The Complete Encyclopedia of Egyptian Deities, by Tamara L. Siuda, PhD

GODS, GODDESSES,

AND SPIRITS

OF

ANCIENT EGYPT AND NUBIA

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Tamara L. Siuda (Portland, OR) has been studying and writing about Egypt for more than twentyfive years and holds advanced degrees in Egyptology, Coptology, and religion. She has published multiple books, given lectures in museums, and appeared on the History Channel. In 1989, Tamara founded the modern practice of ancient Egyptian polytheism called Kemetic Orthodoxy. Visit her at www.Tamara Siuda.com.

LLEWELLYN PUBLICATIONS WOODBURY, MINNESOTA

The Complete Encyclopedia of Egyptian Deities: Gods, Goddesses, and Spirits of Ancient Egypt and Nubia Copyright © 2024 by Tamara L. Siuda. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Edition First Printing, 2024 Book design by Samantha Peterson Cover design by Shannon McKuhen Interior art: Chapter deity art and illustrations by Megan Zane Maps and Baphomet by Llewellyn Art Department Photographs provided by the author, unless otherwise noted Photographs on pages 135, 196, 298, 403, and 488 by James Whitfield Photographs on pages 88, 117, 218, 282, 545, and 715 by Master Iconographer Ptahmassu K. M. Nofra-Uaa (www.iconsofkmt.com) Photograph on page 357 by Setken (www.setken.com) Photography is used for illustrative purposes only. The persons depicted may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

Llewellyn Publishing is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending) ISBN: 978-0-7387-7079-6 Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business transactions between our authors and the public.

All mail addressed to the author is forwarded, but the publisher cannot, unless specifically instructed by the author, give out an address or phone number.

Any internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific location will continue to be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to authors’ websites and other sources.

Llewellyn Publications A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 www.llewellyn.com Printed in China

For all the Akhu, known and unknown, shining as gold in the vault of Nut. Tell Robert I finished it, and it’s at least twice as long as his book was. I hope he laughs.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without my teachers and colleagues over the years, including Mundelein College’s Yohma Gray (who insisted I needed “requisite obsession” to survive grad school), and Catherine Kenney, who demanded I switch my major to writing “or you’ll waste your life.” Thank you to Frank Yurco, Scott Demel, Peter Dorman, Robert Ritner, Mark Lehner, Chuck Jones, and Ray Tindel for believing in me in Chicago (at ISAC and the Field Museum); to Heike Behlmer and Malcolm Choat, who brought me through a remote degree before Zoom existed(!); and to everyone at Claremont Graduate University that helped me to the PhD finish line, especially my committee: Sallama Shaker, Karen Torjesen, and Gawdat Gabra, my Doktorvater. I will never be able to thank you enough. Ti-shep-ehmot to Saad Michael Saad, Hany Takla, and the Coptic community for welcoming me to know them and their culture, and shoukran jazylan to Hesham, Mido, Ali, Tarek, and everyone in Cairo at Nile Sun who made trips to Egypt so amazing for me and the groups I brought along.

Publishing a book always has a team attached, and an absolute unit of a book like this one (oof!) asks quite a bit of that team. I don’t know whether to just say thank you or to apologize for what I put you through—but either way, we did it. Deepest thanks to everyone: • Elysia Gallo and Bill Krause, who convinced me we could turn a Kickstarter project into a Llewellyn one without losing any of the intention or academic focus • Nicole Borneman, who did the hardest job of all, editing an editor • CEED’s interior designers, Samantha Peterson and Donna Burch-Brown, and our cover designer, Shannon McKuhen • Alisha Bjorklund, who wrote the cover/jacket copy, and Kat Neff, my publicist • All the artists whose illustrations and photographs enhance my work, including Megan Zane (all those line drawings of the Netjeru!); Tara Schueller, who drew our maps; James Whitfield, who took me to Egypt on my first trip and helped fill in missing images when I came up short on photos; Setken, who let me use an image of one of his paintings; and Ptahmassu Nofra-Uaa, whose icons and thoughtful counsel inspired me to keep going on more than one occasion • Emily Lewis at Brighter Day Photography for my author photo While not part of the publication team proper, but integral to this book, I must thank Normandi Ellis for agreeing to write the foreword, and I offer a second thanks for how very gracious it is.

Of course, this book wouldn’t have happened at all if it hadn’t been for the generous people who supported the 100 Gods of Egypt project. All of you are named in the Special Thanks section, but it can never hurt to thank you again. Finally, I acknowledge and thank the pharaonic and later ancestors who loved and honored their Netjeru, as well as all people who continue to love and honor Them today.

CONTENTS Foreword xiii Introduction

1

How to Use This Book 5 Ancient Sources for CEED 21

PART I: THE NETJERU: THE DEITIES OF EGYPT Amenti … 45

Bat … 123

Amun and Amun-Ra … 49

Bes and Beset … 127

Amunet … 61

Geb … 137

Anput (Qebehut) … 65

Ha and Igai … 143

Antinous … 69

Hapy (the Nile) … 149

‘Anty (Nemty, Dunanwy) … 75

Harpocrates (Horus-the-Child) … 155

Anubis … 81

Hathor (Hethert) … 161

Anuket (Anukis) … 93

Hatmehyt … 173

Aten … 97

Heh and Hauhet … 177

Atum (Tem(u)) … 103

Heka … 183

Banebdjed(et) … 109

Heqat … 187

Bast(et) … 113

Heryshaef (Harsaphes) … 191

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| CONTENTS

Horakhty and Ra-Horakhty … 195

Neith (Nit) … 365

Horus the Elder (Haroeris, Horit, and Related Horus Gods) … 199

Nekhbet … 375

Horus the Younger (Harsiese and Related Horus Gods) … 211

Nepri and Nepit … 387

Hu and Sia … 225 Iah … 231 Ihy … 237 Imhotep … 241 Isis (Aset) … 249 Iusaas (Nebethotepet) … 261 Kek and Kauket … 265 Khentyamentiu … 269 Khepera … 273 Khnum … 277 Khonsu … 285 Ma’ahes … 291 Ma’at … 295 Mafdet … 301 Mehet-Weret … 305 Meretseger … 311 Merit … 315 Meskhenet … 321 Min … 325 Montu … 331 Mut … 337 Nebtu (Nebet-uu) … 345 Nefertem … 349 Nehebkau … 355 Nehmet-Awai … 361

Nephthys … 379 Nun and Naunet … 393 Nut … 399 Osiris … 405 Pakhet … 417 Ptah … 421 Ra … 429 Rait (Rait-Tawy and Tjenenyt) … 439 Renenutet … 445 Sah, Sopdet (Sothis), and Sopdu … 451 Satet (Satis) … 459 Sekhmet … 463 Sepa and Abyt (Ibayt) … 473 Serapis … 479 Serqet … 485 Seshat … 491 Set … 497 Shai … 509 Shezmetet … 513 Shezmu … 517 Shu (Anhur) … 523 Sobek … 531 Sokar … 541 Tasenetnofret … 547 Tatenen … 551 Taweret (Opet) … 555

CONTENTS

Tayet … 561

Weneg (Uneg) … 595

Tefnut (Mehit) … 565

Wenut … 599

Thoth … 573

Wepwawet … 605

Tutu (Tithoes) … 583

Werethekau … 613

Wadjet … 589

PART II: LIBYAN AND LEVANTINE GUEST DEITIES Anat … 621

Qadesh (Qetesh) … 637

Ash … 627

Reshep … 643

Astarte … 631

PART III: NUBIAN GUEST DEITIES Apedemak … 649

Mandulis … 661

Arensnuphis (Iry-Hemes-Nefer) … 653

Menhyt (Menhit) … 665

Dedun (Dedwen) … 657

PART IV: NETJERI (LESSER DEITIES/DEMIGODS AND OTHER SPIRITUAL BEINGS) Aker(u) … 671

Harmachis (Horemakhet the Sphinx) … 709

Ammit … 675

Henut … 713

Apophis (Apep) … 679

Medjed … 719

Fetket (Fetek-ta) … 685

Mehen … 725

The Four Sons of Horus … 689

Pataikos (Pataikoi) … 729

Duamutef … 693

Sacred Bulls and Cows … 731

Hapi … 697

Apis (Hap) Bull … 733

Imset(y) … 701

Buchis (Bakhu) … 739

Qebehsenuef … 705

Hesat … 743

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xii

| CONTENTS The Isis-Cow … 747 Mnevis (Mer-Wer) … 749

The Souls of Pe/Buto and Nekhen/Hierakonpolis … 753 Special Thanks

757

Appendix 1: Cities and Cult Centers 761 Appendix 2: Offerings 783 Appendix 3: Timeline of Egyptian Chronology 795 Appendix 4: Internet Resources 801 Glossary

805

Bibliography Index

827

853

FOREWORD Some books just take time. I’m glad that Tamara took the time she needed to collect this innovative and extensive information about more than one hundred divine energies born of Egypt and/or adopted from other parts of the ancient world. This was certainly a hefty enterprise to undertake, offering so many avenues to explore that it seems mindboggling to the ordinary researcher.

This is the kind of book written for people like me, who know they want to know more about the gods and goddesses, how they were worshipped (and how they are worshipped now), where to find their temples in the ancient landscape, where to find more information about them, and which deity is related to whom. Those who seek more information about an obscure Netjer or even a recent connection to an otherwise-unknown Netjer will be given information that can widen their understanding. For example, most fluent readers of Egyptology know that Anubis is Anpu, but it is important to note that there is Anput as well. Anput is a genderfluid Anubis. She is related to the Dog Star Isis, who is Sopdet/Sirius.

Dr. Tamara offers insight into the temples where that deity is/was honored. Whether or not the place still exists, the memory of it is known— as are the origins of these deities and their places.

Some Netjeru came into Egypt via Nubia, while others wandered into the pantheon from nearby areas such as Palestine, Babylon, Syria, Sumer, and so on. Rather than finding the linkages confusing, I find them exhilarating.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell how old a socalled minor goddess may be, and whether she is native to Egypt or to another country. This is true of the fish goddess Hatmehyt, who may have arisen as early as the Old Kingdom but came to prominence in later kingdoms as part of the Osirian myth. Her main cult center was Mendes, a Delta city, but was she native to Egypt, or did she have origins in Palestine? At Dendera, she was Isis, honored as the great fish Hatmehyt.

We learn to know these goddesses and gods by their dress and expressive color, as well as their attendance at familial gatherings, such as Anat alongside Hathor and Isis, partnered with Min or Set or another family member. We read tidbits of information beyond the usual retelling of a myth.

For example, I thought I knew Anubis, but I did not know about the blindfolded “Anubis child” in the Coptic tradition, who drew the name of the next Coptic Orthodox pope. Tamara gave the YouTube link where I could watch the whole operation of choosing the Coptic pope, Tawadros. I never xiii

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| FOREWORD

knew that was still being done, although I had heard of that kind of oracular scrying as late as the mid-1950s.

Did you know that Apophis, the great serpent, was a byproduct of Ra’s umbilical cord? I didn’t know Ra had an umbilical cord! Or that some funding for the 1922 excavations in Tell el-Amarna, the city of the iconoclastic pharaoh Akhenaten,

was provided by the Rosicrucians, who count him as a legendary founder? We can see that research is not limited to ancient history, and also how Egyptian myth and mysticism have been usurped by others in more modern times. For example, one of the eight divinities of creation, the god of primeval chaos, Kek, has been usurped recently, and I must quote Tamara here:

The KEK meme was embraced by neo-Nazis as well as the alt-right supporters of former US president Donald Trump who were aligned with various white supremacist movements, and the meme god KEK and his Pepe image evolved into a hate symbol. The word KEK appears alongside Nazi symbols on a green flag that was strategically placed outside the US Capitol during the pro-Trump insurrection on January 6, 2021.

It is important to note that this post-2015 manifestation of Kek derives from internet meme culture and has nothing whatsoever to do with either the Netjeru or with pharaonic religions past or present.

Now, I ask you, in what other book on Egyptology would you find such fascinating ephemera as that?

More impressively, at the end of each entry, the author offers an extensive and well-researched Further Reading list. As a researcher myself, I know that such in-depth notes and primary sources are hard to find. While some might think that activity is quite academic, I applaud Tamara’s hefty research. As an author of books on Egyptian mythology and mysticism, I often find that I cannot access a definitive answer for an astute reader’s question, and there are few trade publications on the subject that I would consider definitive. I can honestly say that if looking for an answer to an unusual question about Egyptian deities, this is the first book in which I would search.

I could read this book forever. I intend, in the future, to plan my trips to Egypt with the help of this book, looking for new cities, temples, or areas off the beaten path to add to my itinerary—and new divine beings to explore. Tamara’s scholarship runs from prehistory to the Greco-Roman period and beyond.

Curious about the manifestations of the theophanies of a particular deity? Be assured that you will find them in this book. One could glean the symbols and create a symbol book for each living deity. How often might the goddess Bast be with you? Perhaps a cat follows you down the street or leads you to an abandoned cardboard box of kittens, or perhaps she shows herself etched upon a knife, or as the sun and the moon appearing simultaneously in the sky?

Bast, of course, is one of the most well-known goddesses of ancient Egypt, and in the modern century

FOREWORD

she appealed to Neil Gaiman enough to be included as a character in his novel American Gods.

Not only do we find the originating cult city of the god or goddess, but we can learn where each divine being celebrates their festivals—the main temples and side temples. The fourteen feast days of Amun, the hidden creator god, appear throughout the calendar year in contrast to the eleven feast days of Amun-Re, linking him to the sunlight.

Interesting details of the temples and the Netjeru are dropped into place as enticements for exploration. For example, the Ogdoad, those eight great beings of frogs and snakes, dug out the basin for

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Lake Moeris in the Faiyum. One might even suspect the lake itself was a form of the cauldron of Thoth.

I could go on and on about the surprises this book brings, but really what I want to do is go on and on reading the book, in which there is always something juicy to discover. I think, in the meantime, there are names of temples of the goddesses that I want to visit on my next trip to Egypt. And I might also want to explore nearby Mediterranean cities with similar imported and assimilated goddesses, like Qadesh, Ashtoreth, Anat, and Ishtar.

As I said, there is so much here. I think it’ll be in my hands and my mind for a long while.

—Normandi Ellis, author of Awakening Osiris and other books on Egypt

INTRODUCTION Of all the topics I have studied related to ancient Egypt, none has ever meant more to me than the Netjeru, the deities Themselves. This is unsurprising, given I have been Their devotee for thirty-five of my fifty-three years, and at the time of this writing, I’ve served as clergy for the House of Netjer Kemetic Orthodox Temple for more than two decades. What does surprise me, given how long the Netjeru have been in my life, is how long it took me to write this book.

My first book, published in 1994, was The Neteru of Kemet: An Introduction. It was a small chapbook of random facts and meditations for a dozen deities that I compiled for a class on pharaonic religion, accompanied by my unskilled attempts to reproduce ancient art. It was well received, and I intended to expand on it—or to follow up with a larger dictionary-type work that would include more deities and details—but life and time and graduate school got in my way. I published a number of books about Egypt over the following two decades, some self-published with the help of crowdfunding via the Kickstarter platform, and others under contract with traditional publishers. During that time, I also proposed several ideas for Egypt-related books to Llewellyn Publications,

though the book I did end up contracting with them before CEED was on a non-Egyptian topic.

In 2017, I was completing my doctorate and contemplating a financial crunch. Kickstarter announced it was seeking proposals for its annual “Make 100” promotion. For Make 100 projects, creators are expected to create one hundred items or to present a project offering one hundred perks.

I had been thinking about my deity dictionary once again, and the Make 100 prompt inspired me to act.

In January 2018, I launched a Kickstarter campaign for a proposed book called 100 Gods of Egypt, a text that would contain one hundred essays about one hundred Egyptian deities. By the time its thirty-day pledge drive ended, the campaign had achieved its goal (and then some!). Taking into account feedback from enthusiastic backers, I modified the project to offer one hundred special editions of the proposed book, which I intended to self-publish. These “deluxe” versions were to be hardcover books with gilding, a bookmark ribbon, and a foil cover, and they would be a signed and numbered limited edition. Backers were very excited, and by the time our campaign ended, we’d reached just short of $11,000 in pledges. This was quite a bit more than the original $2,000 goal, but it was still in line with the cost of publishing the book (deluxe or otherwise) for 1

2

| INTRODUCTION

the two hundred people who wanted a copy. So, I started to work on 100 Gods of Egypt.

A few months later, I needed to set the project aside to concentrate on completing my dissertation. By year’s end, as expected, my dissertation defended, and I could concentrate on the 100 Gods essays again and get the book together—and then a wonderful thing happened. Elysia Gallo, who edited a book I wrote for Llewellyn in 2012, contacted me to ask if I had any projects I might be interested in shopping to them. At the time I didn’t have anything in mind, but I did mention 100 Gods. After some conversation, Llewellyn made me an offer that led to the book you now hold in your hands: a book with far better production value, marketing, and distribution than I would have been able to afford had I self-published. This also gave me the ability to offer each Kickstarter backer more than I’d promised—and, for the one hundred deluxe backers, an even fancier special edition than originally planned!

Everything went on hold again in the fall of 2019, when I had to stop and deal with a health issue. By March 2020, I had announced 100 Gods of Egypt would be a Llewellyn publication. This was, of course, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began, and the project got caught up in the pandemic just like everything else. We had to renegotiate print costs (more than once, thanks to a fluctuating global economy), shipping issues, material availability, and more. Lockdown made it more difficult for me to find solid time to write, beyond research and references. Every time I sat down to write—if I even had a chance to, since my primary occupation was as clergy, and people need that in

times of distress!—things did not go as smoothly or as quickly as I would have liked. The year 2020 blurred into 2021 and then 2022. The project continued to move, but deadlines were missed, shifted, or simply had to change. I’ve never missed more deadlines on a project in my life, and while I regret that, I’m proud we continued to push through to the finish.

Finally, this book—a major work I have been trying to create in one way or another for more than two decades—has come together. The Complete Encyclopedia of Egyptian Deities 1 (renamed in 2022 to reflect that it contains more than one hundred deities) represents more than academic studies into the Netjeru. It also benefits from my time and experience as a devotee of these deities.

I decided early on that I would not leave that part of my life out of the work in favor of something strictly academic as an Egyptologist—which I am, and continue to be; I have earned multiple credentials over two decades, three graduate degrees, and four universities. Even though this is not an academic book in the sense of being published by a university press, each entry in CEED has been treated academically, with ample footnotes and references, and there is a bibliography that includes academic works in multiple languages.

Each entry includes a section on modern worship—that is, how people interact with these deities today, in a completely different time and in places far removed from their original locations (although some of these deities are still being honored in Egypt and Nubia). In the Modern Worship section, I also detail the deities’ reception(s) in popular culture; in one fun example, the minor

1. I am delighted that the acronym for this work ends up being CEED, as the metaphor of a slow-growing seed is quite fitting to describe this project and its journey to publication.

INTRODUCTION

deity or Netjeri called Medjed hadn’t been known since late pharaonic history until his reappearance a few years ago, after some Japanese museumgoers saw his adorable image on a papyrus and launched him into internet fame. I share what I can about contemporary worshippers, artists, and others who are continuing to bring these deities into our world through personal devotions. I provide ideas around the kinds of offerings these beings might appreciate and how people have engaged and continue engaging with Them, in antiquity and currently.

I do this because I want readers to understand that while ancient Egypt might no longer exist, and while “ancient Egyptian” might be a dead language to many,2 the Netjeru—the deities who come from the time and culture we call Ancient Egypt—are still very much alive. To write about them in a past tense would deny Their very real interactions with people all over the world, interactions that did not cease just because Their state temples fell to conquest.

There is an unspoken Egyptological conceit that academics should only write about the Netjeru in the past tense, or as pagan deities unworthy of worship. This was born of a Christian-centric, Western, and colonial mindset—the same mindset generally accepted as a fact by the scientists and savants who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt when he invaded and conquered the country during the eighteenth century. As a twentieth (and now twenty-first) century Egyptologist, I am mindful of our need to decouple Egyptology from its undeniably colonialist origins. Accordingly, I have

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centered and prioritized research coming out of Egypt and/or written by Egyptian Egyptologists— often very recent and cutting-edge scholarship, as Egypt invests more in its cultural heritage—in these pages, along with the lists of reference texts Egyptophiles are likely already familiar with. Egyptian voices have been ignored in Egyptology for far too long, and living Egyptians should be centered in the study of their own culture.

This book also includes major deities from areas south of Egypt—contemporary Sudan and South Sudan, the modern states of an area the ancient world called Nubia. Here again, I have included and prioritized research by Egyptian and Nubian scholars. I hope these resources provide readers with an expanded perspective to complement the many other dictionaries and encyclopedias of Egyptian deities already in print, and additionally, I hope I inspire you to get to know (or continue to get to know) these deities.

Ancient Egyptians called their ancestors Akhu, a word meaning “shining” as well as “to be effective.”

I hope that the Akhu receive this attempt to educate people about the Netjeru favorably and deem it effective. I also hope the Netjeru Themselves will be pleased with it. Through all the experiences I’ve had, and all the things I’ve learned through my lifelong love for the Netjeru and Their people, ancient and modern, my life has been deeply enriched. I hope I’ve been able to convey even a little bit of that gratitude, and that love, in these pages.

2. As the Copts continue to reintroduce their original language to their children—the same language spoken by their pharaonic ancestors—this may not be true forever!

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK Netjer (pronounced net-CHUR or net-CHAIR in American English; plural Netjeru) is an ancient Egyptian word that translates as “(divine) power.” It is used in the same sense as a term used to describe deities in another African religion: the Orisha of the Yoruba people. Netjer is a word without gender.

On its own, it means “god” and/or “goddess” (and, beyond the binary, “deity”) as we name those beings in English, although in some periods, female deities may have used a gendered form of the word: Netjeret.

The people of Ancient Egypt (Kemet in their own language) understood the power of the Netjeru as inherent in all things, including themselves. Hundreds—if not thousands—of Netjeru were worshipped across Egypt’s cities and regions, in some cases even before the beginning of pharaonic history and persisting after its end in the Roman occupation, about four millennia later.

Despite the length of time and regional differences that produced so many Netjeru, all these deities had something in common: They were accessible to all and to each other, and Their worship coincided with all facets of human life, from birth to death to rebirth and every moment in between.

The Complete Encyclopedia of Egyptian Deities (CEED) began as a Kickstarter proposal for a book

about one hundred deities. It quickly became apparent—both from the enthusiastic responses of the Kickstarter backers who helped refine my idea, and from the ways the Netjeru interact—that I could not limit this work to one hundred deities. Instead, CEED includes one hundred entries about them, with the first ninety explicitly for pharaonic deities (that is, the Netjeru as defined above). More than ninety Netjeru appear in these ninety entries. Some contain deities who appear in groups; such entries may include a syzygy pair, a triad-or-larger group of deities, or a single deity who appears in multiple distinct forms in different regions or periods.

The Netjeru are not the only ancient Egypt– related spiritual entities worshipped or otherwise honored in pharaonic religion, either in antiquity or in contemporary times, so I added other important beings to this encyclopedia. In addition to the ninety entries for the Netjeru, entries ninety-one through one hundred cover so-called “guest deities”—divine beings who originated outside Egypt and who became part of the pharaonic pantheon.

Five of these entries are for Libyan and/or Levantine guest deities (Anat, Ash, Astarte, Qadesh, and Reshep), and the other five are guest deities from Nubia (Apedemak, Arensnuphis, Dedun, Mandulis, and Menhyt). All these deities became Netjeru 5

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| HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

themselves or interacted with the Netjeru and their worshippers in other ways.

Following these entries, I have added a section for beings called Netjeri,3 meaning “of the Netjeru” or “Netjeru-like”—semi-divine beings or helper spirits who were not given personal temple cults. In the Netjeri section, you will find beings who interact with Netjeru but who are not deities themselves (e.g., the Four Sons of Horus and sacred bulls and cows), as well as two beings who may be theoph-

anies in addition to being Netjeri: the fearsome Ammit, who appears at a human’s final judgment, and the mysterious Giza Sphinx (Harmachis or Horemakhet, Horus-in-the-Horizon). This part of the book also includes the “uncreated one,” the antiNetjer/embodiment of evil named Apophis.

CEED is divided into one hundred entries, with each entry outlining a major deity or group of related deities. Each entry contains the same data, presented in the same order:

DEITY NAME (MOST COMMON) This is the name by which a deity is best known.

In most cases, this is its Egyptian name. Sometimes a deity is better known by its Greek (e.g., Isis) or Latin (e.g., Antinous) name, and in such cases, that name is used. Where multiple names occur with equal frequency, I provide them all (e.g., Neith (Nit), since her Greek (Neith) and Egyptian (Nit)

names were used interchangeably). Each name is identified by language (e.g., Egyptian, Greek, and, in some cases, Nubian or other languages), and English definitions, when known, are provided.

Any name with a (?) after it is a translator’s conceit to show uncertainty; in other words, the name provided is the consensus, but it’s questionable.

DEITY NAME (OTHER NAMES, ALTERNATE SPELLINGS) If a deity has nicknames or bynames, including epithets (e.g., Unnefer or Khentyamentiu for Osiris), or if multiple spellings of names are in use (e.g., numerous variant names for Isis), these names are included under this header.

HIEROGLYPHS AND IMAGE Both the hieroglyphic Egyptian writing of a deity’s name, when known, and a line drawing of the standard representational image of the deity are included in this section.

3. The ancient Egyptian term Netjeri is an adjectival form of the noun Netjer, meaning a being that is like a Netjer (or Netjer-like) but that is not a Netjer. In addition, in the Late Period, the phrases netjery-’awet, “greatly sacred,” and na netjer(u), “(of ) the Netjeru,” were used to describe sacred animals who served as theophanies for various Netjeru but who were neither Netjeru nor Netjeri themselves (see Colonna, “Theoi and Ieroi,” 104).

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

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RELATIVES This section includes everyone in a deity’s family: parents, spouses or consorts, siblings, children, friends, or other deities they accompany. As pharaonic religion was practiced over a tremendous length of time (at least four millennia uninterrupted, and six millennia from its earliest days), its deities often have different relationships depending on the time period, location, or various forms in which they manifest.

When specifics are known (e.g., where we know one

form of Bast is related to Atum, and another is related to Khnum), those are included. It is not unusual for the Netjeru to have large families or to be depicted with multiple and/or different partners or relatives in different locations; this is especially true for creator deities, attested with multiple parents, partners, and children in different temples or time periods. This can provide a different perspective on their worship in such temples or time periods.

ASPECTS Ancient Egyptian/pharaonic religion (or religions, if we are honest and acknowledge that different time periods, cities, and temples had their own ways of understanding the Netjeru and how to worship them) is a polytheism: that is, a religion with many deities. Contemporary polytheists or pagans often further describe pharaonic practices as henotheism, monolatry, or soft polytheism. These are descriptions or types of polytheism; they are not -isms on their own. It is important to note that monolatry (that is, believing in many deities yet worshipping them one at a time, or taking one of many deities as a personal deity and/or worship focus) is never the same as monotheism (believing in the existence of only one deity).

Henotheism is a polytheism where one believes in many deities and singles one out as the chief deity, such as the Olympian religion of pre-Christian Greece, overseen by the god Zeus. Monolatry, a term coined by Egyptologist Siegfried Morenz, is a polytheism where one believes in many deities yet worships them one at a time, or singles out one deity

or deity group (e.g., the Memphite Triad of Ptah, Sekhmet, and Nefertem) for worship—while still believing in other deities and being able to switch one’s worship to another deity at any time. The regional, city-centric nature of pharaonic polytheism was such that people recognized all of the Netjeru as existing, yet they routinely focused their worship on one deity (or a pair or triad of deities) as their personal deity, the deity of their profession, or their official hometown deity, unless there was a reason to include other deities.4 Soft polytheism, a more recent term, is a polytheism where some deities syncretize or merge with others, or can appear in the forms of other deities. This contrasts with hard polytheism, where each deity has an independent form that never merges or assimilates with others.

The Aspects section of each entry notes situations where Netjeru can be understood as forms of other deities; where they are explicitly identified with, or as, others (e.g., Ra as a form of Atum); or situations where deities absorb each other over time (e.g., ‘Andjety and Osiris merge until the two are no

4. Th is practice of limiting worship focus was so prevalent in pharaonic polytheism that some literature or private texts (and occasionally even liturgical texts) do not write a deity’s name, but use Netjer generically to imply whichever Netjer one is worshipping or one’s “personal deity.”

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longer separately identifiable). There are many explanations as to how and why Netjeru have aspects with each other, including historical or regional practice, function, and mythology. I explain these aspects and

their rationales in the About section of each entry; the Aspects section is primarily a data list of known aspects.

SYNCRETISMS In ancient Egyptian religion, a syncretism is a situation where two (or, less frequently, more than two) deities merge to become a new deity who is both a new being and carries the aspects/duties of the beings who merged to create it.5 In almost every case of pharaonic syncretism, the original deities also continue to enjoy an individual existence. This is a deliberate merging of deities to create a new deity, like one can blend the colors red and yellow to create orange.

Orange is neither red nor yellow, but a new color that includes both red and yellow. The creation of orange does not destroy the colors it comes from, so after red and yellow are blended, three colors exist. To extend this metaphor to the Netjeru, we have Amun-Ra: a god who is a combination of both Amun and Ra, but is also independently Amun-Ra. Amun and Ra continue to exist, with Amun-Ra as a third deity arising from the syncretism of Amun and Ra. The Syncretisms section includes interpretatio graeca and interpretatio romana: Latin technical terms

for identifications or syncretisms created by Hellenistic (Greek-speaking and/or Greek-cultured) people in Egypt, including the ruling Macedonian Ptolemy dynasty, or by the Romans, who occupied Egypt after the death of Cleopatra VII. For an example, Hathor—a pharaonic goddess associated with women, love, and passion—was syncretized via interpretatio with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Roman goddess Venus.

All noted syncretisms have been checked against the detailed, exhaustive lists of deities and divine representations contained in a German-language Egyptological encyclopedia called the Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen (LGG),6 which catalogues every known reference to any Netjer or Netjeri in print before 2002 CE and serves as an invaluable resource for anyone interested in pharaonic religion.

THEOPHANIES A theophany is a manifestation of a deity’s power: an object or a being demonstrating a deity’s character

or personality.7 In this section of each entry, I list animals, natural phenomena, objects, hieroglyphic

5. A reminder that syncretization is not synchronization; the latter word is frequently used by mistake, in my experience; there is neither time nor coordinated movement in syncretism.

6. The LGG (edited by Egyptologist Christian Leitz and a team of scholars) is in eight volumes; its first seven volumes (the encyclopedia without an index) were published in 2002 as Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta (OLA), volumes 110–16. The LGG’s companion index appeared in 2003 as the eighth volume and is numbered OLA 129.

7. Th is is distinguished from an avatar, a literal mortal-flesh embodiment of a deity (e.g., the Dalai Lama is the recognized avatar of a Tibetan Buddhist deity, Avalokiteshvara). Netjeru can have many theophanies but never avatars; these theophanies are honored but are not worshipped as deities.

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symbols, and other things that can serve as a deity’s theophanies. Many Netjeru have animal theophanies; such sacred animals are one of the reasons behind the incorrect and misleading assumption that ancient Egyptians “worshipped cats.” 8 A theophany is a symbol of a deity, not a deity itself. Christians refer to Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God, and a lamb is one of Christ’s best-known theophanies, but it does not follow that Christians

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worship lambs/sheep; the use of sacred animals in pharaonic religion was based on the same theological principle. An excellent summary of recent scholarship concerning “animal cults” in ancient Egypt and how these theophanies relate to the Netjeru (as well as to the practice of animal sacrifice, common among sacred animals at certain Egyptian temples during the Late Period) is Angelo Colonna’s “Theoi and Ieroi.” 9

CULT CENTERS I include a listing of all known ancient places, in Egypt or elsewhere, where a deity had temples or shrines with formal cult/worship. Initially, I had intended to include every form of the location name (Egyptian/ hieroglyphic/Coptic, Greek, Latin, Nubian, Arabic, etc.) as they appear in academic use, but it took up too much space in an already-large volume. It also caused issues in some entries, since different names are used in different periods and by different groups for nearly all cult centers. There is no single way to decide which name to use for a location; each name has positive and negative associations, and arguments can be made for using any name.

After discussion with my editor, we concluded it would make the most sense for entries to use the most common location name, regardless of the language or period the name derives from. For readers who may be interested in a site’s names over time, Appendix 1 provides tables containing all the names for every location included in this book.

For example, Amun-Ra’s primary worship site is at the Karnak complex, located in the city of Waset (Egyptian) / Thebes (Greek) / Luxor (Arabic). In Amun-Ra’s entry, Karnak is listed as inside its most common city name of Thebes, and the other names for the city (Waset, Luxor) can be found in Appendix 1 by looking up the entry for Thebes.

HOLIDAYS/FESTIVALS This section lists known holidays for each Netjer, according to the pharaonic festival calendar and/or a Roman/Julian calendar for deities with Roman cults. Unless otherwise footnoted, these entries are

taken from my research into the calendars, which I published in 2016 as The Ancient Egyptian Daybook.10

8. Various felines serve as theophanies for the Netjeru and as Their symbols in the world, but these Netjeru Themselves are not felines.

9. Note: the article renders these terms in Greek as

(theoi) and

(ieroi).

10. A smartphone and internet companion app that matches the pharaonic festival calendar to Gregorian (i.e., current) dates using the Daybook data is available online at www.ronpet.app.

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The ancient Egyptian calendar, whether calibrated to civil, solar, or lunar data,11 has twelve months of thirty days each. Each of the twelve months is divided into three ten-day weeks. There are three seasons (Akhet, “inundation,” Peret, “coming forth,” and Shomu, “heat”), having four months each. During the New Kingdom, some month names were changed to reflect the major holidays held within them instead of using older (and often regionally variant) names. The later names persisted in Egyptian language and are still used today as month names in the Coptic Orthodox liturgical calendar, the surviving form of the pharaonic calendar system.

MONTH NAME

(NUMBER AND SEASON)

PATRON NETJER(U)

Twelve months of thirty days is only 360 days, so after the last day of the calendar year (IV Shomu 30), the pharaonic calendar provides five heriuronpet, “days upon the year.” These extra days bring the total to 365, the number of days it takes Earth to circle the sun in a celestial year. Sometimes called epagomenal days after a Greek word for intercalary days, these days are set aside as the birthdays of the Children of Nut, five Netjeru of the Heliopolitan Ennead: Osiris, Haroeris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.

The fifth epagomenal day is the day before Wep Ronpet, when a new year begins.

MAJOR FESTIVAL(S)

MONTH NAME(S) AND DEFINITIONS (EGYPTIAN, COPTIC, AND ARABIC)

I Akhet

Sacred to Thoth and Tekhyt “the drunken one,” i.e., the pacified Eye goddess

Wep Ronpet (New Year’s Day) Birthday of Ra-Horakhty Wag Festival Thoth Festival Various Drunkenness festivals

Thoth (i.e., the god’s name) or Tekhy “the one of the plumbbob;” 12 via wordplay “the one who makes (you) drunk” 13 Coptic Thot Arabic Tūt

II Akhet

Sacred to Ptah and Shentayet “widow,” an epithet of Isis

Opet Festival

Pa-en-Opet, “the one of the Opet Festival” Coptic Paoni/Paopi Arabic Bābah

11. Th ree calendars were in use simultaneously over most of pharaonic history: a lunar calendar beginning with the new moon nearest to the Nile’s annual inundation, which was itself marked according to the heliacal rising of Sopdet (the binary star system Sirius); a Sothic calendar where the first day was the same as the heliacal rising day; and a civil calendar arbitrarily set by the government that might or might not line up with the Sothic calendar. Optimally, the civil and the Sothic calendars coincided, but due to a lack of leap-year observations until the Ptolemaic Period, this was not always the case. Civil calendars often had to be recalibrated to keep their dates from separating too far from lunar and/or Sothic observations.

12. Referencing the balance or plumb weight hanging from the scales of Ma’at at the final judgment of the deceased.

13. I Akhet was the month when several Drunkenness festivals related to Sekhmet and/or other Wandering Eye goddesses were celebrated. Thoth plays an important role in pacifying the raging Eye and accompanying her on her joyful return.

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MONTH NAME

(NUMBER AND SEASON)

PATRON NETJER(U)

MAJOR FESTIVAL(S)

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MONTH NAME(S) AND DEFINITIONS (EGYPTIAN, COPTIC, AND ARABIC)

III Akhet

Sacred to Hathor

Voyage of Hathor, Horus Welcomes the Nile

Khenet-Hathor, “voyage of Hathor,” shortened to Hathor in the New Kingdom Coptic Hathor/Athyr Arabic Hatūr

IV Akhet

Sacred to Sekhmet

Mysteries of Sokar/Osiris

Kaherka, “two and two” (i.e., four), or “power upon power” Coptic Khoiak Arabic Kiyākh

I Peret

Nehebkau Festival Sacred to Min, Amun-Ra, Shezme- Coronation of the Sacred Falcon (i.e., Haroeris) tet, and Hathor Intues, “She is Led Back” festivals at the winter solstice Raising the Heavenly/Celestial Cow Thanksgiving Festival Offerings for Ra

Ta’abet, “the (vegetable) offerings”; or Pa-henut-Mut, “the praise of Mut”; or Shef-bedet, “swelling grain” Coptic Tobi Arabic Tūbah

II Peret

Sacred to Isis and Horus-Shu

Pa-en-Mekhir, “the one of low-lying land,” 15 shortened to Mekhir in the New Kingdom Coptic Meshir Arabic Amshīr

Rekeh-wer, “Great Burning” Heb-wer, “(Very) Great Festival” Festival of the Pastures Victory Festival of Horus-Shu Navigium Isidis14

14. This Roman festival, where Isis blessed trading boats as they returned to sea for another year, was celebrated on Julian March 5.

15. I n different periods, mekhir (“low-lying”) referred either to land exposed as the Nile floods receded, or to Horus-Shu as a lion, laying his enemies low (i.e., mekhir as overthrown enemies).

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MONTH NAME

(NUMBER AND SEASON)

PATRON NETJER(U)

MAJOR FESTIVAL(S)

MONTH NAME(S) AND DEFINITIONS (EGYPTIAN, COPTIC, AND ARABIC)

III Peret

Sacred to Sobek

Rekeh-sheri, “Little Burning” Feast of Ptah Birthday of Nut Birthday festival and oracle of the deified Dynasty 18 king Amunhotep I 16

Pa-en-Amunhotep, “the one of (king) Amunhotep” Coptic Phamenoth or Paremhat Arabic Baramhāt

IV Peret

Sacred to Ptah, Renenutet, Wadjet, and Hathor

Feast of Zep Tepi Day of Chewing Onions for Bast Birthday of Harsiese Divine Birth Mysteries

Pa-en-Renenutet, “the one of Renenutet” Coptic Parmouti or Pharmouthi Arabic Baramūdah

I Shomu

Sacred to Khnum, Khonsu, and Sobek

Renenutet Festival Procession of Khonsu Going Forth of Min Voyage of Harsomtus to Khadi Birthgiving of Hathor of Dendera

Pa-en-Khonsu, “the one of Khonsu” Coptic Pakhons or Pashons Arabic Bashans

II Shomu

Sacred to Khentykhety, Montu, and the Eye of Ra

Beautiful Feast of the Valley (Valley Festival)

Khenty-Khety (i.e., a form of Haroeris); or Pa-en-Inet, “the one of the valley” or “the one of bringing in (crops)” Coptic Paoni or Payni Arabic Ba’ūnah

III Shomu

Sacred to Opet (a form of Taweret)

Feast of the Beautiful Reunion Opet or Ipip, “spitter” (i.e., the uraeus/cobra Eye goddess and/or Taweret) Coptic Epep or Epiphi Arabic Abīb

16. K ing Amunhotep I and his mother Queen Ahmose-Nefertari were both deified in the Theban region; their icons were taken in procession for public oracles several times a year for almost eight centuries after their deaths (see Siuda, The Ancient Egyptian Daybook, 183).

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MONTH NAME

(NUMBER AND SEASON)

PATRON NETJER(U)

MAJOR FESTIVAL(S)

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MONTH NAME(S) AND DEFINITIONS (EGYPTIAN, COPTIC, AND ARABIC)

IV Shomu

Sacred to Heribakef Isis Luminous (a form of Harsiese) Preparations for Wep Ronpet (New Year’s Day), including a Festival of Lights for Khnum and Neith on the last day of the year

Epagomenal Days

Osiris, Haroeris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys

Five days17 for the birthdays of these five Netjeru

Wep Ronpet, “opening the year”; or Mesut-Ra(-Horakhty), “birth(day) of Ra(-Horakhty)”; or Pa-shemet-en-Heru, “the going out of Horus” Coptic Mesore Arabic Misrā Heriu-ronpet, “days upon the year” Coptic Pi Koyi Enavot, “the little month” Arabic Nasī

DEPICTION What do Netjeru look like in two-dimensional representations such as inscriptions, tomb or temple paintings, and papyri? What about threedimensional representations like amulets, statues, or ritual objects? The Depiction section describes the known appearances of each deity.

Pharaonic representations of the Netjeru follow an artistic canon based on archaic dress standards that were established during the Old Kingdom.

According to this artistic canon, a male deity/god is usually depicted as a standing humanoid wearing

a heavy, plaited wig and a curved “divine” or “false” beard 18 as well as a kilt of pleated white linen called a shendyt, which hangs to just above the knees.

When depicted standing, the deity is in a striding position, with one arm and leg in front of the other (almost always the right side), while the other arm and leg remain in line with the rest of the body.

Such a standard god usually holds a scepter or staff and may grasp a hieroglyphic Ankh, meaning “life,” with his other hand.

17. I n the Ptolemaic Period (or whenever necessary for calibration previous to a Ptolemaic decree adding leap years), if additional days were needed to recalibrate the civil and Sothic calendars, they were added to the epagomenal days from the front (i.e., before the birthday of Osiris). Most commonly, this was a sixth day (designated as the extra epagomenal day or Day 0), dedicated to praising Thoth—who was, according to myth, the originator of the epagomenal days.

18. A divine beard, sometimes called a “false beard,” is not a literal beard of chin hair. (Facial hair is rarely observed in pharaonic art; Egyptians preferred to be clean shaven in almost all periods.) A divine beard is a piece of wood or leather shaped like a beard and attached to the chin with a ribbon or strap. Guest gods and a handful of the Netjeru may be depicted with natural-hair beards or goatees, but this is infrequent.

False beards were routinely worn by both Netjeru and kings.

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Usually, a standing pharaonic female deity/goddess also wears Old Kingdom clothing: in her case, a tight-fitting sheath dress falling to just above her ankles, with the same jewelry and wig gods wear, minus the divine beard. Her feet are generally placed together when standing, though imagery of striding goddesses is known.

Deities of mixed or androgynous gender may wear other clothing or appear in either traditional deity form (or both!). For example, a deity manifesting as a syzygy can be two beings: a god and goddess standing or seated next to each other. Netjeru with multiple genders may appear with all character-

istics or a mix of them, such as a body with female breasts but the beard and kilt of a male deity. While the Netjeru are most often depicted in striding or standing poses, they can be kneeling, sitting with their knees drawn in front of them, or enthroned.

Deities of any gender can carry scepters and wands or other symbols, and they wear various crowns or headdresses. These items and/or crowns may persist across different depictions even where their body depiction changes, such the god Ra, who usually wears a solar disk whether he is depicted as a falcon or a falcon-headed man.

STANDARD DEITIES

“Egyptian god” and “Egyptian goddess”

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STANDARD SCEPTERS

Ankh

Crook

Djed

Sa

Flail

Sekhem

Papyrus/Wadj

Sistrum

Ptah’s staff

Was

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Anhur Plumes

Atef

Deshret/Red Crown

Hathor Crown

Hedjet/White Crown

Hemhem

Khepresh/Blue Crown

Lunar Disk

Modius

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STANDARD CROWNS

Seshed

Pschent/Double Crown

Shuty

Solar Disk

Tatenen Crown

Uraeus

Vulture Crown

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ABOUT The main body of each entry includes information about the history, symbolism, worship, and conceptions of the deity throughout pharaonic history or in classical times. These entries are of differing length and complexity by design; the original 100 Gods of Egypt project had divided the deities into small, medium, and large essays based on the prevalence

or importance of the Netjer to the pantheon and the history of pharaonic religion. Thus, the major deities of ancient Egypt have longer entries than regional or more obscure ones—with a few exceptions. For example, some Netjer receive more attention in contemporary times than They had in antiquity, in which case I attempt to provide more context.

MODERN WORSHIP Because this book acknowledges the Netjeru as living deities, after I finish explaining the ways they were known to ancient Egyptians and their neighbors, I include a section focusing entirely on how They are still being honored today. This section discusses each deity’s life in contemporary times, including how They are or are not recog-

nized in popular culture as well as within religious devotions. It includes information on how a deity is—or, in some cases, is no longer—venerated in contemporary times. For contemporary devotees who have interest, I’ve included an appendix with a list of suggested offerings (ancient and current) at the back of the book.

FURTHER READING Compact bibliographic references (by author and title) are included in this section. This section not only represents sources contained in the entry’s

footnotes, but provides a summary of books, articles, and internet resources that offer more information on a deity.

BACK MATTER After the Netjeru and Netjeri sections of CEED, there are additional sections that cover information that doesn’t properly belong in the deity entries but

is no less important. These are presented in the following order:

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Special Thanks

Appendix 4: Internet Resources

This is an official list of the patrons or Kickstarter backers who supported my original plan for a private publication, many of whom sponsored individual entries. The Complete Encyclopedia of Egyptian Deities would not have happened without them, so this book would be incomplete without this list. I hope it expresses my gratitude for their support of this project over the years it took to reach publication.

Websites, databases, and other online resources concerning the Netjeru, Netjeri, pharaonic religions, and contemporary devotions for the Netjeru.

Appendix 1: Cities and Cult Centers This appendix contains tables that list the known names of cities and other cult centers for the Netjeru and Netjeri listed in CEED. It also has maps of Upper and Lower Egypt.

Glossary A general glossary of Egyptian and Egyptological terms that appear frequently in CEED. In each entry, words that appear in the glossary are bold and italic upon first usage.

Bibliography This is a full academic bibliography for all quoted sources and any items appearing in the Further Reading sections.

Appendix 2: Offerings

Index

This appendix lists suggested offerings and ideas for modern devotions for the Netjeru and Netjeri, collated from ancient and contemporary data.

For ease of reference across the entire encyclopedia, an index of the page numbers where names and major terms appear is also provided.

Appendix 3: Timeline of Egyptian Chronology These tables follow the generally-agreed-upon historical chronology of pharaonic Egypt.

ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED The bibliography at the end of this book provides an exhaustive list of books, articles, and other information (both academic and popular) concerning the Netjeru and their religious traditions over time.

Considerable material also exists in the preserved words of the ancient Egyptians themselves, gathered into religious and secular texts, monumental inscriptions, and other writings collated from mil-

lions of surviving artifacts. For those of you with an interest in reading the ancients’ words for yourselves, whether in their original language(s) or in translation, I have provided a list of the original texts that are referenced in CEED. Texts in this section are subdivided by theme, as follows:

FUNERARY TEXTS • Pyramid Texts (PT)

• The Book of Caverns

• Coffin Texts (CT)

• The Book of the Earth (Book of Aker(u))

• The Book of the Dead (BoD)

• The Book of Gates

• Papyrus Greenfield (The Greenfield Papyrus)

• Theban Tombs (TT) inscriptions

• Amduat (or Imy-Duat)

• Texts from the Tomb of Petosiris

• The Books of Breathing

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MYTHOLOGICAL LITURGICAL AND/OR THEOLOGICAL TEXTS, STORIES, AND/OR LITERATURE • Astarte and the Sea (The Astarte Papyrus or Papyrus Amherst)

• Papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.48 (also containing the Brooklyn Medical Papyrus)

• The Book of the Faiyum

• Papyrus Chester Beatty IV

• The Contendings of Horus and Set (Papyrus Chester Beatty I)

• Papyrus Chester Beatty VIII

• The Destruction of Mankind/Book of the Heavenly Cow

• Papyrus Jumilhac

• Papyrus Chester Beatty IX

• The Doomed Prince (or The Prince Who Was Born to Die)

• Papyrus Westcar (also called Khufu and the Magicians/King Cheops and the Magicians, and Three Tales of Wonder)

• The Famine Stela

• The Petubastis Cycle or Inaros Petubastis Cycle

• Harper’s Song(s)

• (The Tales of ) Setne Khaemwaset

• How Isis Learned Ra’s Name

• Solar Hymns of Suti and Hor

• The Khonsu Cosmogony

• The Story of Sinuhe

• The Litany of Ra (Re)

• The Tale of the Two Brothers

• The Manual of the Delta

• Tebtunis Mythological Manual

• Osiris Mysteries Texts

• Tebtunis Papyri

• Papyrus Amherst

• The Vision of Mandulis (or The Dream of Mandulis)

SPELLBOOKS/COLLECTIONS OF MAGICAL INCANTATIONS • PGM (Papyrus Greciae Magicae, the Greek Magical Papyri) • PDM (Papyrus Demoticae Magicae, the Demotic Magical Papyri)

• The Dream Stela (Sphinx Stela) • Harris Magical Papyrus (Papyrus Harris VII and Pap Mag Harris)

• Papyrus MMA 35.9.21 (pMMA 35.9.21)

• Leiden/London Magical Papyrus LL (Papyrus Leiden I)

• The Apophis Book

• The Metternich Stela

ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED

• The Oracle of the Potter (or Apology of the Potter)

• Papyrus Boulaq 6

• Papyrus Berlin 13603 (dem.)

• Papyrus Hearst 11 (also called the Hearst Medical Papyrus)

• Papyrus Berlin 3038 (also called the Greater Berlin Papyrus and the Brugsch Papyrus)

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• Papyrus Bremner-Rhind

“WISDOM LITERATURE” OR ETHICAL INSTRUCTION/ TEACHING TEXTS (SEBOYET ) • The Eloquent Peasant • The Instruction of Amunemopet (or Wisdom of Amenemope)

• The Instruction of Ptahhotep (or The Maxims of Ptahhotep) • Papyrus Insinger or The Insinger Papyrus

• The Instruction of Ankhsheshonq(y)

OTHER IMPORTANT ANCIENT TEXTS • The Canopus Decree

• Papyrus Berlin 13242, also called The Manual of the Royal Ritual for Purification

• The Palermo Stone

• The Rosetta Stone

• Papyrus Anastasi I (or pBM10247)

• Papyrus Turin 1940-1941

• Papyrus Berlin 3048

• Papyrus Turin CGT 54050, sometimes called Papyrus Turin Cat. 1995+1996

• The Cairo Calendar

FUNERARY TEXTS The Pyramid Texts (PT): Old Kingdom–dating funerary texts that evolved into the Coffin Texts sometime during the Middle Kingdom, so named because they appear on interior walls in Old Kingdom pyramids for the kings

and queens buried inside. James Allen completed the most recent English translation of the Pyramid Texts.19 Raymond O. Faulkner published an excellent translation in 1970,20 and older translations by Alexandre Piankoff

19. Allen’s 2005 The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts and its 2015 revised edition are excellent; the 2005 edition is available in digital form from the Internet Archive website.

20. F aulkner’s 1970 The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts is in two volumes: the first is English translations, and the second contains hieroglyphic Egyptian texts. It was the first book to contain texts from a queen’s pyramid: that of Dynasty 6’s Queen Neith.

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| ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED (1968) 21 and Samuel A.B. Mercer (1952) 22 are useful, as is a thorough concordance by Kurt Sethe (1908–1922).23 A good online resource with images, translations, and bibliography is https://pyramidtextsonline.com/.

The Coffin Texts (CT): An evolution of the Pyramid Texts, both in technology (copied onto coffins rather than carved into pyramid walls) and accessibility, as they appear in the burials of nonroyal people. The best English translation of the Coffin Texts remains that of Raymond O. Faulkner,24 and a seven-volume corpus of Coffin Texts by Adriaan de Buck and his team at the University of Chicago is available for free on the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures’s website.

Book of the Dead (BoD): 25 The final evolution of the Pyramid Texts. The Book of the Dead, which contains about two hundred 26 texts, gets its modern name because it was written on papyrus scrolls that were buried (and thus discovered by the archaeologists who gave it this name) with a mummy. The texts in the

Book of the Dead are largely adapted from the Coffin Texts, but some additional texts are included. These texts were also written on tomb walls or on funerary furniture, but their primary form is as a rolled-up, painted papyrus scroll, placed in the hands of the person for whom it was created. Its ancient name would be (ro nu) peret em hru, “(chapters of ) going out in the daytime,” taken from its opening lines. The most complete English translation is Thomas George Allen’s 1974 The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day, available from the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures.27 A Ramesside-era Book of the Dead, created for the scribe Ani, is now held in the British Museum. A beautiful color reproduction of the Ani papyrus was published in 1895 by E. A. Wallis Budge,28 then updated and corrected a century later by Raymond O. Faulkner.29 Papyrus Greenfield (or The Greenfield Papyrus): The intact Book of the Dead of a Third Intermediate Period (end of Dynasty 21 and/ or beginning of Dynasty 22) princess named

21. Piankoff ’s translation only reproduces texts from the Unas pyramid, but it includes extensive line drawings and photographs of the texts.

22. Mercer’s 1952 English translation, adapted from Sethe’s 1908 research, is in the public domain and available online.

23. S ethe’s collection contains all the Unas texts; portions of the texts of Teti, Pepi I, Merenre, and Pepi II; and none of the Pyramid Texts discovered after 1908, including any belonging to queens (e.g., texts for Dynasty 6 queen Ankhesenpepi II are still awaiting publication as of this writing). Sethe’s work is available online via the University of Chicago.

24. F aulkner’s translations were published in three volumes between 1973 and 1978. Since 1994, all three have been available in a single-volume reprint from Liverpool University Press.

25. The Book of the Dead is Livre des Morts (LM) in French and Totenbuch (TB) in German.

26. As of this writing, the generally agreed upon number of BoD texts (“spells” or “utterances”) is 192, but as more texts are discovered, the number can always change.

27. Allen’s translation can be downloaded as a free PDF at https://isac.uchicago.edu/research/publications/saoc/saoc-37-book-dead-or-going -forth-day-ideas-ancient-egyptians-concerning.

28. B udge’s 1895 translation appears everywhere and is often quoted, particularly in its widely reprinted 1967 Dover edition, featuring a yellow cover with an image of Anubis. Unfortunately, it only reproduces a single papyrus and not the entire corpus of texts, and Budge’s translations are not very good—errors introduced by Budge and/or his printers (plates in the wrong order, misspellings, etc.) abound. This book is the Egyptological embodiment of the saying that just because something is easily accessible does not make it good.

29. S everal editions of Faulkner’s 1990 translations are in print; the best is in an expanded 2015 Chronicle Books revised third edition, checked and updated by Egyptologist Ogden Goelet.

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Nestanebetisheru, held in the British Museum as accession number EA10554. One of the longest surviving Books at thirty-seven meters(!), it was sliced into ninety-six pieces by E. A. Wallis Budge so he could publish it in 1912.30 While Budge’s book is long out of print, it is available via public domain, and the papyrus can be viewed at the British Museum’s website. This is the text that made the mysterious Netjeri and/ or Netjeru named Medjed famous while it was on display in a Japanese museum exhibit (see Medjed’s entry).

Amduat (or Imy-Duat): “What is in Duat” or “the book of the hidden chamber (in Duat)” is a mythological text describing the Twelve Hours of the Night and Ra’s journey through Duat to return to the next sunrise. It was depicted exclusively on the walls of royal tombs beginning with the tomb of New Kingdom/ Dynasty 18 king Thutmose III, and it remained inside royal tombs until Dynasty 21, when it began to appear in a papyrus form in the tombs of non-royal nobility. The best English translation of the Amduat is the 2007 work by Erik Hornung and Theodor Abt.31 The Books of Breathing: Late Period and Roman Period (i.e., no earlier than 350 BCE and no later than the second century CE) funerary papyri containing incantations and other information intended to permit the dead to “breathe (again)” in Duat. In 1999, David Lorton published The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, an English translation of Erik

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Hornung’s 1997 German translation of a selection of these texts.

The Book of Caverns: First appeared on the walls of the Osireion temple at Abydos. It was put there in the New Kingdom during the Ramesside Period (Dynasties 19 and 20) and later appeared inside the Valley of the Kings tomb of Ramses IV. This text follows Ra on his nightly journey across six quererti, “caverns,” in Duat. It provides rich imagery of the beings who live in these caverns and the things that happen there, including a vivid description of the wicked’s eternal punishment in fire, which may have influenced Christian conceptions of hell. Portions of this text appear in Erik Hornung’s The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife.

The Book of the Earth (Book of Aker(u)): Related to the Book of Caverns. Appeared in vignettes in the New Kingdom tombs of Kings Merenptah, Ramses III, Ramses VI, and Ramses VII, and Queen/Female King Twosret.

It depicts Osiris, Ra, and “Ba” (i.e., the body or flesh form of both gods) as they traverse the body of Aker(u) through the Hours of the Night. The best English translation of this book appears in the 1954 reproduction of the tomb of Ramses VI published by Alexandre Piankoff.32 The Book of Gates: A New Kingdom–dating funerary text inscribed in most Valley of the Kings tombs between Dynasty 18 (starting with Horemheb) and Dynasty 20 (ending with Ramses VII). Portions of the texts also appear in the tomb of the necropolis artisan

30. S adly, in addition to mutilating the papyrus, Budge’s publication suffers many of the same quality issues as his translation of the papyrus of Ani. A more accurate translation is needed.

31. David Warburton translated Hornung and Abt’s The Egyptian Amduat into English in 2007.

32. Piankoff ’s gorgeous two-volume boxed set The Tomb of Ramesses VI is available as a free PDF online from the Internet Archive.

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| ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED Sennedjem at the nearby workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina. It describes the Duat passage from sunset to sunrise in the context of its twelve gates and their guardians, but unlike the Amduat or Book of Caverns, the Book of Gates describes the passage undertaken by the deceased person in whose tomb the text is inscribed. Erik Hornung and Theodor Abt published their translation as The Egyptian Book of Gates in 2014.

Theban Tombs (TT) Inscriptions: There are currently 415 known Theban tombs; more are added as they are discovered. Wikipedia maintains an accurate list of all currently identified Theban tombs, with links to more information on their owners and contents. Theban Tombs are abbreviated with a number; for example, Theban Tomb 55 at Qurna, belonging to Dynasty 18 vizier Ramose, is TT55. Tombs in the Theban Valley of the Kings (designated KV

rather than TT) are also Theban Tombs, but they are numbered separately and kept distinct from the TT series because they are in a single location and belong almost entirely to royalty.

An interactive website with plans and details for every KV tomb is located at https://theban mappingproject.com/.

Tomb of Petosiris: Located at Tuna el-Gebel, one of the necropolis areas of the Middle Egyptian city of Hermopolis Magna, and created during Dynasty 28, in the second half of the fourth century BCE. Petosiris (or Ankhefenkhonsu) was a high priest of Thoth who also served other Netjeru in Hermopolis; he had a beautiful tomb with fine decoration and sumptuous grave goods. The tomb was catalogued in French by M. Gustave Lefebvre in 1924,33 and portions of its texts appear in English in Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume III (1980).

MYTHOLOGICAL LITURGICAL AND/OR THEOLOGICAL TEXTS, STORIES, AND/OR LITERATURE Astarte and the Sea (The Astarte Papyrus or Papyrus Amherst): Papyrus fragments of a text likely written during the Dynasty 18 reign of Amunhotep II 34 about the Levantine guest goddess Astarte and her having been attacked

by Yam, a god of the Mediterranean Sea. What remains of the text resembles surviving Canaanite stories concerning Astarte and Yam(m), but it is written in Egyptian, and the god Set appears to avenge his consort’s honor.

A good translation by E. F. Wente, collated from some of the fragments, is included in William Kelly Simpson’s anthology The Literature of Ancient Egypt under the title “Astarte and the Insatiable Sea.” The Book of the Faiyum: A Ptolemaic-dated “mythological manual” or sacred map created to explain the religious symbolism of the Faiyum, a lake and marshy district south of Cairo that was the primordial home of the god Sobek.

33. Lefebvre’s archaeological report is available via the Internet Archive.

34. Th is narrative only survives in fragments currently scattered across several museum collections. The largest fragment is pBN202, now held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France; other fragments of the narrative have been identified as portions of Papyrus Amherst IX.

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The book was popular in Roman Egypt, and as a result, multiple fragmentary copies survive, written in hieroglyphs, hieratic, and rudimentary early Demotic script. Portions also appear on the walls of Sobek’s southern temple at Kom Ombo. Horst Beinlich published facsimiles of some fragments with German translations in Das Buch von Fayum in 1991; a fifty-page excerpt translated into English was included in a museum exhibition catalogue in 2013.35 The Contendings of Horus and Set (Papyrus Chester Beatty I): The first sixteen pages 36 of a papyrus dating to the reign of Dynasty 20 king Ramses V, relating epic battles between Horus the Younger and his uncle, Set, as the two fought to inherit the throne of the murdered Osiris. This is an informal text formatted as if it were a fictional story, and it features graphic and even vulgar depictions of various Netjeru acting in unusual or out-of-character ways that do not match their depictions in liturgies or other formal religious texts. The badly damaged papyrus is held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Ireland. The best and most recent English translation of the Contendings was made by E. F. Wente for the William Kelly Simpson–edited anthology The Literature of Ancient Egypt.

The Destruction of Mankind/Book of the Heavenly Cow: 37 A fragmentary narrative of the

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origin myth of the goddess Sekhmet, the wrathful manifestation of Hathor. It relates Sekhmet’s war on Ra’s enemies and Ra’s decision to save humanity from Sekhmet’s bloodlust using a lake of red beer. Once his daughter has returned to her bovine Hathor form, an apologetic Ra convinces her to carry him into the sky and away from future temptations for destruction.

The narrative breaks off after revealing that Ra and Hathor/Sekhmet live among the stars, which they formed from the souls of the people Sekhmet slaughtered.38 This text is inscribed on sarcophagus shrines and/or walls in four New Kingdom royal tombs: Dynasty 18’s Tutankhamun; Dynasty 19’s Seti I and Ramses II; and Dynasty 20’s Ramses III. The text also appears on papyrus sheets discovered in the tomb of Dynasty 20’s Ramses VI.39 Translations exist of the incomplete versions from all five locations.

E. F. Wente translated the entire extended narrative for the 2003 Simpson anthology The Literature of Ancient Egypt; Alexandre Piankoff ’s book reproducing the shrines in Tutankhamun’s tomb with their inscriptions in text, drawings, and photographs was published in 1962 as The Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon. I translated and published its “Destruction of Mankind” section for a 2015 devotional anthology. 40 The Doomed Prince (or The Prince Who Was Born to Die): A fragmentary New Kingdom–

35. See Beinlich, “The Book of the Faiyum.”

36. “ Pages” is misleading, as the original was a single scroll; this number comes from later times, after the papyrus was cut into pieces. The rest of the papyrus is filled with erotic poetry, and it seems to have come from a private collection created by its owner for entertainment purposes.

37. Th is text is also referred to as the Book of the Divine Cow and the Book of the Celestial Cow; the narrative modernly titled the Destruction of Mankind is not a separate text, but is the opening section or prologue of the Book of the Heavenly Cow. 38. None of the five surviving texts preserve the end of the story, which breaks off after Ra and Hathor settle into the newly starry sky.

39. It is possible that this text was represented in other tombs, but no other examples survive.

40. See Siuda, “The Myth of the Eye of Ra” for my translation.

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| ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED dating 41 story written in hieratic on the verso of Papyrus Harris 500, now held in the British Museum.42 This papyrus, which was badly damaged in a late–nineteenth century CE explosion that also destroyed portions of the Harris Magical Papyrus, also contains lyrics for a Harper’s Song identical to one found in a Theban royal tomb (see Harper’s Song(s)). E. F. Wente translated this story into English for the William Kelly Simpson–edited anthology The Literature of Ancient Egypt and gave it the title “The Tale of the Doomed Prince.”

the Middle Kingdom. By the New Kingdom, they could appear on papyri, including Papyrus Harris 500, now held in the British Museum.43 This damaged Ramesside papyrus—the same papyrus that includes the tale of the Doomed Prince—reproduces a Harper’s Song from the Theban tomb of Dynasty 17 king Intef. Many examples of Harper’s Songs in translation exist, including English versions in Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volumes I–II, and several translations can be found online.44

The Famine Stela: A Ptolemaic (probably dating to the reign of Ptolemy V) inscription carved into the rock walls of Sehel Island in the Nile’s First Cataract near Aswan. Despite this stela’s late date, it states that it is a copy of a lost Old Kingdom text written about a famine during the reign of Dynasty 3 king Djoser. It relates the story of a visit by Imhotep, Djoser’s vizier who was later deified as a national Akh, to Sehel Island, to find the Nile’s hidden source and beg its guardian, the god Khnum, to free its lifegiving floods so Egypt could survive. A good English translation is in Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume III, and other translations can be found online.

How Isis Learned Ra’s Name: The contemporary name of a story appearing as part of five Ramesside texts found in the Theban West Bank workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina (on two papyri and three ostraca). The texts include spells to protect against snake and/or scorpion venom. They also contain historiolae, textswithin-texts where a side story explains the main text. For these texts, the reason the spells work is because (according to their historiolae) once upon a time, Isis almost killed Ra with a snake so she could learn his secret name, and the same magic words she used to cure him can cure anyone. The myth of Isis and Ra that is included in these historiolae does not appear in any formal liturgy or myth, but it reflects a human tendency to create stories to explain how the world works. I have published a translation of this text; 45 and University College London

Harper’s Song(s): Songs about life and the afterlife, sung to harp accompaniment, in the context of celebrations like festivals or parties.

Harper’s Songs first appear on tomb walls in

41. S ome scholars date the narrative on stylistic grounds to Dynasty 18 despite its single surviving example being included as part of Papyrus Harris 500, which dates firmly to Dynasty 19.

42. Accession number BM10060.

43. Accession number BM10060.

44. A good selection can be found at https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/harper-song/.

45. Siuda, “How Aset Learned Ra’s Name.”

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hosts an online version with both transliteration and English translation.46 The Khonsu Cosmogony: A group of Ptolemaic texts written on the walls of Khonsu Temple inside the Karnak temple complex at Thebes.

The texts provide a cosmogony, or creation story, different from all other pharaonic cosmogonies: they name Khonsu as the first Netjer who created all others. Eugene Cruz-Uribe’s 1994 English translation is the most recent/accurate version.

Khufu and the Magicians/King Cheops and the Magicians: See Papyrus Westcar.

The Litany of Ra (Re): A New Kingdom funerary text first known from the Theban tombs of Dynasty 18’s Thutmose III in the Valley of the Kings and his vizier, Useramun, at Qurna (TT131). From Dynasty 19 king Seti I through the end of the New Kingdom, the Litany appears in some form in every royal tomb (as well as some nobles’ tombs) as a collection of texts praising the seventy-five “names” or forms of the solar creator, Ra. After an opening litany, the text adds spells allowing the deceased king/noble for whom the Litany was provided to transform into other beings in Duat. Erik Hornung includes portions of the Litany in The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Alexandre Piankoff provides a collation of all known copies of the Litany in English translation with illustrations, photographs, and commentary in his 1964 The Litany of Re.

The Manual of the Delta: A mythological papyrus now held in the Brooklyn Museum.47 This Saite Period (Dynasty 26) set of stories relates the history of the Delta nomes back to a mythical time when the Netjeru lived on earth. See Jens Jørgensen’s 2013 dissertation, “Egyptian Mythological Manuals,” as well as an article he wrote for a festschrift (an anthology presented as a gift to an esteemed scholar) named “Myths, Menarche, and the Return of the Goddess” for translations and more information concerning this enigmatic text.48 Osiris Mysteries Texts: For Egyptians, the Mysteries of Osiris (from Greek mysteriōn Osiri) were just part of the Osiris/Sokar-Osiris ritual cycle celebrated during the month of IV Akhet.

The “Osiris Mysteries Texts” is a collective term given to the liturgies, processions, and other rituals celebrated throughout Egypt during the final month of the first season in honor of the death and elevation of Osiris as King of Duat.

There are many sources in Greek and Egyptian related to various rituals performed over the entire month and into the first week of the following month. Its holiest rite, called the Night Vigil or Hourly Vigil, was a twenty-four-hour ritual drama performed by multiple priests with a public audience, and it was translated into German by Hermann Junker in 1910.49 In 2017, I translated the vigil texts into English using photographs of the hieroglyphic texts and comparing them against Junker’s work; it is published as The Hourly Vigil of Osiris.

46. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/literature/isisandra.html.

47. Also named by its accession number, Papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.84.

48. Jørgensen’s Academia page includes a copy of his dissertation as well as other articles he has written about this and other texts.

49. Die Stundenwachen in den Osirismysterien.

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Papyrus Amherst: See Astarte and the Sea/Papyrus Amherst IX. Papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.48: Also named as the first half of the Brooklyn Medical Papyrus,50 this is half of a large papyrus dating to Dynasty 30 (circa 450 BCE), written in a style that suggests it may have been a copy of a much earlier 51 Middle Kingdom text. It is a catalogue listing thirty-eight types of snakes, how they bite/how dangerous their bites are, and which Netjer(u) each snake can be associated with.52 It includes descriptions of living/organic snakes as well as snake Netjeri, including Apophis, who is described as a red snake with a white belly, four teeth, and a fatal bite.

Papyrus Chester Beatty IV: A fragmentary/ damaged Ramesside (Dynasty 19) Late Egyptian hieratic papyrus donated to the British Museum by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty in 1930 CE (EA10684, multiple sheets). This papyrus has writing on both sides; its verso contains a satirical text praising writing and writers, and the recto has a collection of hymns to Netjeru including Amun, Ra-Horakhty, and Ptah, as well as a text praising Ra’s victory over Apophis.

Alan H. Gardiner’s Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum translates this papyrus as “Papyrus IV.” Papyrus Chester Beatty VIII: A fragmentary/ damaged Ramesside Period (Dynasty 19 or 20) papyrus donated to the British Museum by Sir

Alfred Chester Beatty in 1930 CE (EA10688, multiple sheets). It has writing on both sides; its verso contains spells for protection and for exorcising Apophis, along with hymns to Netjeru and Netjeri, including the royal uraeus. Its recto is filled with magical and religious texts, including protection spells and excerpts from the Book of the Dead. Alan H. Gardiner’s Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum translates this papyrus as “Papyrus VIII.” Papyrus Chester Beatty IX: A damaged Dynasty 19 (likely dating to Ramses II) hieratic papyrus donated to the British Museum by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty in 1930 CE (EA10689, multiple sheets). It is very large; its surviving form is four meters long, and we know that this is shorter than its original length, as portions were removed in antiquity and some of its outer leaf sections are lost. EA10689 has writing on both sides (starting on the recto and finishing on the verso) of the text of an elaborate religious rite known from at least two other papyri,53 called the Ritual of Amunhotep I. Gardiner’s Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum translates this papyrus as “Papyrus IX.” 54 Papyrus Jumilhac: Held in the Musée du Louvre (accession number E17110). It is a nine-meterlong collection of myths recorded by a group of priests living in the 17th and 18th Upper Egyptian nomes. The only published translation is Jacques Vandier’s 1961 Le papyrus Jumilhac,

50. Its second half, known by its accession number Papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.85, details the treatment of snakebite/scorpion stings.

51. The text’s style recalls known texts from Dynasty 13, more than 1,500 years earlier.

52. The opening section of this papyrus is missing, so the first thirteen of its thirty-eight listings are lost.

53. C airo Museum 58030, and a papyrus in the Museo Egizio di Torino whose accession number I have been unable to find. See Gardiner’s Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum Volume I. 54. M uch of the verso is caked with dirt and was either uninscribed (the dirt is from antiquity) or cannot be read today due to the remaining dirt, or damage caused when trying to remove it.

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in French, but portions of the papyrus were translated into English by Jens Jørgensen for his doctoral dissertation.55 Papyrus Westcar: Also known as pBerlin 3033.

A Hyksos Period–dated papyrus written in a Middle Kingdom/Dynasty 12 style; it is likely to be a copy of a lost Middle Kingdom original. It relates four tales of magic, being told to a bored Dynasty 4 king Khufu (Greek Cheops) as part of a storytelling contest by Khufu’s four sons: a son whose name is lost with most of the first story,56 Khafre (Greek Chephren, Khufu’s second heir), Bauefra, and Hordjedef. Both the beginning and the end of the papyrus are damaged, so portions of the first and fourth tales are lost, but enough remains to provide an entertaining set of Old Kingdom adventures. Translations exist in multiple languages; the best English translation is by William Kelly Simpson in The Literature of Ancient Egypt.

The Petubastis Cycle or Inaros Petubastis Cycle: 57 A group of Demotic language, Hellenistic Egyptian pseudo-historical tales 58 written in the Ptolemaic Period. The cycle is set in the Third Intermediate Period; several of its tales revolve around Dynasty 27 king Petubastis III and his rebellion against Persian rule. The cycle’s narrative is Hellenistic in style; schol-

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ars theorize this happened because Egyptian writers were being influenced by Greek epics including the Iliad. In recent years scholars have started to refer to the cycle as Inaros Petubastis to acknowledge its other main character: Inaros, the Egyptian grandson of Dynasty 26 king Psammetichus III, who also rebelled against Persia with the help of Athenian allies in 460 BCE.59 (Inaros-)Petubastis cycle texts were widely shared over a long period; they survive in intact and fragmentary papyri that were created and copied over the seven centuries between 500 BCE and 200 CE. One of the cycle’s tales appears in a beautifully illustrated children’s book, Tamara Bower’s 2005 How the Amazon Queen Fought the Prince of Egypt.

(The Tales of ) Setne Khaemwaset: The modern name of Demotic-language fictional narratives found in three different papyri that concern the same nonfictional person: a Setem 60 priest and prince named Khaemwaset, the fourth son of Dynasty 19 king Ramses II. Setne Khaemwaset was famed for his intellect in the millennia after his death, like the deified national ancestor Imhotep. In life, Khaemwaset was high priest of Ptah at Memphis and a scholar sometimes referred to as the first Egyptologist, as he studied and even restored monuments and tombs from earlier Egyptian history

55. Jørgensen’s Academia page includes a copy of his dissertation as well as other articles he has written about Papyrus Jumilhac.

56. K hafre was Khufu’s third son. His first son, Kawab, died early or was murdered, so Khufu’s second son, Djedefra, became his heir/successor. After Djedefra’s short reign—which may have ended with a coup to avenge Djedefra’s possibly having murdered his older brother for the throne—Khafre became king. It is unclear today, from what remains of the damaged Papyrus Westcar, whether its first tale was narrated by Kawab or Djedefra.

57. The latter name is more recent and seems to be more accurate.

58. Th e cycle’s stories can be described as historical fiction; they do discuss real places and people in history, but they were written as fiction for entertainment.

59. Inaros’s rebellion was not successful. Six years later, he was taken to Susa in Persia and was executed.

60. Setem, the title of a kind of funerary priest, is written Seten or Setne in Demotic Egyptian.

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| ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED (which, by the prince’s lifetime, was already almost two millennia long). Cairo Museum Papyrus 30646, dating from the Ptolemaic Period and sometimes called Setne I, is the earliest of the surviving examples; six of its eight pages survive. Another papyrus, Cairo Museum Papyrus 30692, preserves a portion of Setne I’s missing beginning and indicates that the tales were circulating as a cycle or genre. Setne II, the name given to a different set of Khaemwaset stories, was written on the verso of Papyrus BM604, a damaged Roman Period papyrus held in the British Museum. Setne I relates the prince’s successful attempt to find the legendary Book of Thoth—and the curse he suffers once he acquires it. Setne II focuses on Si-Osire, Setne Khaemwaset’s son, who is wise beyond his years and teaches his father lessons about the fate of the just and the wicked. Full English translations of Setne I and II can be found in Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume III.

Solar Hymns of Suti and Hor: Dating from Dynasty 18 (Amunhotep III) in the New Kingdom. Suti and Hor were twins 61 who shared a burial somewhere in the Theban necropolis; 62 a stela taken from their tomb is now held in the British Museum.63 It features

twenty-one lines of inscription, including hymns to solar Netjeru. A good English translation is in Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume II; Mark-Jan Nederhof ’s 2009 transliteration with an accompanying English translation can be viewed online.64 The Story of Sinuhe: A Middle Kingdom tale 65 about the misadventures of a courtier after the assassination of his king, preserved in two papyri and hundreds of fragmentary papyri and ostraca that are examples of student work, which indicates that Sinuhe was used as a tool to teach writing. William Kelly Simpson offers an English translation in The Literature of Ancient Egypt, and an online transliteration and translation is available from the University College London.66 Tebtunis Mythological Manual: Another etiological manual created during Dynasty 26 (Saite Period) containing stories of Netjeri and Netjeru. See The Manual of the Delta entry for a text of the same type and period, as well as information on the most recent English language scholarship concerning both manuals.

The Tale of the Two Brothers: A Dynasty 19 (Seti II)–dated story on a long papyrus attributed to a scribe named Inena, appearing on Papyrus

61. While some scholars theorize that Suti and Hor (named for Set and Horus, respectively) were a same-sex couple, a known pharaonic convention of naming twin boys after Horus and Set argues in favor of them being twin brothers.

62. We know from the stela’s details and style that it came from Thebes, but its provenance is unknown; it first appeared in 1857 CE in an auction (and was likely smuggled out of Egypt, like many artifacts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Thanks to the stela’s lack of documentation, the tomb of Suti and Hor has yet to be located.

63. Accession number EA826; an interactive catalogue with images of the stela is on the British Museum’s website.

64. See https://mjn.host.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/egyptian/texts/corpus/pdf/HymnSun.pdf.

65. I ts two earliest versions date to Dynasties 12 or 13; most surviving copies were written by scribal students and are Ramesside (Dynasties 19–20) in date. Sinuhe is described as a courtier of Dynasty 12 king Amunemhat I, but no historical courtier of this name has ever been discovered.

66. See https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt//literature/sanehat/text.html.

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d’Orbiney.67 While it was probably created for entertainment and is an exciting narrative about two brothers named Anubis and Bata, it contains numerous religious allusions, including the brothers’ names.68 The tale was written in nineteen columns of text across the papyruses’ recto and verso; Papyrus d’Orbiney is its only known version. Many translations have been made in multiple languages. One of the best English versions is by E. F. Wente, included in the William Kelly Simpson–edited anthology The Literature of Ancient Egypt, but multiple good translations exist online.

Tebtunis Papyri: The collective term for a trove of papyri found in an archive at Tebtunis by Grenfell and Hunt in 1899–1900 CE, which has subsequently applied been to other related papyri found at Tebtunis. The original trove contained administrative and accounting documents related to the daily life of a local Sobek temple; the business papers of Kerkeosiris, a village scribe; and other texts including fragments of literary, administrative, and religious documents that had been reused for mummy wrappings in the city’s southwest necropolis. The Tebtunis

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Papyri date from the Late Period to the Roman Period (the second century BCE to approximately 52 CE) and are written in Demotic and Koine Greek. Despite their importance, these papyri are neither adequately studied nor published; Grenfell and Hunt’s 1902 The Tebtunis Papyri is still the most complete study. The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley, continues to study the Tebtunis Papyri fragments in their collection as part of the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri (CTP) and maintains a website for their work.69 Three Tales of Wonder: See Papyrus Westcar.

The Vision of Mandulis (or The Dream of Mandulis): The name given to a Greek-language text praising the Nubian god Mandulis, inscribed as part of a personal devotion (i.e., as graffiti, and not part of its temple decoration) on the walls of his Kalabsha temple during the Roman Period, sometime in the third century CE. The standard English translation remains Nock’s “A Vision of Mandulis Aion,” published in The Harvard Theological Review in 1934.

SPELLBOOKS/COLLECTIONS OF MAGICAL INCANTATIONS PGM (Papyrus Greciae Magicae, the Greek Magical Papyri): A name given to a group of Greco-Roman magical texts written in Greek, Demotic, and Coptic. These texts were used by

magicians as collections of spells and incantations for many purposes. The best English translation of collected PGM texts is in a 1986 anthology called The Greek Magical Papyri in

67. Held in the British Museum as EA10183 since 1857 CE. 68. H ere, Bata is a regional form of Set and Anubis is related to a form of ‘Anty called Horus-Anubis. The tale relates a series of conflicts between the brothers involving supernatural elements, and it is reminiscent of another New Kingdom narrative called the Contendings of Horus and Set. 69. See https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/bancroft/tebtunis-papyri, where you can even search individual papyri.

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| ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED Translation, published by the University of Chicago, and collated by Hans Dieter Betz, though a specific group of PGM texts known as the Leiden Magical Papyrus was separately published in England six decades earlier.70

PDM (Papyrus Demoticae Magicae, the Demotic Magical Papyri): PGM texts that are written in Demotic Egyptian rather than Greek are numerous enough that they are classified on their own as PDM/Papyri Demoticae Magicae/ Demotic Magical Papyri.

Papyrus MMA 35.9.21 (pMMA 35.9.21): An early Ptolemaic Book of the Dead for a priest of Horus named Imhotep (Greek Imouthes) found at Meir, inside Imhotep’s coffin. It is now held in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which published a French translation in 1999.71 The original papyrus can be viewed on the museum’s website.

The Apophis Book: A Theban ritual for “overthrowing Apophis,” included with other texts inscribed on Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, a Late Period papyrus (datable to 312 or 311 BCE).72 Fragments of a Ramses II–dated text with identical wording imply the Apophis Book is likely to be a copy of a much earlier original, created by New Kingdom solar priests in Memphis. Other sections of the Apophis Book’s ritual appear as early as the Middle Kingdom.

The most recent and thorough English language translation and commentary is in a 2003

article by Panagiotis Kousoulis,73 but other translations exist in print and online. See part IV for more sources.

The Dream Stela (Sphinx Stela): A stone monument that was placed between the paws of the Giza Sphinx statue by Dynasty 18 king Thutmose IV. It describes Thutmose’s mission to restore the Sphinx after he dreamed that the Sphinx asked him to do so, and it justifies his rise from prince to king as a reward. While the stela is damaged and some of its text is lost, a translation was published in Selim Hassan’s 1953 The Great Sphinx and Its Secrets.

Harris Magical Papyrus (Papyrus Harris VII and Pap Mag Harris): Currently held in the British Museum; 74 it was transcribed and translated into French by François Chabas (Le papyrus magique Harris). In 1855, an intact, nine-page papyrus dating to the New Kingdom was acquired by A. C. Harris, the British consul general in Egypt. After a massive gunpowder explosion in Alexandria damaged Harris’s home and antiquities collection, the papyrus— down to six pages of its recto inscription and part of the second page of its verso, with the remaining pages in fragments—was eventually sold to the British Museum in 1872, along with other artifacts. The papyrus contains a collection of magical spells to protect against crocodiles. Christian Leitz translated what remains of the Harris Magical Papyrus into English

70. Griffith and Thompson, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden.

71. Jean-Claude Goyon’s Le Papyrus d’Imouthès Fils de Psintaês.

72. N ow held in the British Museum, succession number BM10188. See the Papyrus Bremner-Rhind entry for information on the other texts it includes.

73. See Kousoulis, “The Function of HK3.”

74. Accession number EA10042.

ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED

in 2000 for the British Museum as part of its Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum series.75 Leiden/London Magical Papyrus LL (Papyrus Leiden I): See PGM. The Metternich Stela: A large, intact Late Period (360–343 BCE/Dynasty 30/Nectanebo II) Horus cippus featuring an image of “Horus on the Crocodiles” (i.e., Harpocrates and/or Horus the Younger).76 The stela, one of the largest of its kind, was uncovered inside a wall in a Franciscan monastery in Egypt during the nineteenth century CE. Egypt’s ruler at the time, Muhammad Ali Pasha, presented the stela as a gift to Austria’s Prince Metternich in 1828; in 1950, it passed from the prince’s descendants to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.77 Its inscription consists of spells to protect against or cure the bites of snakes or scorpion stings—it even includes a spell not to protect a human, but a cat. There is no complete English translation in publication; several partial translations exist, with the most recent being by James Allen as part of a 2005 exhibit catalogue.78 The most thorough study and translation is in German, published by

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Constantin E. Sander-Hansen half a century earlier.79 The Oracle of the Potter (or Apology of the Potter): A second or possibly third century BCE Demotic language Hellenistic Egyptian oracular text. It relates the tale of a potter (a human, or possibly the god Khnum) revealing a prophecy concerning Egypt’s catastrophic future under the Ptolemies.80 No full version of the Oracle survives, but a second century BCE 81 version recorded in Papyrus Rainer 19.813 (now held in the Austrian National Library) is the most complete; an English translation of this version by L. Koenen is available online.82 Papyrus Berlin 13603 (dem.): A fragmentary Demotic language magical papyrus from Thebes that describes religious elements of Memphite theology/cosmogonies. It is in bad condition. No full English translation exists, to my knowledge; even a definitive book on the papyrus, written in German,83 only translates portions of its text. The text is mentioned, but rarely translated, in studies on Bes and Beset, who both appear in its fragments.

75. The Harris Magical Papyrus is one of five manuscripts translated in Leitz’s Magical and Medical Papyri of the New Kingdom.

76. Th is image and many other photographs of the Metternich Stela are available online at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection /search/546037.

77. The Metternich Stela’s accession number is 50.85.

78. Th e Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt is long out of print, but a digital version is available on the MMA website at https://www.metmuseum .org/art/metpublications/The_Art_of_Medicine_in_Ancient_Egypt. The Metternich Stela appears starting on page 49 as object 52 in the collection.

79. Die Texte der Metternichstele was published in Copenhagen in 1956.

80. Th e potter delivers his article to a king named “Amunhotep,” a name given to a series of Dynasty 18 kings. This means the context of this prophecy is set more than a millennium before either the events the prophecy describes, or of the time in which the text was authored.

81. U sually dated to the reign of Ptolemy VIII, approximately 130 BCE. Some scholars wish to assign it an earlier date of 220 BCE and the reign of Ptolemy III instead.

82. See http://attalus.org/egypt/potters_oracle.html.

83. Erichsen and Schott’s 1954 text, Fragmente memphitischer Theologie in demotischer Schrift.

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| ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED

Papyrus Berlin 3038 (also called the Greater Berlin Papyrus and the Brugsch Papyrus): An important New Kingdom medical papyrus dating to Dynasty 19 (Ramesside) that contains descriptions of various diseases and their cures.

Only a German translation is available.84 Papyrus Boulaq 6: A Ramesside hieratic magical papyrus held in the Boulaq Museum in Cairo.

It was translated into French by Yvan Koenig in 1981.85 Papyrus Bremner-Rhind: This work contains three religious texts: the Songs of Isis and Nephthys (also called the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys), ritual songs or chants publicly enacted as part of Osirian mystery rites; a second Osiris Mysteries related text called

the Ritual of Bringing in Sokaris; and the text of the Apophis Book (see Apophis Book). It is currently held in the British Museum.86 The entire papyrus was published by Raymond O. Faulkner in 1933.87 Papyrus Hearst 11 (also called the Hearst Medical Papyrus): An important New Kingdom medical papyrus dating to Dynasty 18 (Thutmose III) that contains descriptions of various diseases and their cures. The Hearst Medical Papyrus was translated into English by George A. Reisner in 1905.88 The papyrus is currently held at the University of California, Berkeley; it is in such pristine condition that rumors persist it might be a modern fake.

“WISDOM LITERATURE” OR ETHICAL INSTRUCTION/TEACHING TEXTS (SEBOYET ) 89 The Eloquent Peasant: The contemporary name given to a Middle Kingdom story that survives in four incomplete sources. It is the lament of Khuenanup (or Khu-anup or Khuenanubis).

Khuenanup is a peasant who is being harassed

by Nemtynakht, a minor official working for Rensi son of Meru, the chief steward of

Dynasty 10 king Nebkaure. Khuenanup’s tale, which includes the peasant relating his wisdom 90 to various officials and eventually to the king himself, has both a moral lesson (bullies never win) and a happy ending. It has been translated into multiple languages; an English translation by Vincent A. Tobin is in William

84. Wreszinski’s Der Grosse Medizinische Papyrus des Berliner Museums (Pap. Berl. 3038), published in 1909, is available online at the National Library of Medicine Digital Collections: https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-56620280R-bk.

85. Le Papyrus Boulaq 6 is the title of this French translation and commentary.

86. Accession number BM10188.

87. Faulkner’s The Papyrus Bremner-Rhind.

88. Online at the Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/gt745jqg/items.

89. S eboyet or sebayet is an Egyptian word meaning “teaching (text)” and is the term these texts use to describe themselves, as collections of proverbs or ethical teachings.

90. Th is text was used as a moral teaching text, but it is primarily a literary work that includes vignettes of the peasant reciting seboyet rather than a collection of seboyet, like most sources so defined. In other words, it is a story including seboyet rather than a nonfiction collection of such teachings.

ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED

Kelly Simpson’s The Literature of Ancient Egypt, and several other translations are available online.91

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The Instruction of Amunemopet (or Wisdom of Amenemope): A seboyet containing proverbs attributed to a Ramesside noble, Amunemopet son of Kanakht. It takes the structure of a letter from Amunemopet to his son, featuring thirty sections of proverbs for ethical living.

This text survives in eight sources 92 dated between Dynasty 21 and 27, and its contents were popular enough that it may have influenced the writer of the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Proverbs.93 An English translation by William Kelly Simpson is included in his anthology The Literature of Ancient Egypt, and several versions are available online.

be more different. Amunemopet is an elderly courtier dispensing wisdom to his heir; Ankhsheshonq, by comparison, is in prison after getting caught up in a palace coup, and he is scribbling out his last words to be given to his son in case he is executed. The direct, immediate tone one might presume from this predicament is apparent, and Ankhsheshonq’s wisdom is relayed in pithy, often humorous one-liners, including “Don’t laugh at your son in front of his mother, lest you learn the measure of his father.” 95 Janet H. Johnson uses excerpts of the text in her Demotic grammar Thus Wrote ‘Onchsheshonqy,96 and full English translations can be found in Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume III as well as online.

The Instruction of Ankhsheshonq(y): A seboyet written in Demotic language dated to the Ptolemaic Period, currently held in the British Museum as Papyrus pBM10508.94 Like the Instruction of Amunemopet, Ankhsheshonq’s instruction is organized as wise sayings from a father to his son, but its context could not

The Instruction of Ptahhotep (or The Maxims of Ptahhotep): A seboyet attributed to a Dynasty 5 vizier 97 named Ptahhotep. The sole intact, surviving example 98 has the modern name “Papyrus Prisse” and was discovered in Thebes in 1857 CE. It is now held in the Bibliothéque Nationale de France. Ptahhotep’s Instructions

91. One of the best was collated from multiple translators by Mark-Jan Niederhof: see his website for more.

92. Th e most complete set of Amunemopet’s teachings is British Museum papyrus pBM10474, which preserves the full 551 lines of the original text on its recto and includes other religious and magical texts on its verso. It is written in hieratic hieroglyphs and datable to Dynasties 26–27.

93. D ozens of scholars have debated excerpts from the Instruction of Amunemopet that are eerily like the Book of Proverbs. Whether or not there was influence cannot be proven, but among scholars who believe there is a connection between the texts, theories lean toward Amunemopet being the model that influenced the scripture. (In the early twentieth century, biblical scholars tried to claim Amunemopet was influenced by Proverbs instead.) A summary of the theories and links to the various scholarly arguments can be found on Wikipedia.

94. While this papyrus is the only surviving example of Ankhsheshonq’s teaching, stylistic arguments suggest that its text is a copy of an earlier original. The author’s name alone recalls the Third Intermediate Period, during the Libyan Dynasties (Dynasties 22–23) when kings named Sheshonq (a Libyan name) were ruling. This name, meaning “may Sheshonq live,” would have been common only during that period.

95. This text also includes a line reminiscent of the Golden Rule: “Do not neglect to help those who help you.”

96. Available as a free PDF at https://isac.uchicago.edu/research/publications/saoc/saoc-45-thus-wrote-onchsheshonqy-introductory-grammar -demotic.

97. Ptahhotep was King Djedkare Isesi’s vizier in the Old Kingdom.

98. Th ree other partial copies of this Ptahhotep survive, dating considerably later (to the Middle and New Kingdoms), so we know this text was being copied and remained in circulation for millennia after its first appearance in either Dynasty 5 or 12.

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| ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED comprise forty-five wise sayings about how to live an ethical life. Vincent A. Tobin—whose English translation is provided in William Kelly Simpson’s anthology, The Literature of Ancient Egypt 99—argues on stylistic grounds that the Instruction cannot date any earlier than Dynasty 6 and is probably Dynasty 12 (Middle Kingdom) in origin. If the earlier dates are correct, Ptahhotep could have been the text’s literal author; however, this text is likely to date later than his lifetime by decades or, possibly, centuries.

Papyrus Insinger or The Insinger Papyrus: A damaged, fragmentary, second century CE papyrus of unknown provenance, currently held at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in the Netherlands. Its recto is inscribed in Demotic language, with fragments of an untitled seboyet that contains proverbs like “A crocodile doesn’t die of worry; it dies of hunger.” Additional fragments of the text surfaced in other museum collections after it went to Leiden in 1895. English transliteration and translation of this papyrus is in Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume III.

OTHER IMPORTANT ANCIENT TEXTS The Cairo Calendar: The modern name given to a single Ramesside Period book of lucky days (like a modern almanac) surviving on a single papyrus now held in the Cairo Museum. It has been translated into English as a monograph.100 Other pharaonic calendars, including calendars of lucky/unlucky days and a series of temple festival calendars, survive from multiple time periods and locations. Temple calendars can be found in the archaeological reports of their respective temples; some of those surviving from the larger temple complexes are collated together and appear in Sherif el-Sabban’s 2000 Temple Festival Calendars of Ancient Egypt. In 2016, I published a book about the pharaonic calendar and its festivals called The Ancient Egyptian Daybook; the calendrical data from

my book has been used as the database for Ronpet, a mobile/web app that permits anyone to calibrate their own version of the pharaonic calendar (or to check the dates of any of its religious holidays) using contemporary Gregorian dating.

The Canopus Decree: A trilingual (Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphic, and Demotic script) royal text copied onto multiple stone monuments during the reign of Ptolemy III. It survives on at least two stelae 101 and fragments of a third; in 2004 a fourth copy of the text was discovered on a stela at Bubastis. The Decree discusses various events from the king’s reign, and its trilingual format resembles another Ptolemaic stela (see The Rosetta Stone). An 1876

99. Editions of this book dated prior to 2003 contained a translation by Raymond O. Faulkner.

100. Abd el-Mohsen Bakir’s 1966 The Cairo Calendar No. 86637; this number is the Cairo Museum accession number for the papyrus containing the calendar, which is mostly intact but does suffer from some ancient damage.

101. The first “San stela” was discovered at Tanis in 1866 and the second at Kom el-Hisn in 1881.

ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED

English translation of the Canopus Decree can be found online.102 The Palermo Stone: The modern name for one of seven surviving fragments of the Old Kingdom Royal Annals, a historical document carved onto the front and back of an immense 103 basalt stone. While the Palermo Stone is only a single fragment of the Annals—that is, the fragment held at the Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonio Salinas” in Palermo, Italy—the name Palermo Stone has been applied to any fragment of the Annals, despite their distribution in multiple locations.104 These seven fragments provide historical details of the reigns of the kings from Dynasty 1–5 and are Egypt’s oldest surviving historical documents. A current English translation of the Palermo Stone is in Toby Wilkinson’s 2000 Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt. Another version with images is available online, but it derives from an older work: Heinrich Schäfer’s Ein Bruchstuck altägyptischer Annalen (1902).105 Papyrus Anastasi I (or pBM10247): A Ramesside (Dynasty 19 or 20) teaching text, held in the British Museum today. The text is written in the form of a humorous interchange between two scribes making fun of each other’s jobs. Despite

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being satirical, the narrative explains things actual scribes were expected to do in their daily work.

Among other examples, it contains a detailed description of how ancient Egyptians moved colossal obelisks, and it describes the mathematics involved in the process, which a scribe would need to document or even calculate on behalf of the work crew.106 The papyrus also includes an excellent geographical description of the Levant.

A full English transliteration and translation for this text are in Alan Gardiner’s 1911 Egyptian Hieratic Texts Series I; a more recent full translation is only available in German.107 Papyrus Berlin 3048: The only surviving papyrus administrative document from the Libyan dynasties, dating to the reign of King Takelot II or III. It also contains a hymn to Ptah. A partial English translation can be found in “A Clause in the Marriage Settlements,” a 1929 article by William F. Edgerton.

Papyrus Berlin 13242, also called The Manual of the Royal Ritual for Purification: A GrecoRoman papyrus containing a Memphite ritual for ritually purifying a king. A German translation was published by Siegfried Schott in 1957.108

102. See http://attalus.org/egypt/canopus_decree.html.

103. Th e Royal Annals stone monument, of which the Palermo Stone is one of seven remaining fragments, was potentially up to two meters wide when it was intact.

104. F ive other Royal Annals fragments are in the Cairo Museum, where they are “Cairo Annals Stones 1–5.” The sixth, UC15508, is in the Petrie Museum of University College London.

105. C opies of the plates from Schäfer’s work, along with an anonymous English language commentary, are available online at http://egypt -grammar.rutgers.edu/Artifacts/Palermo%20Stone.pdf.

106. Th e answer involves engineering, inclined planes, and soldiers working as a press gang (in paid six-hour shifts) to pull the obelisk with ropes and sleds. Once moved into position, a special “box” or caisson was used to tip the obelisk upright into its socket. None of this—contrary to contemporary assertions—involved extraterrestrials. An explanation of this text is online at https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent .cgi?article=2713&context=ocj.

107. Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert’s Die satirische Streitschrift des Papyrus Anastasi I. 108. Die Reinigung Pharaos in einem memphitischen Tempel.

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The Rosetta Stone: A large, black, granodiorite, trilingual (Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphic, Demotic script) fragment of an even larger stela containing a 196 BCE decree of Ptolemy V concerning Mnevis and Apis cults. The intact stela was probably located inside a temple at Sais. Napoleonic soldiers and scholars traveling with the army found this remaining piece of the stela at Rosetta in 1799. It passed into British hands in 1801 (along with colonial control over Egypt), and it ultimately ended up in the British Museum. Competing English and French Egyptologists set to work on comparing the stone’s unreadable hieroglyphs and Demotic with the Greek, and they were eventually able to read all three texts. Along with the Canopus Decree and two other Ptolemaic trilingual stelae, the Rosetta Stone helped European scholars crack the hieroglyphic code. Good English translations and other details about the Rosetta Stone are available at the Rosetta Stone Online

website, hosted by the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.109 Papyrus Turin 1940-1941: A New Kingdom text detailing a military expedition to Syria, undertaken by Dynasty 18 king Thutmose III. Giuseppi Botti published the fragments with transliteration, translation, and hieroglyphic drawings and photographs in an article called “A Fragment of the Story of a Military Expedition of Tuthmosis III to Syria.”

Papyrus Turin CGT 54050, sometimes named Papyrus Turin Cat. 1995+1996: A Ramesside magical papyrus found in 1824 in Thebes at Deir el-Medina. It is approximately two meters long and inscribed on both sides, though each side was written by a different scribe. Its text describes a purification ritual for the dead, and there is also text related to the uses of various medicinal and magical ointments and washes.

An annotated German translation can be found online.110 I am unaware of any published English translation of this text.

WHAT’S IN A (MUSEUM) NUMBER? Some entries in this encyclopedia reference “accession numbers,” museum registration names and/or numbers for pharaonic artifacts including papyri, stelae, statues, and other material objects. Museum registrars assign numbers to items that come into a museum’s possession.

Such numbers are arbitrarily assigned according to whatever catalogue codes or systems a museum establishes; there is no universal catalogue system, and every museum has its own.

These numbers can change if a museum updates its catalogue of holdings, changes hands or names, etc.

109. See Rosetta Stone Online at http://rosettastone.hieroglyphic-texts.net/.

110. See https://sae.saw-leipzig.de/de/dokumente/papyrus-turin-cgt-54050.

ANCIENT SOURCES FOR CEED

Originally, catalogue numbers for antiquities passing into museums with a long history were simple: for example, the Louvre began cataloguing Egyptian items (when it first began receiving them during Napoleonic times) with the letter E for Egypt, followed by a number that went up incrementally. Since its founding in the eighteenth century, the Louvre has reorganized its collection of over 50,000 Egyptian objects more than once, so its catalogue is no longer consistent with the original plan. (In other words, the entire collection is not numbered E1 to E50000.) The same situation occurs in other museums, where numbers-only cataloguing was often updated using combinations of numbers and letters, or was divided into more informative subgroups (such as papyri that get a number, letters, and a lowercase p in front of their name, which indicate the item is a papyrus; one example is pBerlin 3033).

Museum objects can also be known by various other names. Using the previous example, pBerlin 3033 is also named Papyrus Westcar, after Henry Westcar. Westcar purchased the papyrus during a trip to Egypt in 1823 or 1824, and an Egyptologist (Adolf Erman) purchased it from his family, then donated it to the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin. Many papyri are named after their benefactors (for example: Papyrus Westcar, Harris Magical Papyrus, the Chester Beatty Papyri). Objects can also be named for locations; in papyri, it is often the name of the museum or city where they are held (for example: Leiden/London Magical Papyrus, Cairo Calendar, Vatican Papyri), and in stelae and monuments, it is usually the name of the place where they were found (for example: Rosetta Stone, Canopus Decree). However, papyri named for their findspots and monuments named after museums do exist (for example: Tebtunis Papyri and Palermo Stone, respectively).

Unfortunately, locating an artifact by museum accession number and/or common name is complicated due to the sheer number of artifacts and variation in cataloguing techniques.

There are some general conventions: early Musée du Louvre holdings are in E-plus-number format; the British Museum does the same, but prefixes numbers with EA; the Cairo Museum used C-plus-number for its first century. However, there is variation over time, and some artifacts receive new numbers, names, or designations after a museum reorganizes its catalogue or returns/gifts an artifact to another museum. The easiest way to track down an accession number is to visit a museum’s website, or visit the museum and seek out its registration department and/or museum registrar. A registrar is a museum’s artifact librarian, which is not the same thing as a conservator (who keeps artifacts in good condition) or a curator (who organizes and manages collections of artifacts). Most museums publish their artifact catalogues physically and/or digitally, and these can also be searched for information on specific artifacts.

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PART I

THE NETJERU: THE DEITIES OF EGYPT The ancient Egyptian word Netjer (pronounced net-CHUR or net-CHAIR in American English; plural Netjeru) translates as “(divine) power.” It is a word without gender; on its own, it means “god” and/or “goddess” (and, beyond the binary, “deity”). The people of Ancient Egypt (Kemet in their own language) understood the power of the Netjeru as inherent in all things, including themselves. Hundreds—if not thousands— of Netjeru were worshipped across Egypt’s cities and regions. Despite the length of time and regional differences that produced so many Netjeru, every deity was accessible, and Their worship coincided with all facets of human life, from birth to death to rebirth and every moment in between.

AMENTI

Deity Name (Most Common): Amenti, “the West” Deity Name (Other Names, Alternate Spellings): Amentet Nofret, “Beautiful West”; Imenet; Imentet; epithet Khefethernebes, “Who Is Before/Standing Opposite of Her Lord” (i.e., the western necropolis across the Nile from Thebes)

RELATIVES • Iabyt (Iabet) (the personification of “East” and Amenti’s complementary deity/syzygy)

• Amun of Karnak (Amenti’s partner as Khefethernebes)

• Ra-Horakhty (partnered with Amenti in funerary contexts)

• Osiris (often seen with him, especially as AmentiKhefethernebes)

ASPECTS • Can be an aspect of Hathor, Isis, and/or Meretseger

• Amenti-Khefethernebes appears in place of or is directly identified as Ma’at in some funerary scenes of the final judgment 111

111. As on the coffin of Padiamun in the Cairo Museum (accession number EM 6234); see Menyawy, “The Goddess hft-Hr nb.s,” 22.

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| AMENTI

SYNCRETISMS • Amenti-Khefethernebes-Nut (Theban tomb of Thothemheb (TT194) at el-Assasif )

• Hathor-Amenti-Khefethernebes

• Amenti-Waset-Khefethernebes (Theban tomb of Tjanefer (TT158) at Dra Abu el-Naga)

• Isis-Amenti

• Hathor-Amenti

• Hathor-Khefethernebes • Meretseger-Amenti 112

THEOPHANIES • Sycamore fig trees (Ficus sycomorus)

CULT CENTERS • The West Bank necropolis of Thebes

HOLIDAYS/FESTIVALS • Beautiful Feast of the Valley (new moon through full moon of II Shomu) in honor of HathorAmenti and all the dead, held in the Theban necropolis

DEPICTION Amenti is usually shown in a traditional Old Kingdom sheath dress, with the hieroglyph for “west” (also called Amenti) on her head. This hieroglyph depicts a falcon standing on a hill on a standard. In tomb paintings, Amenti can be seen emerging from

a sycamore fig tree holding water jars and trays of food for the deceased, or she can appear as a leafless/bare tree with human arms draped with ribbons, offering water and food to the dead.

112. S ee Refai, Die Göttin des Westens, 28 and section 9.1.3 for attestations of Meretseger as Amenti in the Valley of the Kings (in the tombs of Ramses IX and Ramses XI) as well as in QV10 in the Valley of the Queens and in three private Theban tombs.

AMENTI

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ABOUT AMENTI Amenti is the divine personification of west as a direction: “She of the West.” From very early times, Amenti was associated with Egypt’s western deserts and the cemeteries they contained.113 From the Pyramid Texts onward, she represented the concept of “(beautiful) West”—not a direction, but a location: the afterlife, also called Duat, where the dead dwell.

Amenti can be a form of Hathor, Isis, and/or Meretseger. She is almost universally depicted in tombs or other funerary contexts, as one might expect given her sphere of influence. Beautiful images of Amenti welcoming the newly deceased into Duat or reaching outward from the entrance of a cave, a tomb, a pyramid, or the branches of a tree are depicted in many tombs throughout Egypt over multiple time periods, but especially at the immense necropolis situated in the foothills of the Theban West Bank, where Amenti dwells. Geographically, her necropolis home is situated directly

across the Nile from the Karnak temple complex belonging to Amun-Ra and his divine family; because of this, Amenti received the epithet Khefethernebes, “She Who Is Before Her Lord.” 114 During the Beautiful Feast of the Valley— a major annual, national festival commemorated at Thebes at the new moon of II Shomu—AmunRa, Mut, Khonsu, and their entourage, along with thousands of human celebrants, made pilgrimage on foot and by boat from Karnak on the east side of the river across to the western bank and the necropolis area of Deir el-Bahri. During this two-week festival, the Theban triad visited HathorAmenti and all the blessed dead to celebrate life and rejuvenation. People made temporary camps in the forecourts of family tombs, shared their meals and rituals with the dead, and honored the Netjeru and their ancestors in the necropolis with additional pilgrimages, parades, and festivals lasting until the full moon.

MODERN WORSHIP In contemporary times, Amenti is most often venerated as a manifestation or an aspect of Isis: Isis-Amenti, chief mourner of the dead and the comforter of the living. Amenti also receives devotions as Hathor-Amenti, the Lady of the Sycamore, who gives rest and refreshment to the dead in the form of cool water and comfort.

In her form as a hospitable and/or healing tree who gathers the souls of the dead, Amenti contin-

ues to be honored in Egypt by both Muslims and Christians, who still believe that certain trees have healing powers: “People are asked to show them the greatest respect and care, especially to refrain from breaking off twigs or branches, and the violators of such injunctions immediately suffer great misfortune…Persons who experience curative powers of a tree often bring small votive gifts such as handkerchiefs, candles, and the like. The trunks of many

113. Refai, Die Göttin des Westens, 1.

114. S ee Menyawy, “The Goddess hft-Hr nb.s,” for how this epithet is primarily attributed to Amenti but was granted to other goddesses, including Hathor, Isis, Meretseger, Nut, Waset (i.e., the divine personification of the city of Thebes), and Werethekau during the New Kingdom.

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| AMENTI

sacred trees are studded with nails hung with small gifts representing prayers which people have spoken in their shade…It is interesting to see how the idea of the residence of souls in a sacred tree survived several thousand years.” 115

FURTHER READING Buhl, Marie-Louise. “The Goddesses of the Egyptian Tree Cult.”

Menyawy, Habiba M. El. “The Goddess hft-Hr nb.s.”

Refai, Hosam. Die Göttin des Westens in den Thebanischen Gräbern des Neuen Reiches: Darstellung.

115. Buhl, “The Goddesses of the Egyptian Tree Cult,” 96.

Body, Mind & Spirit / Egyptian Deities

THE ONLY RESOURCE ON EGYPTIAN DEITIES YOU’LL EVER NEED Discover ancient Egypt, how its deities were worshipped, and how people still honor them today with this innovative and extensive encyclopedia. Dr. Tamara L. Siuda presents comprehensive profiles of more than one hundred Egyptian gods, goddesses, demigods, and other divine beings, including: Amun and Amun-Ra • Anat and Astarte • Antinous • Anubis • Apedemak • Bes • The Four Sons of Horus • Geb • Hapy • Hathor • Heka • Horus • Imhotep • Isis • Khepera • Khnum • Khonsu • Ma’at • Mandulis • Mut • Nefertem • Neith • Nephthys • Nut • Osiris • Ptah • Ra • Sekhmet • Serqet • Set • Sobek • Taweret • Thoth • Wadjet • Wepwawet Exhaustively researched and featuring modern devotional perspectives that are rarely covered in other works, this premium book provides descriptions and illustrations of famous and lesser-known Netjeru (deities) as well as guest gods from Nubia, Libya, and the Levant who became part of the Egyptian pantheon. Each entry includes a remarkable cache of information, including the deity’s personality, forms and symbols, relatives, name in hieroglyphs, festivals, worship areas, and more.

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