Supernatural beings were appealed to for a variety of reasons in Ancient Egypt, with the most obvious perhaps being for healing, fertility, and to gain knowledge. For the most part, help in these realms was sought from deities, but especially in the earliest eras of Egypt’s history, help was sought from the dead as well. Through the Middle Kingdom, the living could try to contact dead relatives and friends by writing them letters and leaving them in or near the tomb. Although the letters could be written on papyrus, they were often written on pottery vessels, and left in the tombs. The very fact that the Egyptians left these letters at all reveals their belief in the continuation of ordinary life in the next world, and the possibility of direct communication with the dead. Some of these letters, particularly the earliest ones, were written on bowls or vases, that may have originally been filled with offerings for the deceased, both out of respect and as further encouragement for the dead to help the living. The letters usually consisted of requests to the dead for personal favors either in this world - such as the settling of household quarrels, or property disputes, or the defending of an inheritance, or perhaps the birth of a healthy child - or direct intercessions on the behalf of the living, within the afterlife itself.
Healing could also be requested from the dead, but it was the power of the gods that was called upon for most of Pharaonic history. Religious and medical practice were fully integrated, with myths playing a major role and acting as a model for successful cures. Spells were composed that beseeched various powerful deities such as Re, Atum, Thoth, Sekhmet, even the entire Ennead, to come to the aid of the patient. In many spells, Isis was specifically named as the healer while the patient played the role of her child Horus. The actual gender of the healer and patient were irrelevant - what was important was that the treatment was set within the mythical plane and that those involved temporarily embodied deities in order to re-enact those mythic episodes wherein the goddess successfully protected her young divine son from assaults and cured his ailments and injuries.
The spells could likewise be successfully employed as preventive defences or as counteragents against the adverse effects of disease, animal assaults, sickness, disorders of the stomach, eyes, and teeth, burns, splinters, aches and pains, as well as injuries caused by accidental trauma or inter-personal violence. Many of the disorders, diseases, and sicknesses were blamed on aggressive supernatural beings. While the invaders mentioned in the spells shared a common source as they all resided in the afterlife, their specific roles and attributes varied. The ones that were labeled as enemies (khefiju), or adversaries (djay) - those that represented the enemies of the great gods Osiris and Re - or those who were simply referred to as the host of dead (mutu), were those who had threatened or transgressed against the gods, and for whom the proper rituals were not carried out. They were therefore doomed to eternal punishment and unrest - predisposed to intimidate the living in whatever way they could. But the spells also mention the akhw, the ‘‘transfigured dead.’’ The irony is that a so-called demon could include an Egyptian who had worked very hard to become an akh, one of the blessed dead who were not only allowed unrestrained travel throughout the many regions of the afterlife, but also free passage into the land of the living. It seems that these akhu who could appear as benevolent ghosts, also had the power and the will to potentially harm the living in the same manner as the generic enemies and unjustified dead. These pugnacious beings, who inhabited the farworld, like the gods, were able to step through the permeable membrane between the worlds and attack the living. Their presence could manifest itself in the form of bodily pains and illnesses, or even mental anguish such as nightmares. This is the flip side ofa beliefin the numinous, ofliving in constant potential contact with the divine. While one could petition the gods and plead for their attention and intervention, the hostile dead and malignant entities were equally close at hand.
Most of the Egyptian spells also included a physical component, that needed to be produced and applied in order for the healing to be effective. Many concoctions used to repel the malignant intruder worked because the affect of the ingredients on the demonic entity was opposite to the one it would have had on the living. The damned were believed to live a life reversed in the afterlife - even their posture was described as being backwards. Thus a common food such as onions, which the Egyptians recognized as being beneficial to the living, were harmful to the damned, while honey, sweet and healing for the righteous, was bitter for the demons. This again reflects the core Egyptian belief in the concept of maat - that there was a fundamental and correct order in the world that needed to be properly maintained. But isfet ‘‘wrongness,’’ the antithesis of maat, was also a constant threat and had to be kept at bay, often by applying the theory that what was good for the upright citizen would be harmful to those who were ‘‘un-maat.’’
Much of the healing was the responsibility of priests, many of whom concurrently bore titles marking them not only as priests, but also as physicians, and specialists in heka, thus reflecting the melding of religion and medicine that was a hallmark of Egyptian treatments. Indeed, certain treatments seem to have been restricted only to literate priests. Not only were some individual incantations explicitly specified as inaccessible to commoners, but some of the major compositions (such as Papyrus Edwin Smith and Papyrus Ebers) were introduced by ‘‘beginning of the secret knowledge of a physician,'' to emphasize the carefully regulated nature of the knowledge contained therein. Only those who were literate and who had sanctioned access to copies of the papyri, likely housed in the House of Life, were in theory able to successfully treat the ailments and injuries that these texts catalogued.
In everyday life, however, many more individuals must have practiced the art and science of medicine. Birth attendants and wet-nurses must have played a significant role at the least in the recognition of pediatric ailments. Although gynecological issues appear in numerous documents, the actual process of giving birth was likely considered a natural event - part of the ordered world as opposed to the ailments and diseases that stemmed from the chaotic realm. It was not necessary, therefore, to record any instructions. Unless there were serious complications, it is unlikely that doctors were needed, and experienced midwives may have been equipped to deal with many of the unforeseen problems. Other remedies would have required swift and immediate implementation if they were to be effective at all. For example, a person choking on a fish bone would not have had time to find a sanctioned doctor or priest for help. At least two spells have survived that provide the remedy that included reciting a short religious invocation and swallowing a piece of cake to force the bone down the throat (Borghouts 1978: 23). That the appropriate treatment for such a common emergency was transmitted in writing does not necessarily imply that its use was restricted only to the literate few. On the contrary, it is probable that a remedy such as this should be considered a part ofthat nebulous assortment oflore that was known by many, and that is often referred to as folk medicine. This kind of knowledge derives from a variety of sources and the patterns of transmission are often impossible to detect. In Ancient Egypt, with the exception of certain incantations that were specifically described as being classified information, there are few indications that physicians treated their patients in utmost secrecy. In most cases there would have been others who would have seen and heard the process, and possibly kept it in mind for the future. In other cases, simple trial and error would have been the source. In all of these cases, whether a priest was used as an intermediary, or whether the gods were appealed to directly, both the source of the ill-health and the cure were attributed to beings who inhabited the supernatural realm, but whose presence was clearly felt in the land of the living.
The gods were also responsible for the fertility of the land of Egypt and its people. Part of the duties of the king was to carry out rituals whose purpose was to ensure proper levels of inundation and continued fecundity of the earth, and part of the role of the temple and its priesthood was to administer the storage and redistribution of the resulting grain to the people of Egypt. The task of ensuring personal fertility, however, fell to all individuals. In any society with a high infant and maternal mortality rate, the divine world is appealed to in an effort to maximize the chances of not only successful conception, but also a safe pregnancy that leads to the birth of a healthy child. Newborns were especially vulnerable to any number of natural risks and parents or care-givers would have taken advantage of every means possible to ensure the infant’s survival into childhood. These means included petitions to deities particularly associated with fertility such as the ithyphallic Min, the hippopotamus goddess Taweret, and especially the goddess Hathor, whose was represented with the features of a cow to emphasize her maternal qualities.
Although Egyptians were well aware that the physical act of copulation was required for impregnation, it was believed that appeals to the gods could help the odds of successful conception. These often took the form of votive offerings in the form of figurines of naked women, phalli, and animals such as cows and cats, as well as beads and jewelery (especially of turquoise, the stone most associated with Hathor), amulets, textiles and stelae. These have been found in small chapels and sacred shrines throughout Egypt, as well as in domestic contexts, and would have been offered either as supplications for or in gratitude for successful conception.
Spells were composed specifically for the purpose of protecting mothers and their infants from the same demonic forces that caused other ailments, but artefacts could also be used. It is likely that vulnerable individuals would have been surrounded by carved hippopotamus tusks (sometimes called ‘‘wands’’ or ‘‘knives’’) incised with depictions of apotropaic deities, ivory rods carved with the forms of turtles, frogs, lions and other animals associated with those deities responsible for primeval creation according to various cosmogonies. Expectant mothers would gave birth while squatting on bricks made of mud and decorated with deities such as Hathor, and the same apotropaic and protective deities that appeared on tusks and rods. That these supernatural beings could also be used to protect individuals other than infants is suggested by their appearance on objects such as headrests, (sleepers were in a particularly vulnerable state), as well as small cups with pouring spouts that could have been used for the feeding of infants, the aged, and the ill.
World History
