Preface

A proposal to present a new book on ancient Egyptian religion is a double challenge: first, to do justice to the vast range of existing studies across all that the topic can cover, and, then, to find the most productive ground for those interested in and actively working in those broad areas. From the foreign territory of English literature studies, the Palestinian-American writer Edward Said once delivered to an anthropological audience a frontal assault on the entire practice of anthropology (Said 1989). In the deconstructive approach of the time, every word in the title of his paper became an invitation to work with words more seriously, to appreciate how the ground of our study shifts like sand in the field of language users. His aim was not to remove the ground for research, but to pursue any enquiry fully conscious of its difficulty. Said is most famous for his longer assault on European study of the Arab World (Said 1978), where his methods and conclusions have long been both denounced and acclaimed. In that wider debate, readers sympathetic to his motivation have expressed fundamental objections to the precedence given to the literary, misgivings which I share (Ahmad 1994). Nevertheless, in his paper on anthropology, Said offers a cautionary model to follow, particularly in Egyptology, considered part of the study of human societies. Rather than taking any term for granted, I would never underestimate the weight of the baggage we bring from the twenty-first century across more than two millennia to the land and people of Kemet.

In this spirit, the first chapter begins with caution over the words we use, and may have to use, to talk about people in another time—and, for anyone outside Egypt, another space. In turning our attention to something we call ancient Egyptian religion, even the first recognition of words in a book title may imply that we have a sense roughly of where we are going and where we are. That sense of familiarity can be a powerful motor in learning, but it may also involve blocks of assumptions that need rethinking. Accordingly, the chapter identifies some core terms that cannot be left unattended in any effort at archaeological or historical understanding. The very first word that needs a warning sign is religion itself, closely followed by priest, king, and temple. For an Egyptologist, defining any of these is a problem to be explored—an active research agenda, awaiting always new study and discussion. In the battle to dislodge, or at least make visible, the embedded obstacles of vocabulary, researchers may return to different ranges of sources: first, to the evidence of the full archaeological record, rather than the selection dominant in Egyptology, where the focus has been on ancient writings and depictions; secondly, to comparative anthropology and cultural studies, and the wider circles of social and historical sciences. Many Egyptologists have advocated and worked on comparative approaches, and my aim has been to follow their example.

Chapter 1 also introduces some of the places and deities prominent in sources, and here every writer in a language foreign to the people who wrote those sources must become a translator, and apply choices, conscious or not. The names in this and any other West European language translate into Latin-based scripts such as English the written form as preserved in the ancient African script of Kemet— Egyptian hieroglyphs, and its handwritten variants. Those scripts preserve the hard and more constant edge of language sounds, called consonants in English, but not the movements between them, called vowels in English. This “consonantal writing,” also known from many other scripts, is perfect for conveying the meaning of many languages, including Egyptian; alphabetic writing makes Egyptian harder, not easier, to read, because words are built on roots or sound-groups, and so, regularly, a whole group of words may sound the same (Loprieno 1996). Despite a widespread view that the alphabet is the vocation of script (countered by Harris 1986), there is no deficiency or lack in Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, the difference in script does compound the difficulties already present in translation from one language to another, multiplying the choices available to translators. Three means of translating names predominate in Egyptology, and two centuries of European-language writing on ancient Egypt leave little option other than to mingle these. The first approach is to accept previous European writings, starting from ancient Greek and Latin versions (e. g., Heliopolis, Sesostris). The second approach is to return as closely as possible to the ancient writing (e. g., Iunu, Senusret). In a third, more radical approach, indirect sources such as ancient and medieval writings in other scripts are used to estimate the ancient sound behind the writing (e. g., On, Senwosre). Throughout the book, I have attempted to follow the less-ambitious second approach, while accepting some European forms for names, particularly where the original consonantal core is not certain (so, Osiris instead of Wesir/ Asetir/Isetir and Isis instead of Iset/Aset). In the aim of returning as closely as possible to the tangible evidence, I risk introducing confusion from unfamiliar versions of ancient names. The place names in particular may seem unnecessarily different: Abu for Elephantine, and for Memphis even two names, Inebhedj for the early Old Kingdom, and Mennefer from the late Old Kingdom onwards. I would ask the reader to use my choices again as an invitation to think about our distance from the world under study, and, whichever choice the reader wishes to make, to make the choice consciously and on the basis of evidence.

Chapters 3-7 test the exploratory approach of opening to wider or different ranges of sources across archaeology and comparative studies. Each chapter takes one thematic area prominent in the archaeological record and in current Egyptological writing: temple and festival, deities and the relations between them (including the Egyptological debate over the presence or absence of myths), ethics (ma'at “what is right”), healing and well-being (conceived holistically, in opposition to modern divisions such as magic and medicine), and burial customs. Before entry into this sequence of segmented areas, Chapter 2 presents the issues that unify all themes: in Kemet, what does it mean to be human, how are human life stages understood and expressed, and which spaces and times, if any, are marked as different, as more intensely sacred than others. The first part of this chapter offers more general discussion, followed by case studies where the reader can tread in greater detail in the footsteps retrieved in archaeological fieldwork. These sections sketch a threshold at which to pause and consider the full social, material, and historical context for all the evidence for the themes in Chapters 3-7. At the end of Chapter 7, I briefly return to the question of unity and segmentation, toward a future collaborative approach for a more holistic understanding of past people along the Saharan Nile.