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Styler78
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Joined: 05 Oct 2009
Posts: 100
Location: UK
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 Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 7:41 pm Post subject: Gods and Godesses- Family Tree |
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I am getting lost in the world of gods and goddesses. Overlapping roles and themes has made it very confusing to get a feel of who was "related" to who.
Horus being born of Aset and Hathor is one example of this.
How do i make sense of all the gods and goddesses? Do i look at time periods or is there a common line of thought?
I wonder if there are good quality sites out there to give a good overview?
Can anyone give me some pointers?
Thanks 
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Beloved of Hathor, Chief of Thebes
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neseret
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Joined: 10 Jul 2008
Posts: 232
Location: United Kingdom
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 9:38 pm Post subject: Re: Gods and Godesses- Family Tree |
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| Styler78 wrote: | I am getting lost in the world of gods and goddesses. Overlapping roles and themes has made it very confusing to get a feel of who was "related" to who.
Horus being born of Aset and Hathor is one example of this.
How do i make sense of all the gods and goddesses? Do i look at time periods or is there a common line of thought?
I wonder if there are good quality sites out there to give a good overview?
Can anyone give me some pointers?
Thanks |
I'm not aware of many online websites which I would trust as a resource for "making sense" of Egyptian religion. There are, however, a fair amount of publications in book and article formats which do attempt to explain the intricacies of the ancient Egyptian belief system.
One reason you have the confusion on the birth of Horus, for example, has to do with localised myths, such as Isis being the mother of Horus, son of Isis, in Heliopolis, while Hathor is the mother of Horus (the Elder), in Coptos. So, as you note, there are two forms os Horus and they are not necessarily related, either.
Then you have variations of certain set myths over long periods of time. Seth killing Osiris is talked about in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, but it's not until the New Kingdom and later one sees tha myths of the various times Seth kills Osiris (twice), the myth of finding the chest with Osiris' body after his first death in Byblos, the wandering of Isis and Nephthys, the myths of the fourteen body pieces which Isis has to find and reassemble, and so on.
It's pretty much assumed that everyone knows the myth in the Pyramid Texts so they didn't go into detail, but by the New Kingdom and later, you have full-blown passion play stories which were likely acted out, such as the Osirian passion play at Abydos, and the various plays surrounding the Contendings of Seth and Horus over the kingship of the gods (and of Egypt).
I doubt that any single book can "make sense" of the totality of Egyptian deities, which likely numbered into the thousands. Recall that most deities are local village deities, then city deities, then "national" deities.
Even the same deity could have different facets to his worship depening upon whether you are talking about his "localised" or "national" forms. So Amun in Thebes, as a local deity, may have had a consort named Amaunet, who was his feminine counterpart of "hiddeness", as explained in the Hermopolitan creation stories, but when Amun becomes a national deity in the New Kingdom, he's given a new consort (Mut) and a son (Khonsu), forming the Theban triad, and a new set of myths.
However, if I were to start anyone on the study of Egyptian religion from a reliable source, I'd start off slow with a book like
Hart, G. 1986. A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul.
George Hart, who works in the Egyptian Department at the British Museum, wrote this small but very informative paperback some years ago. I believe he updated it recently, so look in a local or online bookship for any book on Egyptian deities by this author, and you likely won't go wrong.
If, after reading Hart's works, you find you want a more indepth view of deities, I'd suggest any of these books
Morenz, S. 1973 (1960). Egyptian Religion. A. E. Keep. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Quirke, S. 1992. Ancient Egyptian Religion. London: British Museum Press.
Redford, D. B., Ed. 2002. The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shafer, B. E., Ed. 1991. Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wilkinson, R. H. 2003. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson.
Any or all of these books give a very good overview of Egyptian religion itself, not just deities.
If you find yourself still interested in more information, these are the "top of the line" books on Egyptian religion
Assmann, J. 2001. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt. D. Lorton, transl. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bonnet, H. 2000 (1952). Reallexikon der Aegyptischen Religiongeschichte. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Frankfort, H., H. A. Frankfort, et al. 1977 (1946). The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East. Oriental Institute Essay. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hornung, E. 1982. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. J. Baines, transl. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Tobin, V. A. 1989. Theological principles of Egyptian religion. American University Studies. Series 7, Theology and Religion 59. New York: Peter Lang.
There are, of course, numerous publications out there which concern themselves with only one, two, or sometimes a triad, of deitties. These are specialised publications and you would have ot hunt them down mainly by the deity's name. For example, the AEB (Annual Egyptological Bibiography) list over 300 publications about the deity Osiris between 1822 - 1997, in the form of books and articles, with a similar amount for his sister-wife, the goddess Isis. This can give you an idea of the scope of publications out there.
HTH.
_________________
Katherine Griffis-Greenberg
Oriental Institute
Oriental Studies Doctoral Program [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom
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Styler78
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Joined: 05 Oct 2009
Posts: 100
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:24 am Post subject: |
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Thank you for the pointers.
I will look into this further to get a better understanding. The local and national roles make things much clearer,
much appreciated...
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Beloved of Hathor, Chief of Thebes
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