(5) EGYPTIAN

 

“I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra…
“Who was that
dog-faced man? they asked, the day I rode
from town”…
Go get my eyelids of red paint.
Hand me my shadow
I’m going into town after Set”

If there’s one of two things I lament about Christianity, it’s the decline of the Egyptian pantheon. If only the Roman Empire could have gone the way of the ankh instead of the cross. Or if only the Egyptian gods had returned out of the desert, as opposed to Islam and swept Christianity out of Egypt!

What’s not to love about those funky animal-headed gods and those slinky goddesses? Especially the goddesses – lithe and svelte in their form-fitting dresses, with their golden skin and painted eyes, they would not look out of place as supermodels on a modern catwalk. Of course, Egypt was, quite frankly, the sexiest ancient civilization – admittedly perhaps not for its population’s vast majority of peasants who farmed the Nile or worked on those useless tombstones known as pyramids, but certainly for its elite, who pretty much invented style. You know it’s true – just look at the figures in their art!

Or what’s not to love how the gods kept shifting and swapping out with each other as they rose and fell within the pantheon? My personal favorite trinity of Egyptian mythology (well apart from Anubis, one of my favorite dog gods of mythology) – Osiris, Isis and Horus as they square off against their adversary Set. O yes – Isis. Goddess of magic who seduced the secret name from the sun god Ra and lover of Osiris who resurrected him after he was dismembered by his evil adversary Set to conceive the divine hero Horus (who then avenges Osiris)

Or what’s not to love about its different and contradictory creation myths? Particularly the one where the god Atum (who swapped out as supreme god from time to time) created the world by, ahem, mastrbating it into existence. Now that’s creationism! Indeed, Egyptian mythology could get downright kinky. Isis essentially s€xes up all her magic, including that briefly reviving Osiris to conceive Horus. Or how Set and Horus essentially strive to, ahem, out-ejculate each other…

 

SACRED SPACE & CHTHONIC BLUES

 

Egyptian mythology may well be the most chthonic of mythologies – albeit not so much in the name recognition of its underworld (Duat) and more in terms of the afterlife in general. Indeed, ancient Egypt almost seems a necropolis, with its religion and ritual predominated by preparation for the afterlife – and its monumental statues or architecture as portals to it, such that Egypt itself appears as its own sacred space.

 

APOCALYPSE HOW

 

Somewhat surprisingly for its focus on the afterlife, Egyptian mythology is somewhat devoid of any apocalypse to popular recognition, although it did have its cosmic battles between good and evil.

However, like voodoo and meso-American mythology, I sometimes tend to see ancient Egypt itself as post-apocalyptic in mindset – a civilization huddled around the Nile with the apocalypse of the desert surrounding it on all sides. And while the Nile was reliably fertile, when it did fail it could be apocalyptic – those Biblical plagues had some basis in the historical reality of how apocalyptic it could get.

 

EQUAL RITES

 

Perhaps not quite as highly as Hindu mythology, Egyptian mythology does rank highly for equal rites in the prominence of its divine female figures (and pharaonic figures) – with Isis in particular, so much so that she came closest of any divine female figure to becoming a universal monotheistic Goddess during the Roman Empire (and was a major inspiration for the veneration of Mary within Christianity).

 

DIVINE COMEDY

 

There would seem to be little room for the laughter of the gods in a mythology between the desert and the deep blue sea, but surprisingly Egyptian mythology does come to the party with some divine comedy, albeit some of it would seem unintentional and more to modern readers – as well as working blue. There’s the creation myth, admittedly one of many, of a god literally mast*rbating the cosmos into existence – or of the sacred scarab or dung beetle rolling the sun like dung. And the less said about Horus’s special sauce in his salad dressing the better, although I presume that must have been intended as a dirty joke.

 

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

 

Sadly, one of the mythologies where the divine figures have mostly faded away in the twilight of the gods, apart from their tiny revival within neo-paganism – although they remain far more within popular imagination (and name recognition) as compared to other ancient Middle Eastern mythologies, mainly due to the enduring fascination with their visual depiction within Egyptian art and sculpture.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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