declaration of policy. The throne names of certain famous kings, such as Menkheperra (Thutmose III) and Usermaatra (Ramses II) were used on amuletic jewellery long after their deaths.

Some Egyptian amulets, particularly those worn as a temporary protection during a magical rite, consisted simply of the names of divine beings. These might be written on linen or papyrus or, in later times, on thin sheets of metal or the leaves of certain plants. Amulets consisting of extracts from sacred texts are sometimes called phylacteries.

The ancient Egyptians did not have one official holy book, but extracts from compilations such as The Book of the Dead were sometimes used as amulets. Spells from everyday magic might also be written down and worn at the neck as an amulet

The neck seems to have been considered a special point of vulnera-bility by the Egyptians. Tomb curses warn trespassers that an akh will wring their neck as if it were a bird's. Choking fits, which can lead to sudden death, might be the origin of this belief. Rubrics to everyday magic often specify that an amulet is to be applied to the neck.

Some strings of amulets are too small to fit round even a baby's neck. They could have been bracelets, but it is equally possible that they were originally put in linen or leather amulet bags and worn at the neck.

The pelvis was a danger point for women, so amuletic girdles were popular

The stomach was held to be the seat of the emotions and a person or deity's heka was said to be in their stomach.

The amuletic belt clasps worn by men, usually just below the navel, may have been intended to bind in and keep an individual's magic where it belonged. The stomach was still deemed to be vulnerable to demon attack. They were probably thought to enter through the navel.

Broad collars were owned by both sexes, but women were more likely to wear amuletic bracelets and anklets than men. Earrings were also mainly for women and children. Spells refer to the vulnerability of the ears to demon attack. Few earrings have much obvious amuletic decoration, but ear-piercing may have been thought to bestow some sort of protection in itself. Rings were not common before the seventeenth century BC, and do not feature much in magic until the Graeco-Egyptian papyri.

Magico-medical texts make it clear that temporary amulets might be applied to any part or orifice of the body.

How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 2/7

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How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 2/7

Part of The Book of the Dead of Ankhwahibre, c.6th century BC. It shows the main amulets used on a mummy and the spells that went with them. Next to the mummy (far right) are the djed pillar and the tyet knot. Thoth (left) is opening the gates of the underworld to let in the four winds.

Most amulets were intended to transfer to the wearer a particular quality of the being or object portrayed.

Some pendants in the form of deities may have been worn by pious people who wished to express their devotion to a particular god or goddess, but amulets use the power of a divine image in a more specialized way.

The gods and goddesses who were popular as amulets were not necessarily those who dominated the cult temples.

The most benevolent divine forms were portrayed in temples, but for protective amulets more formidable manifestations might be desirable. The alarming composite form of Taweret is one of the earliest recognizable deities used as an amulet. She continued to be popular in amuletic jewellery right down to Roman times.

Amulets with mythical resonance are particularly characteristic of Egyptian culture. Many can be associated with creation myths.

A lotus pendant might evoke the image of the infant sun god, born from the primeval lotus, and thus symbolize the hope of rebirth.

The best known of all Egyptian amulets, the scarab beetle, was an image of Khepri, the regenerated sun at dawn . As god ofbecoming, Khepri embodied the continuous process of creation. Scarabs were produced in millions for use as beads and seals.

The Egyptian word for seal sometimes means 'amulet' and sealing was a standard magical technique

An amulet as common as the scarab might be expected to lose its significance, but Egypt was such a symbol-conscious culture that this does not seem to have happened. The scarab remained a powerful image in magical texts as late as the fourth century AD.

To the Egyptians, the archetypal amulet was the wedjat eye, from which one of the general words for amulet was derived. Rubrics often mention that a wedjateye should be drawn on linen or papyrus for use as a temporary amulet. Thousands of examples in more permanent materials survive

A whole complex of myths lies behind this symbol. A tiny gold pendant in the British Museum shows Thoth holding a wedjat eye

Thoth was held to be the general provider of amulets for the living and the dead

It was Thoth who restored the damaged lunar eye of Horus , making it into a symbol of wholeness and health. The eye of the sun, which was pacified and brought back from

Nubia

by Thoth , could also be shown as a wedjat eye.

The two eyes were often combined in Egyptian imagery, so a wedjat eys amulet might have the healing power of the 'sound eye' of Horus, and the protective power of the fearsome goddess who was the Eye of Ra.

The wedjat eye was ceremonially offered to the gods in major temples. Some other amulets are based on objects used during the daily cult or at religious festivals. These include the loop sistrum, a kind of sacred rattle, and the Osirian amulet known as the djed pillar

The mummy of Osiris was held to be the model for all human mummies, so this god was the original wearer of protective amulets. Several myths recorded in PapyrusJumilhac tell of attempts by Seth and his followers to steal the objects that gave magical protection to the body of Osiris.

In origin, the dyed may have been a corn sheath or some kind of temporary column raised in a harvest ceremony. By the era of The Coffin Texts, it was interpreted as the backbone of Osiris and symbolized stability or endurance. Rituals of raising the djed pillar are known from Memphis and Abydos.

Miniature forms of magical objects, such as cippi, also occur as amulets. These were for the protection of a particular individual rather than for group use. Cippus amulets show the main divine figures and may be inscribed with very simple versions of the elaborate spells found on the full-size objects. On a ctppus, both image and word are important for the magical effect, but the power of other amulets resided chiefly or entirely in their inscriptions.

How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 1/7

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How to use ancient Egypt magic Amulets part 1/7

Part of The Book of the Dead of Ankhwahibre, c. 6th century BC. It shows the main amulets used on a mummy and the spells that went with them.Next to the mummy (far right) are the djed pillar and the tyet knot. Thoth (left) is opening the gates of the underworld to let in the four winds.

The use of amulets is probably the most famous aspect of Egyptian magic. Egyptian amulets were exported or copied all over the ancient world. Huge numbers survive. One catalogue divides them into 275 main types, but that is probably an underestimate. Burials of the Egyptian elite include specially made amulets in precious materials

The function of some of these amulets is described in funerary literature such as The Coffin Texts and The Book of the Dead

The amulets found in humbler graves are more likely to be those worn by the deceased in life

They could go on helping and protecting the deceased in the afterlife. As with other intimate possessions, such as cosmetic kits and hairpieces, these amulets were probably considered too personal to be passed on to anyone else.

Amulets have also been recovered from houses and from temples or shrines where votive offerings were made.

The use of amulets in daily life has been much less studied than their funerary role. Their ubiquity at Egyptian sites implies that amulets were considered a necessity of life, even by the poorest members of society.

An amulet is generally defined as a powerful or protective object worn or carried on the person. In Egypt, this definition might be extended to include some larger objects, such as headrests, which also worked through physical contact. A distinction is sometimes made between amulets and talismans.

The purpose of an amulet is to protect, while the purpose of a talisman is to enhance a quality in the wearer or to promote success. The Egyptian words sa and mkt do mainly seem to be specific to protective amulets, but another Egyptian term for amulet —wedja - is used for objects which both protect the wearer and bestow desirable qualities such as health and vitality.

Some amulets were used on a temporary basis in crisis situations; others were worn on a regular basis for permanent protection or benefit.

The types of situation which might require temporary amulets included childbirth, an illness or a dangerous journey. In a magical rite to resolve a crisis, both the patient and the officiant might wear amulets.

Permanent amulets were likely to be in the form of jewellery. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that most Egyptian jewellery had amuletic value. How conscious the wearers were of the symbolism of their ornaments is a more difficult question.

Temporary amulets were probably always reinforced with spoken magic, but it is not clear how often this would have been done with amuletic jewellery. Some types of amulet were peculiar to the temporary category; others could serve as temporary or permanent. It is chiefly the permanent amulets that survive.

Amulets of the kind worn in life are more often found in the burials of women and children than in those of adult men.

It is easy to understand why children should have been thought to need amulets. They were genuinely more at risk from disease. There also seems to have been a belief that the dead were jealous of new life. Women faced considerable risks in childbirth and were thought to need intensive protection at this time

In many cultures, the danger to women in childbirth was balanced by regular danger to men in hunting and warfare. This would originally have been true of Egypt too. In the fourth millennium BC, dangerous animals were hunted to provide food and raw materials, and warfare was frequent among tribal groups. By the end of the fourth millennium BC, hunting had become much less important than agriculture and there was greater political stability. For much of the third millennium BC, Egyptian soldiers were more likely to be involved in trading, mining and quarrying expeditions than in wars. In the second millennium BC, when the Egyptians were fighting large-scale wars, they employed numerous foreign mercenaries. This may explain the scarcity of specifically masculine amulets in Egyptian culture and the absence of spells for protection in battle.

The most risky masculine activities were probably desert quarrying expeditions and anything that involved working on water.

Spells associated with these activities are well attested.

When men had accidents or became ill, temporary amulets might form part of the treatment, but women and children seem to have been the main wearers of permanent amulets. This may be because women and children were thought to be more at risk from supernatural dangers.

Many spells from the second millennium BC emphasize the danger of the dead taking possession of young children. In the Graeco-Egyptian papyri, young boys are used as spirit mediums. Some evidence for women serving as mediums has already been mentioned

What the Egyptians saw as the ritual impurity of menstruation may have been held to attract ghosts and demons. If purity gave protection, impurity presumably meant vulnerability.

Women were probably perceived as being weaker and more emotional than men. In some Egyptian texts, violent emotions seem to be attributed to the influence of spirits, demons or the bau of deities.

Instruction Texts lay great stress on the control of the heart, that is, the emotions. The prevalence of amulets in female graves tells us quite a lot about Egyptian attitudes to women.

The distinction between the sexes broke down in certain circumstances. All the calm, rational advice of the Instruction Texts could not protect the Egyptian male from the chaotic world of dreams.

A fear of night-terrors seems to have been characteristic of the Egyptians. Some amulets are described as a 'protection of the bedchamber.' One of the functions of headrests decorated with magical images was to keep away nightmares. Demons were more powerful at night and each sleep was a miniature descent into the underworld. In death, both sexes had equal need of amulets, because the deceased was actually entering the realm of demons and spirits.

Amulets can be natural or manmade objects. The power of a natural amulet might derive from its shape, its material, its colour, its scarcity or any combination of these properties. Heka was thought to reside in rare or strange objects. Shells from the Red Sea came into this category and were used as amulets as early as the fourth millennium BC. River pebbles were common objects, but specimens that naturally resembled the male genitals or a pregnant woman could be used as fertility amulets.

Another natural object prized for its resemblance to something else is the cowrie shell. Cowries have been used as amulets against the Evil Eye in many cultures, and they were popular in ancient

Egypt

Their shape has been thought to resemble the female genitals as well as the eye. The

Egyptians often strung cowries to make girdles

They were probably worn in the pelvic region to protect a woman's fertility, as is still done today in parts of Sudan. A few girdles made of real shells strung on leather have survived, but imitation cowries in faience, silver or gold are more common. Natural amulets such as shells or claws were often translated into precious jewellery and worn to bring permanent benefits.

Other amulets were made of transitory natural materials. These might be herbs or parts of animals, such as hairs from a cat. Ingredients of this kind were usually wrapped up together in linen. Such amulets rarely survive from ancient times, but they are described in magico-medical texts. Their contents sometimes sound too bizarre for belief, but comparisons with recent magical practices suggest that it would be wrong to be sceptical.

Writing about village Egypt in the early twentieth century AD, Winfrid Blackman described a pair of amulet bags worn to protect a pregnant woman. These contained the head of a hoopoe, a snake's fang, parts of the lip and ear of a donkey, a camel's tooth, a dried chameleon, seven silk threads and a written charm.

We tend to think of an amulet as a single object, but the Egyptian words for amulet have a less restrictive meaning. The word sa can mean a group of objects, the cord they were strung on, or the bag that contained them, and the words and gestures needed to 'activate' them.

One of the hieroglyphic signs used to write the word sa depicts a looped cord. The cord, which was usually of linen thread or leather, was always important and sometimes served as an amulet in itself. Surviving examples have a series of knots which were probably tied by a magician in the course of a rite to bind evil forces.

A spell from the late second millennium BC describes deities, such as Isis, Nephthys and Hedjhotep, spinning and weaving the linen cord of an amulet of health, which the goddess Neith then ties knots in.

Hedjhotep was a god of weaving and amulets. The two are associated, not only through linen cords and amulet bags, but because pictures drawn on linen were a common form of temporary amulet.

In the Graeco-Egyptian papyri, knotted cords are described as Anubis threads.

Anubis presided over all the stages of mummification, including the bandaging of the corpse, so he was much concerned with wrapping and tying knots. As early as the late third millennium BC, the reef knot was a popular element in amuletic jewellery when translated into precious metals

Manmade amulets include pendants in the form of deities, demons, animals, plants, parts of the human body, furniture, tools and ritual objects. Some of these are simply miniature models of things which the deceased needed or desired in the afterlife. Such models have more in common with funerary figurines than with amuletic jewellery.

Animal Mummies OF ANCIENT EGYPT

2011-05-10T11:33:00.000+01:00

Animal Mummies OF ANCIENT EGYPT

Most scientiﬁc research has concentrated on human mummiﬁed remains, but there have also been some studies on animal mummies.

The Egyptians worshiped many of their gods in the form of animals, and some gods could appear in the guise of different animals. Originally, most gods were depicted with complete animal forms, but by the early historical period (c.2900 BC), many of them had acquired some human characteristics so that they now possessed human bodies attached to bird or animal heads.

Others, however, were represented entirely as humans. Gods could be worshiped in the form of cult statues, as cult animals kept at the temples, or simply through the belief that they were present in all the animals of the corresponding species. In this way, the deity, made manifest in a variety of forms, would become more widely accessible to the believer. Animal worship continued and flourished throughout ancient Egyptian history, and although individual animals were not regarded as gods in themselves, they were acknowledged as manifestations of the invisible power of the deity and were therefore highly regarded in the society.

Different types of funerary procedures were accorded to various categories of animals. Evidence indicates that the Egyptians kept house- hold pets, including cats, dogs, monkeys, and gazelles, and that some of these were mummiﬁed and placed in special cofﬁns and tombs.

It was clearly hoped that they would accompany their owners into the afterlife.

In the Late and Greco-Roman Periods, there was also a custom of presenting dead, mummiﬁed animals as votive offerings to gods at particular temples. Pilgrims could purchase animals that had been specially bred at these sites as representatives of the species sacred to the local deity. These animals were then killed, mummiﬁed, and placed in nearby catacombs as gifts to the gods. The most famous catacombs at Saqqara accommodated the burials of thousands of animals, including dogs, cats, baboons, rams, ibises, monkeys, bulls, and cows.

Many of these animals were votive offerings, but others were the sacred cult animals that were kept in some of the temples.

Some baboons found at Saqqara, for example, belonged to this group, but undoubtedly the most famous of these cult animals are the Apis bulls. The priests selected the bulls according to the presence of certain physical characteristics, and each Apis bull was regarded as the incarnation of the god Ptah. It was provided with a harem of sacred cows and received worship at the temple throughout its lifetime.

When it died, another animal was selected to replace it. The dead bull received an elaborate funeral: It was mummiﬁed then buried in a stone cofﬁn in the Serapeum, a vast subterranean structure at Saqqara.

Herodotus, in The Histories, described three basic techniques used for human mummiﬁcation, and the second method was probably also employed for animals, although other methods were available. The Apis bulls were elaborately treated according to the method described by Herodotus: They were eviscerated, probably by injecting a corrosive liquid through the anus, and then dehydrated by means of dry natron. However, simpler techniques were used for other animals, such as some of the birds: They were either just wrapped in linen bandages or dipped in resin before wrapping.

No evisceration was carried out on crocodiles; they were simply cured with salt or natron.

Although far fewer modern studies have been carried out on animal mummies than on human remains, several radiological examinations have been undertaken. These have provided interesting information; for example, studies of cats have shown that in some cases their necks were broken, indicating that they were probably specially bred to become votive offerings. Also, X rays sometimes reveal surprising and unexpected contents in the bundles. The animal represented on the outer casing and wrapping does not always correspond to the mummy inside: Sometimes the bundle holds an animal of a different species, or eggs containing recognizable fetuses, or single bones or feathers, or wrapped sticks.

The embalmers were clearly not always meticulous about providing the pilgrims with the complete animal for which they had paid.

CLEOPATRA THE DANCE QUEENS OF THE NILE watch online

2011-05-08T12:42:00.000+01:00

CLEOPATRA THE DANCE QUEENS OF THE NILE watch online

The distinctive sound of the leading world music artist's passionate percussion with the exciting rhythms of the Hossam Ramzy band of traditional musicians will support Serena's exploration of the traditional dances of the Nile from ancient Egyptian queens to modern fusion, accompanied by guest dancers.

The Friends of the Petrie Museum have organized the show in support of UCL's appeal for a new building for the Petrie Museum, the UCL Institute for Cultural Heritage. The new building will be a major new landmark and visitor attraction for London, housing UCL's art collection, special library collection, Galton collection and Petrie Museum. It will feature innovative exhibition areas, conservation, study and research facilities

The great temples at Luxor watch online

2011-05-06T12:05:00.000+01:00

The great temples at Luxor watch online

The modern town of Luxor is the site of the famous city of Thebes, (Waset in ancient Egyptian) the city of a hundred gates. It was the capital of Egypt from the 12th dynasty (1991 BC) and reached its zenith during the New Kingdom. It was from here that Thutmose III planned his campaigns,Akenaten first contemplated the nature of god and Rameses II set out his ambitious building program. Only Memphis could compare in size and wealth, but Memphis was pillaged of its masonry to build new cities and little remains. Although the mud brick palaces of Thebes have disappeared the stone

The temple of Luxor is close to the Nile and parallel with the riverbank. King Amenhotep III who reigned 1390-53 BC built this beautiful temple and dedicated it to Amon-Re, king of the gods, his consort Mut, and their son Khons.

This temple has been in almost continuos use as a place of worship right up to the present day. It was completed by Tutankhamun and Horemheb and added to by Ramses II. Towards the rear is a granite shrine dedicated to Alexander the Great.

During the Christian era the temple's hypostyle hall was converted into a Christian church, and the remains of another Coptic church can be seen to the west.

The International Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank

2011-05-06T11:29:00.000+01:00

The International Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank

In order to obtain sufﬁcient quantities of samples from different mummies to enable the schistosomiasis study to be undertaken, the Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank was established at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester. The aim was to collect and store samples from Egyptian mummies held in collections outside Egypt in order to provide the world’s ﬁrst international resource for preserving and researching ancient tissue.

The Manchester Museum approached more than 8,000 institutions worldwide (museums, medical institutions, and so forth) to ascertain if they held mummies in their collections and would be willing to provide milligram samples for the bank.

This international search and call for participation have resulted in the collection of many samples from mummies of different periods and social groups. These are being used in studies on schistosomiasis, and they also provide material for researchers and specialists in many disciplines to study the occurrence and patterns of various other diseases.

Thus, the tissue bank is able to make a unique contribution to investigations relating to the history of disease.

Once the Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank was established, the Manchester researchers set out to develop an immunological diagnostic tool that could be applied to large numbers of small samples.

Some already-existing procedures were very expensive, low in sensitivity, and often required body ﬂuid and therefore would have been impractical for the bank’s ancient, dehydrated tissue samples. Eventually, immunocytochemistry was selected and has been successfully applied in the project to both ancient and modern tissues.

Whereas in living tissue, the simplest way to detect the presence of a disease is to look for its antibody (the human body custom-designs these molecules to ﬁght off different diseases), it is unlikely that antibodies survive well in ancient tissue. Immunocytochemistry, however, had the potential to work well in detecting schistosomi-asis in the bank’s ancient tissue because it could detect the presence of any remaining antigen that was part of either the schistosome worm or the egg that originally caused the disease.

First, a special antiserum for the schisto-some parasite had to be developed. The antiserum would contain antibodies that, if the antigen were present in the tissue as either a dead or living form of the parasite, would bind to speciﬁc antigen sites called epitopes.

Essentially, the antibodies would track down the particular antigen still present in the tissue if the person had ever suffered from the disease. A simultaneous process, tissue staining, would introduce new trackers—molecular tags that would bind with a speciﬁc antibody.

Depending on the tag chosen, this would show up under the microscope in one of several colors.

Using these methods, the Manchester research team was indeed able to visualize positive staining to S. mansoni and S. haematobium antigens, ﬁrst in modern mouse tissue and then in a tissue sample taken from an Egyptian cadaver some ﬁfty years ago, indicating the presence of schistosomiasis in these examples. The tech-niques were next applied to ancient tissues, and again positive immunostaining was achieved, demonstrating that schistosome antigens could survive for thousands of years.

Immunocytochemistry has added a new and effective method of diagnosing not only schisto-somiasis but also other diseases in ancient tissue.

Follow-up studies undertaken at Manchester have employed ELISA and DNA to conﬁrm the immunocytochemistry results obtained on the ancient tissue samples. Further research at Manchester has also led to the identiﬁcation of parasite DNA in one of the samples.

These studies may ultimately enable scientists to study and compare the genetic evolution and development of the schistosome over several thousand years, and in turn, this may inform some of the genetically based preventative measures now being developed to combat the disease. It will be of considerable interest to see how this pathogen has so successfully developed its survival strategies in order to evade destruction by the human immune system.

THE POTENTIAL OF DNA TECHNIQUES WITH ANCIENT EGYPTIANS MUMMIES

2011-05-06T11:27:00.000+01:00

THE POTENTIAL OF DNA TECHNIQUES WITH ANCIENT EGYPTIANS MUMMIES

Until the 1970s, when the Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo pioneered techniques that have been subsequently reﬁned to identify DNA in mummies, the only method with the potential to trace familial relationships or population movements, or to identify the present-day descendants of ancient peoples was paleoserol ogy, the study of blood groups in ancient human remains. Since the 1930s, several studies had been carried out to identify blood groups in ancient human remains, and some success was demonstrated with the serological micromethod (SMM) and the inhibition agglutination test (IAT).

Since blood-group substances (ABO) exist not only in the blood but also in muscle, skin, and brain, there was the possibility of extracting this information even from dehydrated ancient tissues; however, there were considerable problems with the techniques. Contaminants such as microorganisms present within the tissue itself or even the various substances used in the mummiﬁcation process can appear to react as blood groups and therefore produce false positive reactions. Also, a substance found in fresh samples may deteriorate over time and become undetectable in ancient samples, producing a false or unreliable result. Nevertheless, one such significant study to prove kinship was undertaken on the mummies of Tutankhamun and of the body found in Tomb 55 in the Valley of the Kings.

Mysterious mummy identified; Queen Hatshepsut, archeologists say; DNA tests ongoing.(World Wire): An article from: Winnipeg Free Press

The tests indicated that they shared the same blood group; however, since paleoserology poses such difficulties, it has largely been replaced by DNA analysis.

DNA procedures have opened up possibilities not only of establishing familial relation-ships and population origins and migrations, but also of expanding our knowledge of disease in the mummies. Scientists are now trying to identify bacterial and viral DNA in mummies, and this could conﬁrm the presence of some infectious diseases in ancient individuals and populations that existing techniques cannot currently detect.

Another line of investigation has been attempting to identify the DNA of disease-producing parasites within the human host; in 2002, the Manchester Mummy Project team succeeded in isolating the DNA of a schistosome, the parasite that causes the disease schistosomiasis.

Since the total genetic information of any living organism is carried in almost every cell of the body, only a small sample of bone or tissue is required for DNA identiﬁcation; how-ever, considerable problems are encountered in obtaining suitable samples from ancient remains, particularly because of the possibility of contamination of the specimens.Egyptian King Tut Coffin (Gpp) - Collectible Figurine Statue Sculpture

In the earliest DNA studies, laborious cloning and sequence reading strategies were required to analyze the specimens. More recently, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), also known as “gene ampliﬁcation,” is a quicker and more effective technique used for DNA studies on ancient material. And further developments in this field can be expected as an increasing number of DNA projects are being under-taken on newly excavated samples and on mummies in existing collections.

THE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL APPROACH

Until the mid-1990s, research on mummiﬁed remains had concentrated on in-depth investigations of individual mummies or broader studies of large numbers of bodies, as in the Archaeological Survey of Nubia. In 1995, a new approach was adopted when it was decided to establish a collaborative study among the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Project, in England; the Medical Service Corporation International (MSCI), based in Arlington, Virginia; and the Egyptian Organization for Biological Products and Vaccines (VACSERA), in Cairo. The aim of this study was to construct an epidemiologic profile of schistosomiasis (also known as bilharziasis) in Egypt in the period between the twenty-sixth century BC and the seventh century AD, and then compare those results with data that have been collected in a modern epidemiologic study in Egypt.

Today, schistosomiasis, a chronic and debilitating disease, affects up to 300 million people in many tropical and subtropical parts of the world. It is caused by a parasite known as a schistosome. In order to complete its life cycle, the schistosome requires the presence of both a human host and a water snail. It is therefore found in countries where some of the population have regular and frequent access to snail-infected, stagnant stretches of water. In recent years, water development programs such as dam construction and irrigation systems have accelerated the problem by creating new breeding sites for the snails.

The disease has a major impact on an agricultural workforce and on national economic productivity. Although drugs can cure the disease, people’s lifestyle usually remains unchanged, and so they frequently become reinfected. Today, there are several programs attempting to develop a vaccine against schistosomiasis.

A ten-year research program, the Schisto-somiasis Research Project, was set up and undertaken in Egypt in 1988. Funded by the government of Egypt and the U.S. Agency for International Development, it had the objectives of identifying the current epidemiologic patterns of schistosomiasis and developing better methods of preventing, diagnosing, and treating the disease. When the modern-day research first went under way, 20 percent of the population of Egypt was thought to be infected with the disease, and in some villages, the prevalence rates were more than 85 percent. The Schistosomiasis Research Project collected infection data on more than

100,000 people from villages between the Nile Delta in the north and Aswan, located in the south of the country.

Comparisons will eventually be drawn between this data and the incidence patterns in ancient times to describe the disease patterns and evolution of schistosomiasis in Egypt over a 5,000-year period.

Regarding the historic side of this project, there has been considerable scholarly debate about whether the ancient Egyptians actually diagnosed and recorded schistosomiasis.

In the ancient medical papyri, there are many references to “worms,” and one afﬂiction termed the disease is recorded ﬁfty times. The texts mention the presence of hematuria (blood in the urine) in association with this disease. This is a classic symptom of one form of schistosomiasis in which a speciﬁc parasite (Schistosome haemato-bium) infects the patient and affects the bladder; thus, some Egyptologists have regarded these references as clear identiﬁcations and descriptions of this type of the disease.

This symptom is however also found in other types of parasitic infection, and other scholars have claimed that the papyri describe more generalized parasitic conditions. They consider that the Egyptians almost certainly would not have performed autopsies within a short enough time span and in sufﬁcient detail to have been able to discover this speciﬁc schistosome.

Also, it probably would not have been visible to the naked eye; in modern times, the German scientist Theodor Bilharz used a microscope to become the ﬁrst person to identify and describe the parasite in 1852.

There is evidence, nonetheless, in Egyptian mummiﬁed remains that schistosomiasis existed in antiquity.

In 1910, the paleopathologist Ruffer reported that he had observed the calciﬁed eggs of Bilharzia haematobia in the kidneys of two mummies dating to c.1100 BC, and eggs have been discovered in mummies of other periods. A range of diagnostic techniques have been used to detect the disease in mummies.

These have included noninvasive X-ray examination of mummies to identify the classic pathological calciﬁcations that are secondary results of chronic schistosomiasis in the liver (Schistosoma mansoni) and in the kidneys and bladder (Schistosoma haematobium), and direct microscopic examination of rehydrated mummiﬁed tissue to detect the presence and con- ﬁrm the species of eggs.

Another method, the immunological analysis of tissue or bone samples using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), has been used to detect the presence of circulating anodic antigen, a glycoprotein regurgitated from the gut of the schistosome. (In live patients, its presence is used diagnostically to indicate that the disease is present and that there is an active infection.

Its detection in a mummy shows that the person was suffering from an active infection at the time of death.)

However, for the Manchester team’s research on ancient Egyptians for the schistosomiasis project, it was decided that two new approaches were required: the establishment of an international tissue bank and the development of a new diagnostic tool.

Identify ancient Egyptian mummies

2011-05-06T11:24:00.000+01:00

Identify ancient Egyptian mummies

In the 1980s, the Manchester Mummy Project pioneered the use of endoscopy as a virtually nondestructive method of obtaining samples for paleohistology (the study of tissue in ancient remains), immunological techniques, and DNA

identiﬁcation. Endoscopy originated for medical purposes: An endoscope is a narrow tube with an electric light on the probing end that can be inserted into one of the natural oriﬁces of the body or a small incision made in the chest or the abdominal wall. Endoscopy enables doctors to see structures inside the body and to remove samples for examination under a microscope.

By the 1980s, endoscopes had been greatly improved and included fiberscopes, which incorporated a bundle of tiny transparent ﬁbers that transported light in both directions and allowed light to follow a curved path without distorting the image. By this time, special rigid endoscopes had also been developed for industrial purposes, and since the tissue of mummies is hard and unyielding, these have proved most successful in Egyptological studies.

By attaching a small retrieval forceps to the probing end of the endoscope, the Manchester team produced an instrument that could be used to take biopsy samples from inside the mummy.

The existing bodily oriﬁces or small holes caused by later damage were used as a means of entry into the mummy. The position of the probing end of the instrument within the body could then be directly visualized on a radiographic screen or monitor, and the retrieval forceps manipulated from outside the mummy permitted researchers to take the required biopsy samples.

PALEOPATHOLOGY

At the beginning of the twentieth century, M. A. Ruffer (1859–1917), professor of bacteriology at the Cairo School of Medicine, laid the foundations for the study of disease in ancient populations, for which he coined the term paleopathology. This field includes anthropology, archaeology, paleontology, and paleohistology and attempts to trace the appearance, development, and disappearance of diseases, as well as demonstrating the effect of some diseases on given ancient societies.

Today, pathology, or the scientiﬁc study of disease processes, includes two branches—morbid anatomy and histopathology—which have both provided much information about diseases in mummies. Morbid anatomy relies on the naked-eye study of the body. Histopathology, which demonstrates changes in tissue caused by disease, can draw upon a range of techniques to detect disease in tissue samples, including histology, which focuses on the microscopic structure of the tissues; electron microscopy, which enables histologists to examine tissue at magnifications greater than 800 times normal size; and immunohistochemistry, which improves the histologist’s opportunity to identify cell constituents in the mummified tissue through specialized stains.

Paleohistology, pioneered by Daniel Marie Fouquet (1850–1914) in 1889, was subsequently implemented by Ruffer to examine the state of preservation of the structures in ancient tissue and to detect the presence of disease. Ruffer, in turn, pioneered the basic technique of rehydrating (softening) and ﬁxing the tissue, which could then be processed in the same way as modern samples, which are either frozen or surrounded by parafﬁn wax and cut into thin sections. Next, these sections are stained selectively with different dyes, which have a special ability to highlight particular parts of the tissue or cells.

The individual sections are then examined under a light microscope. Continuing research has refined and improved rehydration and staining techniques, and their use has identiﬁed many examples of disease in mummies.

Findings often include diseases caused by parasitic infestations where the remains of the worms or the eggs can be identiﬁed microscopically. Examples that have been discovered include a round worm (Ascaris), a cyst originating from a Trichinella infestation, the eggs of the Tae-nia tapeworm, Filaria worms, and the eggs and worms that cause schistosomiasis (Bilharzia).

In most mummies thus examined, there is evidence of multiple infestation by different parasites.

Further information has been obtained by using electron microscopy, which provides much better resolution of the detailed structures within a tissue sample. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), analytical electron microscopy (AEM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) have all been used to examine mummies and have made it possible to identify the remains of particular parasites.

Also, using AEM, researchers have been able to go so far as to demonstrate that dense crystalline particles found in a sample of lung tissue are silica particles, indicating that the owner had suffered from the disease known as Sand pneumoconiosis. This is a common problem in parts of the world where the population is exposed to sandstorms.

As well as detecting disease in mummies, these techniques have a wider range of applications. Some research has been carried out to analyze the chemical constituents of mummiﬁed tissue, and studies have also been under-taken on particular areas such as the skin or eyes.

TEM was used to investigate the ultra-structure of ancient skin and muscle tissue, for example, and SEM has been employed to examine hair and to identify insects found inside the mummies. Also, scientists have used AEM to examine mummified tissue in an attempt to detect the presence of metals, such as lead, that accumulate in small quantities in the body. Immunohistochemistry has further added a new dimension to these studies.

Anubis God of Death music

2011-05-06T11:21:00.000+01:00

Anubis God of Death music

Anubis was actually looked at as a God of Death. He was the one who took care of dead when they had passed. Anubis was the one in charge of mummification of the dead and to guard the diseased. Though, this of course, is the interpretation given by Ancient Egyptian cultureunlike now, Anubis is assumed to do and be so many different things.

This is an original song from Recording Artist, Gale Revilla from her "Pharaohs 3" CD Album. This is only one song from the CD and not a compilation of songs. Her Pharaohs Collection Series which comprises of 3 albums has given her, 2 Awards and 2 Award Nominations. The music was composed and performed on the Yamaha Tyros 2. The art was added to give you something to look at while you listen to her song. This is the Full Length Song.

Dental studies of ancient Egypt mummies

2011-05-06T11:18:00.000+01:00

Dental studies of ancient Egypt mummies

Modern investigations employ virtually nondestructive techniques to study disease in mummies. Here, members of the Manchester Mummy Project use an endoscope to take tissue samples from the mouth of a mummy. (Courtesy The Manchester Museum, University of Manchester)

Many dental studies have been carried out on mummies, both as specialized surveys and as part of multidisciplinary projects. Since both dry skulls and mummiﬁed heads (separated or attached to the body) are available for study,researchers have been able to use a combination of investigative techniques.

Scientists can undertake ﬁrsthand examinations of collections of dry skulls in museums and elsewhere, and these have become the basis for studying ancient Egyptian dentitions.

They provide the researcher with direct experience of many pathological and non pathological abnormalities, and this information can be used to interpret the radiographs that are taken of mummiﬁed and wrapped heads. Although specialized equipment—such as the orthopanto mograph unit, which supplies a panoramic view of all the teeth and their supporting structures—can be employed for this purpose, radiology has its limitations because details of the dentitions are frequently obscured by hard facial tissue and the funerary mask and artifacts placed over the head.

There have been, nevertheless, opportunities to examine large numbers of mummies, and researchers have been able to determine dental disease and pathology. This has enhanced our understanding of general dental health and diet in ancient Egypt. Major studies undertaken in Egypt by University of Michigan expeditions have examined the dentitions of the Old Kingdom nobles at Giza, the New Kingdom priests and nobles at Thebes, and the royal mummies in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. Other investigations have focused on the oral health and disease of modern Egyptians and have provided comparative material for studies on ancient remains. There have also been extensive investigations of dry skulls and wrapped heads in museums around the world, and scientists have explored such topics as teeth as an age-deter- mining tool, the ancient Egyptian diet, and the history of dental health in ancient Egypt.

Studies have generally indicated that in the pharaonic period, people did not suffer greatly from caries (tooth decay), although incidence increased in the Greco-Roman Period, probably as the result of dietary changes.

The most common problem for Egyptians in pharaonic times was instead attrition of the cusps (the wearing down of biting surfaces of the teeth).

Microscopic analysis of samples of bread from the tombs has revealed many impurities, including sand, fragments of the querns (hand mills) used to grind the ﬂour, and debris from storehouses. Bread was the staple element of the Egyptian diet; therefore, most people suffered from dental attrition as the result of these gritty fragments contained in the bread.

Some individuals also must have suffered considerable pain. When the mummy of a woman named Djedmaatesankh, in the Royal Ontario Museum collection, was CAT-scanned in 1994, it was revealed that at the time of death she had suffered from an enormous cyst in the bone of her upper left jaw. Attrition of the teeth often resulted in exposure of the tooth pulp; this can then easily become infected and develop into a type of septic cyst, which in turn can cause death. Scientists have speculated whether there was a specialized dental profession in ancient Egypt that could undertake sophisticated dental procedures, but problems such as the one presented by this woman suggest that dental expertise was minimal.

Opera "Aida" the greatest Verdi's opera watch online

2011-05-05T12:14:00.000+01:00

Opera "Aida" the greatest Verdi's opera watch online

Music of Verdi's opera "Aida" is set to scenes of the Nile River, Luxor, Abu Simbel, and other archaeological sites in

Egypt

. Also includes scenes from Cleopatra (1934) with Claudette Colbert and "Caesar and Cleopatra" (1945) starring Vivien Leigh. Video edited by Gilda Tabarez on July 19, 2009.

The flute intro for the Nile Scene is from the album "Giuseppe Verdi: Life and Works", narrated by Jeremy Siepmann; while the chorus section is from the album "Verdi: Great Operas From La Scala".

The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut watch online

2011-05-05T12:11:00.001+01:00

The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut watch online

The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut is one of the most important buildings of the ancient world, located in the Valley of the Queens on the West Bank of Luxor. Built over 4,000 years ago, it looks very modern, with clean functional lines, like 1920s art deco.

The Contribution of Mummy Studies to Egyptology and the History of Disease

2011-05-05T00:51:00.000+01:00

TheContribution of Mummy Studies to Egyptology and the History of Disease

Unlike art representations or literary sources,evidence provided by human remains has not been distorted or altered to ﬁtpreconceived or propagandist concepts. In their religious art, for example, theEgyptians depicted the wealthier classes in an idealized way so that they couldhope to enjoy eternal youth, beauty, and freedom from disease in the afterlife;however, the physical evidence of the mummiﬁed remains clearly indicates thateven the upper classes suffered a wide variety of illnesses and disablingconditions.

Human remains provide a unique opportunity tostudy disease, diet, living conditions, familial relationships, and populationmovements in an ancient population. In this sense, Egyptian mummies areparticularly significant and can add to knowledge of the evolution of disease.

This is partly because, unlike in some othercultures where only the skeletal remains are preserved, the tissues of Egyptianbodies also remain. Also, because the modern population of the Nile Valleyremains relatively unchanged since ancient times, there is an almost unparalleledopportunity here to compare evidence from the mummies with modern medical dataand to trace the evolution and patterns of disease over several thousands ofyears.

THE DEVELOPMENT OFTECHNOLOGY

Since the early unrolling of mummies, when onlythe facilities for anatomical investigations and studies on the bandages andassociated insects existed, paleopathology, the study of disease in ancientremains, has advanced considerably. Major developments have occurred in medicaland scientific technology, and these can often be adopted for the investigationof mummies. Also, two key procedures have emerged in palaeopathology: the buildingof teams that bring together the skills of experts in many fields and thedevelopment of virtually nondestructive methods of investigation, focusingparticularly on the use of industrial endoscopes so that wrapped mummies can bestudied as noninvasively as possible. These projects have often added specific knowledgeabout the mummification procedure itself, confirming the accounts of Classicalwriters and expanding G. Elliot Smith’s pioneering studies in this area.

TRAILBLAZINGTEAM INVESTIGATIONS

In 1901, Smith began an extensive study of bodiesdiscovered in southern Egypt,paying particular attention to the mummiﬁcation procedures and bonemeasurements. With his coworkers W. R. Dawson and F. W. Jones, he also became involvedin the examination of some 6,000 mummies that had been discovered and rescued bythe Archaeological Survey of Nubia, a project established to survey thearchaeological heritage of Nubia before much of it was obliterated as a resultof the ﬁrst dam built at Aswan at the beginning of the twentieth century.

A few years later, in 1908, Dr. Margaret Murrayunwrapped and autopsied the pair of mummies from the Tomb of Two Brothers at Rifeh,then residing at the University of Manchester in England. (The complete tomb group hadbeen incorporated into the Manchester Museum collection in 1906.)

With her multi-disciplinary team and intensivepostautopsy studies, she established a methodology for examining the mummiesand their associated funerary foods. The entire project and its results werepublished in 1910.

AUTOPSIES OF ANCIENT EGYPT MUMMIES

2011-05-05T00:48:00.000+01:00

AUTOPSIESOF ANCIENT EGYPTMUMMIES

The main methods of examination of mummies availableto pioneers such as Murray and Smith were autopsy and morbid anatomy, which involveunwrapping and dissecting the body, and then observing its overall state andcondition. During the 1970s, several autopsies were carried out bymultidisciplinary teams to gain tissue and bone samples for further analyses.

In 1975, at the University of Manchester,the mummy of a young girl (aged about fourteen) was unwrapped and autopsied aspart of the ongoing research of the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Research Project.This project had been established in 1973 to develop a methodology forexamining mummiﬁed remains in order to obtain evidence about disease, diet,living conditions, and funerary customs.

This was the ﬁrst scientiﬁc autopsy undertakenon a mummy in England since Murray’s pioneering workin 1908. The procedure carried out in Manchesterestablished guidelines for obtaining the maximum amount of information about amummy.

During this process, a variety of artifactswere found in association with the body, including prosthetic legs and phallus,nipple amulets, sandals, and toenail and ﬁngernail covers. There was alsoevidence that the girl had suffered from Guinea worm infestation, a diseasethat may have led to the amputation of both her legs shortly before death.

Important autopsies in the 1970s were also carriedout on a series of mummies in the collections of the University of PennsylvaniaMuseum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia(known as PUM I, II, III, and IV) and the RoyalOntario Museumin Toronto, Canada (known as ROM I). The ﬁrstautopsy was carried out on PUM I in the University of Pennsylvania Museum in1972; the second, on PUM II, was at Wayne State University’s School of Medicinein Detroit in 1973.

The investigation of ROM I at the University of Toronto followed in 1974. The bodiesknown as PUM III and PUM IV represented a cheaper method of mummiﬁcation.

All these autopsies generated considerable interestand publicity and revealed the range of scientiﬁc studies that could beundertaken on mummies. As in Manchester,continuing research on the evidence obtained from these autopsies resulted inextensive multidisciplinary studies. But because mummies are a ﬁnite, irreplaceable,and scientifically valuable resource, further work had to employ nondestructive,minimally invasive techniques, some of which remained to be sought anddeveloped.

One of these technologies, radiology, had alreadybeen used as a ﬁrst step, investigative procedure, but as the autopsies proved,unwrapping and dissection supplied information that was not obtainable fromradiographs alone. Following the 1975 autopsy, the Manchester team therefore pioneered the useof endoscopes as a virtually nondestructive technique.

Although this method also has its limitationsand the results obtained from this minimally invasive method offer lesscomplete information than do autopsies, these minimal disadvantages offset thetotal loss incurred by using the destructive methods of autopsy.

RADIOLOGY

Radiology offers an entirely nondestructive methodof visualizing the contents of a mummy.

Radiology-based investigations can expand knowledgeabout the cultural context and archaeological background of the mummy; for example,radiographs will show the type of mummiﬁcation that has been used by indicatingthe presence of resin or natron (the agents used in mummiﬁcation), any sacredjewelry placed between the wrappings, and any restoring or repairing of thebody done by embalmers, such as false limbs or eyes or subcutaneous packing introducedthrough slits in the skin to give the body a more rounded, lifelike appearance.

X rays can also indicate if there has been any attemptto remove the brain and the method implemented. Such details can help the Egyptologistto identify the historical period to which the mummy belongs.

This type of investigation can also revealspeciﬁc details about individuals, including a person’s gender, age at death,state of health, and possibly the social class to which he or she belonged.

Despite the usefulness of this technique, however,it was not employed extensively in Egyptology until the 1970s.

Early Use Pioneering work had been undertaken as earlyas 1896, when the ﬁrst radiographs of mummiﬁed remains—a child and a cat—wereproduced by Walter König in Frank-furt, Germany. Thesame year, just after König, an Englishman, Thurstan Holland, x-rayed a mummiﬁedbird. In 1898, Petrie used this procedure on some human remains, and in 1904,as part of a detailed investigation, Smith and Carter x-rayed the mummy ofTuthmosis IV, which had been discovered in a tomb at Thebes the previous year. The latter was theﬁrst occasion when radiography was used to study a royal mummy.

Gradually, radiology became widely used for theexamination of mummies. Extensive surveys were undertaken in 1931 by Roy LeeMoodie who x-rayed the Egyptian and Peruvian mummies in the Chicago Field Museum’s collection.

In the 1960s, Peter Hugh Ker Gray systematicallyexamined nearly 200 mummies in major museum collections in Britain and Europe.

Since the late 1960s, John E. Harris and Weeks haveundertaken radiological studies on the royal mummies in Cairoto gain further information about mummiﬁcation techniques and to elucidateaspects of the genealogy of the royal family in the New Kingdom.

However, until the 1970s, it was customary onlyto radiograph mummies on site. This implied various attendant limitationsimposed by using mobile compact equipment attached to a local electricitysupply. Conditions usually did not allow researchers to make accurate comparisonswith modern patients.

Modern Use in the 1970s several projects were undertakenthat changed this approach.

In 1973, the Manchester Egyptian Mummy ResearchProject established a methodology that standardized the conditions for radiographingmummies. The human and animal mummies in the ManchesterMuseum were then removed for shortperiods to the Manchester Royal Infirmary and the University Medical School where they wereexamined under near ideal conditions, successfully putting to test themethodology.

In the early 1970s, a series of autopsies and studieson mummies was undertaken in North America, inwhich preliminary radiography played a key role. X rays, for example, showed thatthe internal organs of the mummy of Nakht, a young weaver, were intact.Afterward, when the body was autopsied, it was possible to remove the intactbrain, and in 1976, the scientists were able to examine it by means of computedtomography (CAT scanning) at Toronto General Hospital.Tomography is a method of obtaining radiographs of a section or slice of tissuein one plane. Computed tomography creates a high-tech three-dimensional image.

This pioneering work, which enabled the brain tobe “dissected” noninvasively, was in effect the ﬁrst “virtual” autopsy.

By removing mummies to specialized radiographicunits, it was possible to use the latest techniques that were available forpatients.

These included orbiting and ﬂuoroscopy, which enabledscientists to evaluate the nature of the contents of the mummy and theirarrangement within the wrappings. Each mummy was also examined by means oftomography. Where appropriate, further investigation was under- taken by usingcomputed tomography, which can obtain transverse body sections ﬁve to thirteen millimetersin thickness that combined produce an image far superior to a conventional Xray.

Aside from its nondestructive advantages, radiologycan provide evidence about disease in the skeleton and in any of the remainingdehydrated soft tissues. It can also shed light on such archaeologicalquestions as the earliest evidence for removal of the brain (excerebration) inthe embalming of Egyptian mummies.

It can also indicate an individual’s age atdeath based on evaluation of skeletal maturity and development. It has itslimitations and problems, however, particularly in relation to age determination.The North American and European radiological standards of ossiﬁcation of bonethat have been used to deﬁne bone age in Egyptian mummies have given someresults incongruous with available historical, archaeological, andinscriptional data that detail lengths of reigns. This problem occurs particularlyin adults over twenty years of age.

The Mystery of the ancient Egypt Screaming Mummy

2011-05-05T00:44:00.000+01:00

TheMystery of the ancient Egypt Screaming Mummy

Over 100 years ago an unidentified mummy wasfound lying alongside some of the most famous pharaohs in Egyptian history buthis face is locked in an eternal scream.

This mummy died with a pained facial expression.Could he be Prince Pentewere who was suspected of plotting the murder of hisfather, Pharaoh Ramses III?

Some academics believe that Man E, as thescreaming mummy is named, is the body of an Hittite prince summoned to Egypt by Tutankhamen’s widow Ankhesenamen, whodid not bear heirs to the throne of

Egypt

. Others that he was anEgyptian governor who had died abroad and been returned to his homeland forburial. According to this report, the mummy belongs to Prince Pentewere, elderson of Ramses III, who, with his mother, Tiy, had evolved a plan to assassinatethe pharaoh and ascend to the throne.

Mummies with their mouths agape or lips pulledback as if they are screaming or writhing in pain are truly startling. Two ofthe most famous–designated Unknown Woman A and Unknown Man E–are from a cacheof royal mummies found in 1881 at Deir el-Bahri in Egypt. When first unwrapped in thelate nineteenth century, they provoked the shocked reactions quoted above.

Are screaming mummies really testaments to horrificdeaths? Or are they the result of natural processes, botched or ad hocmummification jobs, or the depredations of tomb robbers?

In his book The Scientific Study of MummifiedHuman Remains (2003), paleopathologist Arthur Aufderheide of University of Minnesotaat Duluthwrites that “During infancy we have learned to ‘read’ expressions on others’faces and translate the messages that such expressions transmit. Essentiallywe’re programmed to look at a face and decode the person’s emotions. But theexpressions of mummies cannot be used to predict their emotional state at themoment of death, says Aufderheide. “Advanced decay of the face’s masseter(chewing) muscle results in a sagging mandible associated with a gaping mouth.Rapid desiccation, on the other hand, can fix facial muscles into their tensedstate, generated a strained expression. Varying combinations of these effectsin different muscles shaped further by wrappings are capable of creating arange of apparent expressions wide enough to include almost all those seen inliving persons.”

“Inbrief,” Auferderheide concludes, “expressions on mummies represent post-mortemartifacts. Much nonsense has been written in efforts to relate a mummy’sexpression to the emotions experienced by that individual at the moment ofdeath. …Yet all are artifacts of decay processes and are useless as guides tothe mummies’ agonal emotions.”

Into the Ancient Egyptian mysteries videos and full details

2011-05-04T14:12:00.001+01:00

Into the Ancient Egyptian mysteries videos and full details

In the Great Pyramid of Egypt the Ascending Passage is a narrow tunnel into the ancient House of Secrets. After a long climb it emerges into the sublime Grand Gallery that connects the King's and Queen's chambers - to stretch a metaphor - balancing the male and female energies and partaking in both. Ancient

Egypt

did balance the energies: Art, Science, Medicine, Architecture, all were based on the same core of Knowledge.

If we only see the Egyptians through modern eyes we miss half of the story - the most interesting half - because the spiritual understanding of these ancient people is as valid today as it was in the age of the pyramids.

So explore Ancient Egypt in a way neglected by conventional archeology. There are unexplained mysteries and secrets on one side, intense beauty and artistic achievement on another. There is a third side, something beyond the words and pictures, something only to be understood. It is this third side that is, after all, the true ascending passage.

Ancient Egypt Magic Figurines and Statues part 2

2011-05-04T01:47:00.001+01:00

AncientEgyptMagic Figurines and Statues part 2

Woodenfigure of a hippopotamus demon coated in black resin, c. 1295 BC. This objectmay come from the tomb of King Horemheb in the Valley of the Kings at

Thebes.

In the legend of Nectanebo, theroyal magician fights his enemies principally with magic. In reality, Egyptian magic wasgenerally used to supplement more concrete forms of attack or defence.

Many Egyptians may have thought that ritual wasmore effective than mere human action because it harnessed divine powers, butthey did not place total reliance on it. The Execration Texts found in

Nubia

date to a period when the Egyptians were building and garrisoning a series ofmassive fortresses there.

The burial of 'captive figurines' or execrationtexts on pots may have been part of the foundation ceremonies for such forts.

In Egyptian society, the use of magic rarelyseems to have precluded more practical action. This can be seen in both magicfor the state and magic for the individual, but it was a factor not alwaysappreciated by later commentators on

Egypt

Terracotta figurines ofbound Nubians, c. 20th— 19^th centuries BC.Thesewere probably used ina cursing ritual

These commentators are likely to have beeninfluenced by Egypt'sliterary tradition. In literature, magical methods are given prominence: theynaturally make for a more picturesque story. The Setne cycle contains severalexamples of the use of magical figurines. In the first part of the cycle,Prince Naneferkaptah makes a model boat and crew, probably out of wax. He givesthe 'breath of life' to the figurines by reciting spells over them. This boatenables him to reach the place where the Book of Thoth is hidden and he throws downsand to part the waters of the Nile. The waxboat probably represents the Sun Boat and its celestial crew.

In this episode, the figures are simply helperswho row the magician as if he was the sun god. In another part of the Setnecycle they are used much more aggressively. Setne and his wife have a soncalled Siosiris, who even as a child possesses remarkable magical powers.

Spellfor driving out poison, c. 13th century BC. The spell refers to making a catout of wax and a human figure out of dough.

A Nubian chieftain comes to the court of RamsesII and challenges Egypt'swise men to read a sealed letter without opening it. Only the prodigy Siosirisis able to perform this feat.

The letter relates how, centuries before, aNubian sorcerer had worked magic against the Pharaoh Siamun of Egypt. Thissorcerer made a litter and four bearers out of wax and recited spells to givethem the breath of life. The bearers travelled to Egypt and took the sleeping Siamunfrom his bed. They carried him to Nubia and beat him with five hundredblows in front of the Nubian ruler. When Siamun was returned to his palace hesummoned his wise men and magicians.

Terracottafigurines of bound Nubians, c. 20th— 19^th centuries BC.Thesewere probablyused in a cursing ritual.

A Scribe of the House of Life called Horusrecited protective spells over the Pharaoh and tied an amulet to him. ThenHorus went to the temple of the creator god Khnum and asked for guidance. Thatnight, as Horus slept in the temple, Khnum appeared to him in a dream. The godtold Horus about a magic book hidden in a chest in a sealed chamber of thetemple library.

When Horus had copied out a spell from thisbook, he was able to animate a litter and bearers made of pure wax. He sentthem to Nubiato fetch and beat the Nubian ruler.

These animated figurines behave like bau andother divine messengers, who are said to strike those they are sent against.

The whole episode also recalls the numerousspells in the Graeco-Egyptian papyri which invoke gods and demons to sendnightmares to the client's enemy.

One spell to send evil dreams invokes Seth,both in words and by making a model hippopotamus in red wax. In general, thestory seems to fit with the growth of aggressive magic in the Graeco-RomanPeriod.

However, the aggressive use of figurines isrecorded in much earlier magical tales.

A fragmentary papyrus (Papyrus Vandief) datingto the late sixth or early fifth century BC contains the tale of a youngmagician called Meryra.

Stories about Meryra were being told at least as early as the thirteenthcentury BC. In Papyrus Vandier, Meryra goes down into the underworld to savethe sick Pharaoh Sisobek by winning him a longer life-span from Osiris. Theking's other magicians are jealous of Meryra.

While the young magician is trapped in theunderworld, they encourage the king to marry Meryra's wife and to kill Meryra'syoung son.

In order to take revenge from a distance,Meryra makes 'a man of clay' and sends him to the world of the living. The clayman orders Pharaoh to burn the jealous magicians in the furnace of the goddessMut at Heliopolis.Sisobek does not dare to disobey this grim supernatural messenger.

He has the magicians executed and their bodiesburned. It gives added point to the story that the magicians suffer the fatewhich they themselves would have inflicted on model or real captives duringexecration rituals.

Earlier still, Papyrus Westcar (c. seventeenthcentury BC) includes the story of the Chief Lector Priest Webaoner and hisunfaithful wife.

Webaoner was informed by a servant that hiswife was meeting her lover in a garden pavilion by a lake. The Chief LectorPriest sent for a gold and ebony box, which contained either his magic scrollsor the ingredients needed for spells. He made a crocodile out of wax and gaveit to the servant with certain instructions. When Webaoner went away to attend KingNebka, his wife invited her lover to meet her in the pavilion.

Afterwards, as the lover set out across thelake for home, the servant tossed the wax crocodile into the water. It grewinto a real crocodile seven cubits long (about three and a half metres). Thecrocodile seized the lover and dragged him under the water.

After seven days at court, Webaoner invitedKing Nebka to come home with him to see a marvel. He took Nebka to the edge of thelake and called the crocodile.

It appeared from the depths, carrying thelover.

Miniaturestatue-stela, late 1st millennium BC. It shows Isisholding the infant Horus (right); a head of Bes (top left); and Horustriumphing over dangerous animals and reptiles (bottom left).

The king was alarmed by the huge crocodile soWebaoner turned the monster back into a wax model. The Chief Lector Priestexplained how he had been betrayed and Nebka ordered the lover to be given tothe crocodile.

The wax model became a giant crocodile againand carried the lover back to the underworld.

King Nebka, and King Khufu in the framingstory, both approve of this act of magical revenge. It is not certain that theauthor meant his readers to share in this approval. The story is reminiscent ofthe tomb curses of the late third and early second millennia BC which threaten offenderswith 'the crocodile in the water and the snake on land'.

In these curses, the tomb-owner appeals to adivine court of justice to enforce his threats, but Webaoner acts like a god,judging the living and directing their fate in the underworld. Later in thesame story cycle, the peasant magician Djedi refuses to exercise his powers oflife and death over humans to entertain the king. In Papyrus Vantlier, Meryraseems to be rebuked by Osiris for sending the 'man of clay'.

There is a curious echo of the Webaoner storyin a spell to keep a man's wife faithful to him in one of the Graeco-Egyptianpapyri.

The magician is to make a crocodile out of clayand put it in a lead coffin. He must write on the coffin a name of power andthe name of his wife.

Presumably the fearsome crocodile was toprevent any lover from approaching the wife. Elsewhere in the Graeco-Egyptianpapyri, wax models are used to invoke various deities in much the same manneras drawn images. For example, a spell to summon Thoth involves the making of awax baboon.

Animals made of wax and other substances dofigure in spells of the second millennium BC, but in everyday magic they rarelyact as animated agents for the magician.

One possible instance is an anti-venom spell whichinvolves making a scorpion out of clay and turquoise, to fight 'mouth againstmouth and tooth against tooth'. Since this scorpion was to be 'put on' thepatient, it should probably be classed as an amulet rather than a figurine.

Figurines animated by magic are more common inthe funerary sphere. The figurines and statuettes of servants found in burialsof between about 2500 and 1500 BC have the same function as the figures in wallreliefs and paintings. They could be animated by spells to provide services inthe afterlife for the deceased. Named servants were some-times shown in thetomb reliefs or depicted by figurines.

This may have meant that their kas could beinvoked by name and compelled to serve the tomb-owner.

The tomb-owner was represented by a particulartype of funerary figurine known as a shabti or ushabti. The earliest examples,which date to the twenty-first century BC, are made out of wax, mud or dough

The use of these magical materials suggeststhat the shabtis of this period were intimately linked with the person of thetomb-owner.

The early shabtis consist of a roughly shapednude body which was wrapped in linen and placed in a model coffin. Spells musthave been said over this substitute body to identify it with that of thetomb-owner.

By the eighteenth century BC, shabtis wereusually made in stone or wood and their function had become more specific. Aspell from The Coffin Texts written on the mummiform body of the shabtidescribes how it is to act as a substitute if the deceased is called up forcompulsory labour on agricultural or irrigation projects in the afterlife

In life, the well-off no doubt avoided suchpublic works by paying substitutes to labour on their behalf. Stress is laid onthe shabti answering when the deceased's name was called, so once again thereis a strong link between magical figurines and the concept of a person's name.

Other figurines from tombs seem to be intendedas magical protectors for the deceased. Figurines of the four sons of Horushave the specific function of protecting the liver, lungs, stomach, andentrails of the deceased. At the period when these parts were put back insidethe body after mummification, wax figures of the four sons of Horus were includedin the packages. Fearsome animal-headed demons made out of wax or wood coatedwith bitumen were placed in royal tombs

Their role was presumably to protect the kingfrom their own kind in the afterlife. Some of these demons have counterparts onthe apotropaic wands

This is also true of many of the animalfigurines found in burial equipment of the first half of the second millenniumBC.

These include hippopotami, crocodiles, cats,and lions. Such figurines probably had spells said over them to animate them as'fighters' on behalf of the deceased.

Protective spells may dominate funerary magic,but models used in everyday magic could have other functions. A spell forscorpion bite required the making of a wax cat

Cats were celebrated as snake killers inancient

Egypt

and may well have tackled scorpions too.

In funerary literature, Ra and Hathor take oncat form to cut the chaos serpent to pieces

An elaborate anti-venom speJJ inscribed on a statueof the mid-first millennium BC seems to refer to a real cat. Possibly thepoison was to be transferred into a sacred cat, who would be able to overcomethis evil force.

The principle of transference is sometimesmentioned in the rubrics to spells. A spell to relieve stomach-ache in apapyrus of the late second millennium BC: is to be said over a 'woman's statueof clay'.

The rubric goes on to explain that theaffliction would then be sent down into the 'Isisstatue'.

Pottery figurines of Isisare virtually unknown from the period to which the papyrus dates. That could bebecause such figurines were destroyed as soon as the infliction had beentransferred into them, but it seems more likely that a divine figurine wouldhave been buried or dedicated in a temple after the rite.

It is possible that the spell is referring to atype of nude female figurine which was used as a fertility charm

These fertility figurines are found in burials,in the outer areas of tombs, in household shrines and in the temples of deitiesassociated with fertility. Their purpose was to ensure a successful sex life,culminating in the birth of healthy children

Spells to alleviate stomach-ache and spells torelieve labour pains are sometimes grouped together in magico medical papyri.The laying of a hand on the belly is recommended in both cases, so a type ofobject related to childbirth might well appear in a spell for ordinarystomach-ache. A woman's figurine of Isis isalso mentioned in an anti-venom spell. Scorpion bite sometimes seems to be usedas a metaphor for all the mysterious and sudden afflictions of early childhood,so this may still be in the sphere of fertility.

Some figurines or statuettes used in magicrepresent deities more directly. One anti-venom spell is to be said over awooden statuette of a divine falcon. This statuette is to brought near thesufferer and offered bread and incense. The magician is here treating thefalcon statuette as if it was a divine image in a temple. Offerings of food,drink, cosmetics and perfumes were made to such images to induce a deity tomanifest itself in the temple. It then became a source of power. Classicalwriters refer to this ability to animate divine images as something uniquelyEgyptian.

The rubric of another anti-venom spell statesthat it is to be spoken over a wooden statue of Horus holding snakes andtrampling a crocodile and a scorpion. Wooden objects of this description arerare, but numerous stone examples have survived

These are usually in the form of statue-stelaein which the figure of Horus is carved in three dimensions. Horus is shown as anaked child trampling on one or more crocodiles and gripping snakes, scorpions,and sometimes desert animals such as lions and oryxes. A head of Bes oftenappears above the Horus figure and numerous protective deities may be incisedon the stela

Such objects are known as Horus cippi, or'Horus on the crocodiles' stelae.5 They range in date from about the thirteenthcentury BC to the second century AD. Some were set up in temples. Others comefrom houses or tombs. A cippus is normally inscribed with several anti-venom spells.

The dual purpose of such statue-stelae was torepel actual poisonous reptiles or dangerous animals and to cure those who hadbeen bitten

They also functioned in a more general way againstsupernatural beings envisaged in animal or reptile form. Collections of similaror identical spells were sometimes inscribed on statues of deities, kings orhigh-ranking priests and officials. These statues often incorporate a cippus

Divine statues of this type most commonlyportray Isis, sometimes with Horus beside her.

Other examples show Neith, whose temple at Sais was so renowned forits doctors. In the late first millennium BC, statues of this type were set upin temple sanatoria. These were buildings inside the precincts of a temple, wherepeople came for healing dreams or cures worked by drinking or bathing in holywater.

In Egyptian temples of the second millenniumBC, the most prominent statues were those of kings. Some of these royal statueswere deliberately set up in the outer areas of temples to act as a focus for populardevotion. Statues of Ramses n 'who listen to prayers' are shown on privatestelae. It was common practice to use a living or dead king as an intermediarywhen approaching the gods.

The king had an important role in popularreligion but, with the exception of the use of royal names as amulets, kings donot feature very much in everyday magic.

An interesting exception is a damaged statuegroup from a chapel in the eastern desert near Heliopolis.

The statue shows King Ramses in (c.1184—1153BC) seated beside a queen or goddess.

The goddess is probably Isis.One would expect Ramses to be playing the role of her son, Horus, but in theinscriptions he seems to be identified with the dawn god, Khepri. The throneson which the divine pair sit are inscribed with a compendium of spells againstdangerous animals and reptiles.

These seem to be copied from a collection keptin a temple library, possibly that of the House of Life at Heliopolis. One of the spells, a curse againstApep, the enemy of Ra, is almost identical to passages from The Book ofOverthrowing Apep in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus

The statue group was set up on one of thedesert routes used by mining and quarrying expeditions. Such expeditions weresometimes provided with scorpion charmers

To judge from the texts on the statue of RamsesIII, horned vipers were the main danger in the eastern desert. Expeditionmembers probably visited the chapel where the royal statue was kept beforesetting out on the arduous trek through the desert. They may sometimes have hadwith them a scribe who was capable of reading the texts aloud, but the standardpractice was probably to absorb the statue's magic by touching it, or bydrinking water poured over it. One of the inscriptions describes the king asthe lion who chases away all (hostile) gods and spirits.

The whole monument seems to be emphasizing thatit is the king who is providing this magical service for his workforce andprotecting the cities of Egyptfrom incursions by desert creatures.

Temple statues of priests and officials also provideda public service.

To set up a statue of yourself in an Egyptiantemple was a privilege confined to temple personnel or granted to importantofficials as a mark of royal favour.

Such statues were thought to provide analternative body for the person's ka. The ka became a resident of the templeand could share in the offerings made there to the gods. Temple statues of the early part of thesecond millennium BC often have inscriptions which address the staff of thetemple, promising good fortune for them and their descendants if they will makeofferings to the statue-owner.

Similar inscriptions are found on the outerareas of tombs and are based on the belief that the dead could act on behalf ofthe living, particularly in celestial courts of justice

Later in the second millennium BC, there was ashift in emphasis from the power of the dead to the power of the gods.

It became more common for lay people to visitthe outer areas of temples in order to pray and sacrifice to the gods.Inscriptions on some temple statues of this period are addressed to anyone,rich or poor, male or female, who may visit the temple. In return forofferings, the statue-owner agrees to pass on the prayers and petitions of thevisitor to the main deity of the temple.

Parts of these 'intermediary statues' have beenrubbed away by the touch of thousands of hopeful hands over the centuries.

Some temple statues of the first millennium BCoffered a different service to the visitor, that of magical cures. These'healing statues' depict a standing, kneeling or squatting man. Thestatue-owner often holds a Horus cippus and there may be a basin in front ofthe statue base.

Such statues are usually covered withinscriptions, comprising prayers for the statue owner and anti-venom spells.7Prototypes for some of these spells are found in The Pyramid Texts, but by thefirst millennium BC elaborate narrative spells had developed.

The cippi and the healing statues workedthrough physical contact with the patient. The head of Bes which features onmany cippi often shows signs of rubbing. The hand of a healing statue mightalso be touched as part of the ritual. On the statue of a man named Djedhor, aspell written on the hand and arm promises the sufferer that the Hand of Atumwill drive out the poison of Apep and bestow life, prosperity and health. Themagical cure was probably supplementary to medical treatment, but if thepatient recovered, offerings would be made to the spirit of the person who hadset up the dppus or statue.

Anti-venom spells may seem rather specialized,but they did deal with a common hazard and one that particularly affectedchildren. A healthy adult was not likely to die of a scorpion bite but a childwas, and the welfare of children was very dear to the hearts of the ancientEgyptians.

Snakes and scorpions could also act as generalsymbols of the forces of chaos that threatened the safe and orderly life thatmost Egyptians hoped to enjoy. Hence these spells are found on everything fromtemple gateways down to miniature cippi designed to be kept in houses or wornas amulets.

Ancient Egypt Magic Figurines and Statues part 1

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AncientEgyptMagic Figurines and Statues part 1

Frontand back views of a magical figurine made of dark wax, c. 100—200 AD.

Human(?) hair has been inserted in the figurine's navel. The back conceals a scrapof a papyrus containing the written part of the spell.

Among the most sinister objects from theancient world are figurines in human shape which were used to cast a spell onthe people they depicted. Such objects only survive when they were buried aspart of the rite, usually in the vicinity of tombs.

The BritishMuseum has a small figurine made indark wax which dates to the period when

Egypt

was under Roman rule

It has strands of human hair pushed into itsnavel and a scrap of papyrus inserted in its back.

The hair would transfer the essence of theperson it belonged to into the figurine. Rites performed over the figurinewould then affect the owner of the hair.

In the Graeco-Egyptian papyri, some cursespells recommend mixing the hair of the intended victim with the hair of a deadperson. The scrap of papyrus which contained the written component of the spellis now unreadable, so the exact purpose of this wax figurine remains unknown.

A more gruesome figurine, now in the Louvre Museum,Paris, is inthe form of a woman with her arms tied behind her back

Nails have been driven deep into the clay bodyof the woman. Drawing on parallels from European witchcraft or Caribbean voodoo, the obvious assumption is that thisfigurine was intended to kill the woman depicted or to cause her severe pain.However, written sources prove that figurines were used in variety of ways in Egyptianmagic.

Objects found with the Paris figurine make it clear that inflictionof physical harm was not the intention.

The Parisfigurine was buried inside a clay pot together with a lead lamella inscribedwith a love charm in Greek. The charm invokes Thoth, Anubis, Antinoos (a loverof the Emperor Hadrian who was deified after drowning in the Nile)and the spirits of the dead. Several spells in the Graeco-Egyptian papyri forgaining the love of a man or woman describe just this type of procedure. Amagical papyrus in the Louvre directs the magician or would-be lover to make afigurine in the form of a kneeling woman with her hands tied behind her back.

The names of powerful demons are to be writtenon the woman's limbs. Possibly the

Paris figurine conceals a scrap of papyrus with suchnames written on it.

The lover then pierces the body with thirteenneedles or nails, saying each time 'I pierce the stomach or throat [etc.] of X,that she may think of no-one but me'.

Terracottafigurines of bound Nubians, c. 20th— 19^th centuries BC.Thesewere probablyused in a cursing ritual.

An invocation to deities, demons and spiritswas to be written on a lead tablet and tied to the figurine with a knottedcord, or buried close to the figurine in a graveyard. If possible, theseobjects were to be buried in the grave of someone who had died young or throughviolence.

Such spirits were more likely to linger onearth and show malice against the living, so they could be manipulated by themagician.

The only pains to be inflicted by the needleswere the pains of love. The magician intended to make his victim wild withdesire.

It appears from the lead tablet that the Paris group was made fora woman pursuing a man, but the sex of the figurine was not changed to suit this.The wax figure in the British Museum could also be alove charm.

The gap between love and hate is notoriouslynarrow. In some spells in the Graeco-Egyptian papyri, the victim is threatenedwith madness or death if they do not feel love for the magician's client.

Such figurines do count as examples ofaggressive magic.

This type of magic was not merely the productof foreign influence.

The use of figurines was thought by Classicaland Early Christian writers to be characteristic of Egyptian magic. TheAlexander Romance, written around the third century AD, describes the magicalexploits of the Pharaoh Nectanebo. This legendary figure seems to be based ontwo kings called Nectanebo who reigned in the fourth century BC.2 Necta-nebo IIwas the last native-born ruler of ancient

Egypt

The legendary Nectanebo is said to haverepelled invasions by making wax models of his own ships and men and those ofthe invaders.

Terracottafigurines of bound Nubians, c. 20th— 19^th centuries BC.Thesewere probablyused in a cursing ritual.

After placing them all in a bowl of water,Nectanebo would wave his ebony rod and invoke gods and demons to animate thewax models and sink the enemy ships. This caused the real enemy fleet tofounder, until the day when the gods decreed that his reign should come to anend and Nectanebo was forced to flee to Macedonia.

This all sounds like picturesque invention, butit does agree quite closely with what is known of the secret rituals carriedout in temples.

In The Book of Overthrowing Apep, wax modelsare made of current enemies of the state, as well as of the eternal forces ofchaos. These enemies were identified by the use of their names and thendestroyed in a variety of ways.

Similar rituals are known from other sites,such as the temple of the goddess Mut at Heliopolisand the temple of Osiris at Abydos

Magic of this kind can be traced back at leastas far as the late third millennium BC.

A spell in The Coffin Texts refers to thebreaking of pots and figurines.

Archaeologists have found the remains of suchrites at the royal cemeteries of Giza, Saqqaraand Lisht, and at several Egyptian forts in Nubia.

Broken pots and clay or stone figurines areinscribed in the hieratic script with lists of the enemies of

Egypt

The body of the figurine may be flattened intoa tablet shape to give more space for the text. On the back, the arms, or thearms and the legs, are bound together. In the more detailed examples, the headsdisplay foreign features and hairstyles.

Terracottamodel of a woman pierced with iron nails, c. 200—300 AD. This figurine wasburied in a pot with a lead tablet inscribed with a love charm.

The inscriptions are known as 'ExecrationTexts'. These texts some-times threaten death to specific people. More often,they simply consist of the name, parentage and tide of the enemy. It must havebeen the words spoken and the actions performed during the dedication rite thatactually inflicted the curse. The Execration Texts are aimed mainly at enemyrulers, nations and tribes in Nubia,Libyaand Syria-Palestine. A few Egyptian traitors are named and there is a catch-allclause against any man, woman or eunuch in

Egypt

who might be plottingrebellion.

The named traitors tend to be officials servingroyal ladies, so it is possible that they were involved in harem conspiracies.An execration rite may sometimes have been carried out after the execution of acriminal.

By killing the enemy's name, which was anintegral part of the personality, this rite would extend punishment into theafterlife.

The Execration Texts provide valuableinformation on the foreign enemies of Egypt, but the lists soon becamefixed. Names were repeated, sometimes in garbled versions, long after an enemyhad ceased to be a physical danger. The spirits of defeated enemies or executedtraitors were probably regarded as a continuing supernatural threat, whichneeded to be met with magic. Some of the Execration Texts end with a sectionmentioning every evil word, thought, plot or dream.

The wording is similar to that of contemporaryspells on papyrus which promise to protect against the malice of demons andghosts.

The Egyptians named in the Execration Texts arereferred to as mut, the same word used of the troublesome dead in protectivespells for private persons.

The red pots on which execration texts werewritten were ritually broken as part of the cursing ceremony in order to smashthe enemy's power.

A pit near the Egyptian fort of Mirgissa in

Nubia

contained hundreds of such potsherds, as well as nearly 350 figurines.

Deposits of figurines have been found justoutside various fortresses, tombs and funerary temples. The clay figurines wereburned by being baked in a kiln and then buried, or nailed to outer walls, asthe bodies of executed traitors and foreign enemies sometimes were.

Uninsurable clay figurines of bound men inforeign dress are likely to be relics of similar ceremonies

These foreigners are tied up in the same way asthe enemies of Ra shown in the Underworld Books.

In a few Execration Texts the enemies arespecifically identified with Apep or Seth. The Louvre figurine also has herhands tied behind her back

Some love charms in the Graeco-Egyptian papyrithreaten to identify the woman with the cosmic enemies if she will not submitto the magician's lust. This type of love charm provides another example of atemple ritual being adapted for private use.

The more elaborate enemy figurines can betrussed up like animals about to be sacrificed. Some are shown with theirthroats cut, the method used to kill sacrificial animals. Temple texts identify such animals,particularly desert game, with the forces of chaos. The dismembered body of aNubian and a flint sacrificial knife were found near the Mirgissa pit. SomeEgyptologists believe that human sacrifices routinely accompanied execrationrituals, others have argued that the figurines were normally a substitute forsuch sacrifices.

There were various magical techniques fordisabling the enemies represented by such figurines. Some crude mud execrationfigures from a cemetery at Lisht were found in a model sarcophagus (outercoffin).

The Cairo Museum has several boxescontaining clay 'captive figurines'.

The Book of Overthrowing Apep also mentionsburying figurines, or figures drawn on papyrus, in boxes. This was presumablydone within the temple precincts where the gods could guard the boxes.

The most graphic ritual was the burning of waxfigurines in special furnaces.

Traces of melted wax were found beside theskull of the sacrificed Nubian at Mirgissa, and some magical papyri show theburning of enemies in furnaces or cauldrons

From the Egyptian point of view, the officiantin such rites was in a very powerful position. When he made figurines inscribedwith the names of the enemies of state, he could add his personal enemies tothe list.

One instance of a private perversion of thiskind of magic survives in records of the trial of a group of soldiers andcourtiers accused of conspiring to kill King Ramses in (c. 1184—1153 BC). Aspart of the plan, one of the conspirators managed to obtain a secret book ofmagic from the royal library. This enabled him to create inscribed waxfigurines which he hoped would incapacitate the king's guards (PapyrusLee).

The conspirators also made wax gods, perhaps toinvoke harmful divine

manifestations against the king (PapyrusRolliri).

The secret book must have been somethingsimilar to The Book of Overthrowing Apep. The names of some of the defendantshave obviously been altered in the court records. Divine elements in theirnames are replaced by the names or epithets of the forces of chaos and evil.

One is called by an epithet of Apep and anotheris called 'Ra hates him'. This was the first step in identifying thesepolitical enemies of the king with the enemies of Ra and the whole cosmiccycle, just as was done in the magic ritual.

The conspirators were either executed or forcedto commit suicide.

The surviving records do not describe the crimein detail, but it appears that force or poison were to be used against KingRamses.

The sexual organs of in ancient Egypt

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The sexual organs of in ancient Egypt

Footboard of the coffin of a Theban priest, c. 200 BC. Bound enemy figures are painted on the soles of the deceased's sandals to be eternally trampled underfoot

A display of the sexual organs is used in many cultures to express contempt or to expel evil spirits. The noise of cymbals, rattles or castanets was also thought to scare off hostile forces. These instruments were often played by dancers

Lively protective dances to banish dangerous spirits were a common feature of Egyptian culture. Such dances involved much clapping and stamping to drive away evil.

Stamping or trampling on an enemy was a standard gesture in magical rites. The earliest known statue of an Egyptian king shows enemies sprawled across its base under the king's feet. Figures of the traditional enemies of Egypt were represented on the king's footstool and on the sole of his sandals, so that he was constantly trampling on them. 'My enemy is under the soles of my feet' is the boast of a magician in a spell to protect against the dangers of New Year. The same idea is found in funerary magic. As late as the Roman Period, the deceased had traditional enemies painted on the footboard of his coffin to triumph over them in the afterlife

Spells from the Graeco-Egyptian papyri use this technique in everyday magic.

The names of a person's enemies are to be engraved on a thin sheet of metal and worn between his foot and his sandal.

The royal objects might be regarded as an extension of symbolic language in which metaphors were acted out. This is sometimes known as 'performative magic'.

Scholars disagree about how far the participants in 'performative magic' expected it to have effects in the real world. An example of performative magic which illustrates many of the techniques mentioned in this chapter is the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus in the

British Museum

Painted wooden figure of Bes from Thebes, c. 1500 BC. He is shown dancing and holding a tambourine.

This papyrus, which dates to the late fourth century BC, includes the scripts and rubrics for several important rituals performed at Karnak and other temples. The most striking are those in The Book of Overthrowing Apep This primeval being was associated with frightening natural phenomena such as darkness, storms and earthquakes.

Apep could also act as a symbol for the rebellious and chaotic forces within mankind. In the official view, this meant anyone, foreign or Egyptian, who opposed king and state. The ritual deals with both the eternal enemies of order in the cosmic struggle and temporary combatants on earth. Egyptian kings and priests represent the divine order.

Foreign rulers and political traitors stand for disorder. The exact names could be filled in differently each time that the rite was performed.

The papyrus includes several rituals against Apep, all with similar components. Repetition was important in itself. Many things in the rite were to be said or done four times. The officiant is described as Pharaoh, but in practice would have been a priest, probably a Chief Lector Priest.

He invoked a great array of powerful deities. They were summoned in their most formidable aspects, or with special attributes, to join in the struggle against Apep. The officiant called on the heka of Thoth and of Isis, on the Eye of Ra and the Eye of Horus (the solar and lunar eyes), and on the spear of Seth.

Knowledge of the true names and forms of Apep was vital to the success of the rite. These were listed in order that every part of Apep's being could be destroyed. The rites were directed at Apep's body, his ba, his ka, his secret name, his shadow, his heka, his bones and his sperm.

The names and forms of Apep were written in fresh ink on virgin papyrus and then burned.

In another part of the rite, the names and forms were copied onto papyrus before being sealed in a box and buried. This method of control seems to be a forerunner of the Islamic tradition of sealing a djinn in a bottle. The original idea may have to bury Apep and his followers alive, a fate mentioned with horror in Egyptian texts. The modern superstition that you can harm or even kill someone by writing their name on a slip of paper and shutting it in a drawer is in the same tradition.

Wax figures were made of Apep and of the enemies of Egypt who were held to be his associates. The human's figurines had their hands tied behind their backs with red or black thread. The wax models were spat on, trampled, stabbed with an iron weapon and burned. A similar fate is shown for models of Seth and his followers in another magical papyrus in the British Museum

Any remains were pounded in pots of urine, which was both polluting and destructively acidic. After all this effort, the victory was a symbolic one, lasting no more than a few hours.

The enemies of order were renewed each day with the sun god and the battle began again.

A more permanent result was hoped for in rites performed for private individuals. A late second millennium BC spell to counter the poisonous efflux of a demon or ghost also uses a whole range of magical techniques.9 It evokes the protection of Mafdet, a ferocious feline goddess, and alludes to a myth in which Horus evaded the sexual advances of Seth. The names of the supernatural enemy and his parents are to be uttered, if known, in order to bring them under control. The rubric is obscure, but it seems that the spell is to be said over a phallus-shaped loaf inscribed with the names of the enemy. This loaf is to be wrapped in fatty meat and given to a cat. As the cat devours the loaf so, on the supernatural plane, the goddess Mafdet will destroy the enemy.

In this spell, the magician deals with a threat by his knowledge of secret names, by raising the conflict to a cosmic plane, by invoking the appropriate defenders, and by the destruction of a model of the enemy.

The technique of transference is also implied. Any poison that might be affecting the client would be transferred into the model and consumed by the cat.

Even more elaborate combinations of words, actions and ingredients are found in some spells in the Graeco-Egyptian papyri.

Part of the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus, 4th century BC. This scroll contains the script and instructions for various temple rituals, including The Book of Overthrowing Apep.

A spell in the London-Leiden Demotic Papyrus to make a woman love a man begins with an invocation to the formidable goddesses associated with the solar eye. The magician asks the Eye Goddess to send down the power that Ra has given her into the scented oil he wishes to use as an aphrodisiac.

The rubric describes how the magician is to put a particular sort of black Nile fish into the rose-scented oil. The fish is to be hung up for some days and then placed in a glass vessel with some kind of plant that was linked with Isis. The pounded flesh is mixed with the oil and an incantation is to be said seven times over the mixture at dawn for seven days running. The magician was to anoint his head with the oil when he wanted to sleep with the woman he desired.

The remains of the fish were to be embalmed with myrrh and natron and buried in the magician's house, or in any secret place. Burial of magical objects or ingredients was a common method of perpetuating the power of a spell in a particular place.

An alternative was to bury the magical objects or ingredients among tombs, or near a sacred place, so that the heka of the supernatural beings who dwelled there could continue to reinforce the spell.

This love spell was performed in secret, but others were carried out in the presence of the client. There was always an element of showmanship in Egyptian magic, but this element seems to have increased in the Roman Period. Much of it was to do with building up the right atmosphere.

In the case of the orgy — divination through dreams or manifestations of deities — the elaborate preparations seem designed to put the magician's assistant into a trance.

In one such spell in the London-Leiden Papyrus, the magician is to take a bronze bowl engraved with a figure of Anubis, fill it with water and cover the water with a film of oil. The child medium is to be made to lie on four bricks with a cloth over his head. The magician lights a lamp on one side of the child and a censer on the other.

He is then to burn exotic incense and chant an invocation to Anubis over and over again. It is hardly surprising that a child who was susceptible to influence would begin to see pictures in the oil.

This was a private rite, of a type disapproved of by the Roman government. In earlier times, when magic was more socially acceptable, large groups of people might come together to achieve a visionary frenzy through music, dance and song.

The elaborate nature of some spells, particularly those in the Graeco-Egyptian papyri, would have made them difficult, time-consuming and expensive to carry out.

These factors presumably added to the prestige of the magic, since people have a tendency to disbelieve that something cheap and easy can be effective. It may also have been convenient for the magician to be able to blame some minor technical error if his spell failed to produce the desired result. For example, it must have been difficult to be sure that you had obtained the fat of a black, male, first-born and first-reared lamb, as required for an invocation to Harpocrates (Horus the child).

The responsibility for failure could then be diverted from the magician's personal powers to factors beyond his control.

The magician papyrus of orgy sexual organs in ancient Egypt

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The magician papyrus of orgy sexual organs in ancient Egypt

Gold bangles from Mostagedda in the form of a protective knot c 2100 BC The knotted cords mentioned in spells have been translated into precious metal to make a permanent piece of amuletic jewellery

The Graeco-Egyptian papyri contain spells demanding an extraordinary range of ingredients. These are sometimes divided into male and female ingredients. Some are bizarre, such as bat's blood or the hair of a murdered man; some exotic, such as Syrian honey; and some expensive, like frankincense, gold leaf or real lapis-lazuli. Lizards, especially double-tailed ones, are a popular ingredient. This could account for a curious find of hundreds of jars packed with lizards at a Roman Period settlement near Lisht.

In the Graeco-Egyptian papyri, strange ingredients cannot always be taken at face value. The rubric to one spell explains that the 'navel of a male crocodile' actually means pondweed and that 'heart of a baboon' means oil of lilies. One papyrus gives a list of the 'secret meanings' of ingredients. Snake's blood is interpreted as haematite, crocodile dung as Ethiopian soil, and the semen of Ammon (a Libyan deity) as the humble houseleek plant

It is difficult to know whether such interpretations should also be applied to earlier texts. Animal dung is one of the most frequent ingredients in magic and medicine of the second millennium BC. The substitution of Ethiopian soil for crocodile dung should probably be seen as a late rationalization of ingredients, rather than as a true explanation for all periods.

The material from which magical objects were made might have its own symbolic role. Substances of mysterious origin, such as resin, had intrinsic beka. Resin was used to make funerary amulets and, at some periods, to coat the skin of mummies. The fact that resin is naturally translucent and golden linked it with the light of the creator sun god.

The uncharitable luster of gold was an appropriate symbol of eternal life, so this metal was much used in funerary magic. Until the first millennium BC, only imported or meteoric iron was available in Egypt.

Its scarcity and exotic origins account for the protective powers attributed to iron blades. An iron spear was traditionally used by Seth against the chaos serpent Apep. The Graeco-Egyptian papyri state that many spells were to be incised on thin metal tablets known as lamellae.

These may be in gold, silver, tin or lead. This last metal was associated with curses and other kinds of aggressive magic.

Malleable substances such as clay, wax, animal fats and bread dough were often used in Egyptian magic.

These materials enabled the magician to imitate creator gods, like Khnum who formed gods and people from clay and gave them the breath of life. Dough, fat and wax could be made to look and even feel like actual flesh. Human detritus such as saliva, hair or nail clippings could be incorporated for magical purposes into objects made from them. Materials which are easily destroyed were desirable for certain rites. Wax, which melts away to nothing at high temperatures, was ideal in this respect.

The colours of the clothing, utensils or ingredients used in magic were carefully chosen. Egyptian colour terms do not directly correspond with our own.

Shades of yellow, red and orange can all be described by one word, probably because they all occur in fire. Black and green were positive and powerful colours, linked with growth and regeneration.

Black was particularly favoured in magic. The blood or milk of a black animal is often specified. Blue and turquoise, were heavenly colours, appropriate to divine beings and places.

Red was a very powerful colour, linked with the solar eye goddesses.

This power could sometimes be harnessed by the magician, as in the spell which uses the red ribbons of the Seven Hathors to bind demons.

The color red was also associated with chaos and evil. Doing 'red things' meant to do evil, and Seth was said to be red-haired. In books of ritual magic the names and images of chaotic forces such as Seth or Apep are often drawn in red, while the rest of the text is in black

In the Graeco-Egyptian papyri, a special kind of red ink, which included ochre and the juice of flaming red poppies, was used to write spells invoking Seth. At this period an elaborate system of beliefs developed based on the colours of the precious and semi-precious stones used as amulets.

The fact that diverse objects shared the same colour was thought of as a significant connecting link, which could be utilized in magic. Thus the blood of a black calf might be used in a potion to restore grey hair to black. Shape, sound or even smell might form the link rather than colour.

These qualities might be used to attract or to repel.

This may account for some of the repulsive ingredients, such as menstrual blood and fly dung, used in spells. In the early part of this century, Egyptian peasant women might wear the pickled head of a puppy as an amulet during pregnancy. Since dogs were held to be unclean animals, this amulet was thought to deter any spirit from getting close enough to harm the unborn child. One ancient Egyptian spell to protect against various hostile forces was to be said over the excrement and fat of a range of dangerous or ritually impure animals.

These substances were probably intended to drive away the agents of harm and make them leave the client alone.

Things were deemed to be upside down in the underworld. Demons were said to have their mouth where their anus should be, so eating faeces was natural to them.

Another reversal of normal behaviour is found in a spell where honey is used as a repellent on the grounds that if it is sweet to living people, it must be bitter to ghosts and demons.

A magician might also do or eat things that were normally taboo in order to establish himself as a superhuman power. In some spells, faeces are probably offered as tempting fare to demons, just as the best food would be offered to the gods after prayer.

Divine beings were sometimes said to live on perfume, so the smell of incense was supposed to attract deities. Incense was often burned during magical rites. It must have helped to heighten the atmosphere and increase the aura of mystery surrounding the magician.

The strong smell of garlic was thought to repel supernatural beings. The Egyptian word for garlic sounded like the word for harm, and the fact that individual cloves of garlic were thought to resemble teeth was an additional reason for using it as a repellent. A charm against ghosts, snakes and scorpions, involved pounding garlic with beer and sprinkling the mixture over a house or tomb at night. The European belief in garlic as a protection against vampires and witches has an ancient pedigree.

Some bodily fluids, such as menstrual blood, might be used as a repellent. The Egyptian words for semen and poison are closely related, and the semen of some demons was particularly feared. One spell seems to be a formula for protecting a sleeper against a demon ejaculating into their ear. The spitting of saliva could be a hostile action, but saliva was also used in healing. The contact of saliva with the tongue, and therefore with the words of the spell, imbued it with destructive or healing power according to the nature of the incantation.

Urine was sometimes thought of as destructive and sometimes as cleansing. The urine of pregnant women had life-giving properties.

The standard ancient Egyptian pregnancy test was to make a woman urinate on young plants. If she was pregnant, the plants would grow; if not they would die. The symbolism of mother's milk, human or animal, was always positive. Women who wanted to find out whether they could conceive drank the milk of a woman who had borne a son.

If they vomited, they were or would be pregnant. The milk of the mother of a son was used as general ingredient in medical prescriptions and protective spells. It was stored in special mother-and-child-shaped pottery containers. Such milk could be equated with the milk of the divine mother.

In myth, the divine mother can be Isis, Hathor, or various other goddesses

The infant god is most commonly Horus. This role is often taken by the reigning king in temple reliefs. The king can be shown suckling from goddesses in human, cow or even snake form.

A pendant found in Tutankhamun's tomb shows him suckling from Weret-Hekau in her snake form. Drinking the milk of the sacred cows kept in Hathor temples was part of the coronation ceremony, and seems to have been regularly repeated to bestow 'life, dominion and power' on the king.

In a magical context, the milk of any mother who had borne a son could symbolize the divine milk and bestow vitality, strength and power.

Objects and ingredients used in magical rites might have intrinsic heka or it might be conferred on them by words, actions or gestures. Gestures are not often described in detail in the rubrics, but a few can be reconstructed from visual evidence. A standard protective gesture consisted of clenching the hand and pointing with the thumb and first finger. In tomb reliefs ranging in date from c.2400 to 1800 BC, men are shown making this gesture. They are usually pointing towards domestic animals at moments of potential crisis, such as the birth of a calf, the start of a desert hunt, or when driving cattle across a crocodile-infested canal. The accompanying inscription sometimes makes it clear that this gesture was part of a protective charm.

In one anti-venom spell, the magician is instructed to symbolically enclose the poison, first with his right hand and then with his left hand.

The rubric of another anti-venom spell in the same papyrus (Papyrus Chester Beatty \/II) says that the words are to be spoken over some kind of soaked plant material, tied by the magician into seven knots, and applied to the mouth of the wound. Here, the idea seems to be to imprison the poison by tying knots. In other spells, the knots are described as a barrier which hostile forces cannot pass. In a spell from a Graeco-Egyptian papyrus the magician ties 365 knots in black thread, saying each time 'Keep him who is bound'.

Pair of ivory clappers from Thebes, c. 1300 BC. Below each hand is the cow-eared face of the goddess Hathor. She was one of the goddesses who had the epithet 'Hand of Atum'

Sometimes the role of the knots is to prevent something happening until the right time, such as the birth of a child. The untying of magic knots would then be an important stage in the ritual. Knotted cords are linked with Anubis, who as god of mummification was concerned with wrapping and binding. Rope was very important in ancient Egypt and was an essential part of many hunting techniques, all of which were used symbolically against supernatural enemies. Harmful spirits might be caught in a net , or with a lassoo of rope, so a magician could use these objects to frighten off potential trouble-makers.

The Underworld Books are full of episodes in which the enemies of order and light are bound with ropes to restrain them. Human or semi-human figures called the 'Enemies of Ra' are shown with their arms tied behind their backs.

Magical figurines representing enemies were treated in the same way

Another method of restraint was sealing. The ancient Egyptians constantly used incised seals, often in the form of a scarab beetle, to seal documents, jars, boxes and chests.

A hymn that describes the creator god Amon-Re in the role of a magician states that 'Anything harmful is under his seal'. The harmful forces would be unable to pass this symbol of divine authority. Images of hostile forces might be placed in sealed boxes to restrain them. One of the rites performed in temples was known as The Book of Sealing the Mouths of the Enemy. Some anti-venom spells promise to seal the mouths of poisonous snakes.

Sometimes it might be desirable to 'seal' the magician or a patient to prevent harmful forces from entering them. Symbolic sealing of the seven natural orifices of the body is mentioned in texts of the late first millennium BC. The gesture of laying a hand on the patient is sometimes linked with sealing. One spell to safeguard a child promises 'My hand is on you, my seal is your protection.' In another spell, the goddess Hathor is described as laying her hand on a woman suffering in childbirth.

Ivory rods ending in hands represented the divine hand and were part of a magician's equipment. A figure wearing an animal or Bes mask seems to be holding such a hand rod in a relief dating to the twenty-fourth century

Hand-shaped clappers of ivory or wood were used in music and dance. In these, the hand is sometimes combined with the mask of Hathor

Hathor, and other goddesses, who embodied the female creative principle, were given the epithet 'Hand of Atum'. This refers to the myth of Ra-Atum copulating with his hand on the Primeval Mound

The divine hand could be a symbol of creative energy as well as protective power.

The combination of Hathor mask and hand can have sexual connot-

ations. Hathor was the 'Lady of the Vulva' as well as 'the Hand of Atum'.

In a literary text known as The Contendings ofHorus and Seth, which has much in common with the myths used in spells, Hathor shows her genitals to the sun god to drive out his bad humor