The Kemetic people of ancient Egypt had a fascinating theology that developed from a variety of sources, much like their Greek and Roman neighbors across the sea. Join us as we explore the Egyptian gods, from the animist origins of Anubis, to the cosmic origins of Ra. Egypt's ancient mystery schools were a magical realm of literary development and ritual emulation, more familiar to modern Freemasonry than to Protestant or Imperial Christianity.
Need to know more about the theological background behind Marvel's Moon Knight, look no further.
We discuss the Ennead, Ra, Osiris, Isis, Pharaoh-worship and the imperial cultus, including Tutankhamun and Imhotep. Next time, we'll have to talk about The Mummy, and more about the Pyramid constructions. Egyptology is all about the ancient nations of Masr, Ptah, and Kemet; and the cities of Memphis, Cairo. Other gods we explore are Horus, Thoth, and Set. May the Chaos Monsters of the Desert leave you in peace, as you prepare for Duat. Join us for more about ancient Egyptian mythology.
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[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: Hi, Preston.
[00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.
[00:00:13] Katie Dooley: How are you today?
[00:00:14] Preston Meyer: I'm doing pretty well. We're finishing up the beer religions. Remember, I definitely brought this up a month ago when we transitioned from the wine religions to the beer religions.
[00:00:26] Katie Dooley: You did.
[00:00:27] Preston Meyer: And we didn't really follow it up a whole lot within the episodes at all. But beer is one of those important drinks for the Egyptians, just like it was for the Celts and for the Norse.
[00:00:39] Katie Dooley: And can we blame them? I can't, you might be able to.
[00:00:42] Preston Meyer: I hate the taste of beer so much.
[00:00:44] Katie Dooley: So good. You're drinking the wrong beer. He's not drinking beer at all, folks, if your Bishop's listening, he's not drinking beer at all.
[00:00:51] Preston Meyer: Uh, lately this is true. I have had sips occasionally over the years. Actually, it's been a really long time, but I just never like the taste.
[00:01:03] Katie Dooley: I mean, like I said, then you're drinking the wrong ones. But we should stop talking about beer and introduce what we're talking about on today's episode of...
[00:01:11] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast!
[00:01:14] Katie Dooley: Because we'll just talk beer for hours.
[00:01:16] Preston Meyer: I mean, I couldn't keep a beer conversation going for more than ten minutes, I think.
[00:01:23] Katie Dooley: Fair enough.
[00:01:24] Preston Meyer: I just don't have the knowledge or the palate for it. All right, so we're talking about Egypt this week, which is a nice little shift of direction. We've been mostly talking about white folks for the last couple of months and that's not the case today. Egypt is in Africa and for most of their history, they were predominantly a black population. There were times where they were ruled by white folks, but, that's really not the subject that we're on today.
[00:02:00] Katie Dooley: So words guy, you have a great little paragraph on the names of Egypt. Let's start there.
[00:02:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So Egypt has been known by a good handful of names. Nobody who lives there calls it Egypt on a regular basis, and that's never actually been the case. Egypt is a foreign name dumped on the country. It's derived from the Latin Aegyptus, which comes from an Egyptian word, Hikuptah, which actually means home of the soul of Ptah, which was the name of the city that is today known as Memphis.
[00:02:37] Katie Dooley: Memphis, Egypt?
[00:02:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:02:39] Katie Dooley: Oh.
[00:02:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So it was not terribly uncommon, like, say, the Babylonian Empire. Babylon was the capital city, not actually the nation. And so the same sort of deal was happening in Egypt.
[00:02:52] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:02:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, the country is known today to locals as Masr, which is more or less what the Jews and Babylonians called it anciently as well. Anciently, it was known among its own people as Kemet or sometimes, some scholars will say Kumat problem there is that their language doesn't record vowels in the way that we find useful, but usually you'll see it written as Kemet, which is also the name of a popular board game that I think is quite enjoyable.
[00:03:24] Katie Dooley: Also, isn't it a character in Mario Party? There's a board that's like Kemet's... That's the Egyptian board.
[00:03:33] Preston Meyer: I believe you. That makes sense. I don't actually know.
[00:03:36] Katie Dooley: It's literally all I can think about, but I never actually looked it up while I was doing the research. I was like, isn't that a board in Mario Party?
[00:03:43] Preston Meyer: That makes sense. So the name Kemet means black, which a lot of people first hear it and I see your eyebrows go up - has nothing to do with the color of the people, but the color of the very rich soil along the banks of the River Nile. That was just "we will populate this Kemet land" instead of the desert, which is trash. You can't grow anything in the desert.
[00:04:08] Katie Dooley: Sadness.
[00:04:10] Preston Meyer: Sure, sadness can grow very plentifully in the desert. Yeah, so that's that's the name Kemet, anciently. Masr today and honestly, for the last few thousand years by people who speak Semitic languages and Aegyptus is the white folk name.
[00:04:29] Katie Dooley: The White folk name, just like you say, just like Germany.
[00:04:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. We have a really strong tradition of just renaming other people's stuff.
[00:04:41] Katie Dooley: Well, we don't like that you call it Deutschland, so we're gonna call it Germany.
[00:04:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. For no good reason at all.
[00:04:48] Katie Dooley: Because we can't say Deutschland.
[00:04:49] Preston Meyer: So if you pop into, um, the preface to the King James Version of the Bible, it does refer to the German people as the Deusch people, which is still a terrible mispronunciation of their proper name. But there's evidence that they tried and then apparently they gave up on it. Like, we can't call you douches anymore, you're Germany.
[00:05:12] Katie Dooley: The just had a stroke and couldn't say it properly.
[00:05:14] Preston Meyer: I guess.
[00:05:16] Katie Dooley: So by the time they were a unified kingdom, the Kemetic peoples of the Nile had several different cults from all over the region. Each of these cults focused on surviving the chaos of the desert, violent storms and unreliable rains, and lots and lots of sand in places you don't want sand.
[00:05:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Scorpions.
[00:05:39] Katie Dooley: I've stepped on a scorpion.
[00:05:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:05:41] Katie Dooley: Have I..?
[00:05:42] Preston Meyer: How'd that go?
[00:05:43] Katie Dooley: I was okay, but I could have not been okay.
[00:05:45] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah, that seems like a high-risk activity.
[00:05:50] Katie Dooley: Well, it was completely accidental. Sidebar! I don't know if I'm gonna keep this in, but. Yeah, it was when I was in Guatemala, and I was at a water cooler and I step back and I like I heard this crunch and I was like, oh, I stepped on something and I lifted up my foot and it was a scorpion and I, like, stepped on it like perfectly head to tail with the length of my foot. But had I stepped on it any other way could have been bad news bears.
[00:06:14] Preston Meyer: Well, yeah. If it has the time to freak out and lash out with its tail.
[00:06:18] Katie Dooley: Yeah. If I stepped on like perpendicular our viewers can't see me. Then it could have gone. Our viewers can't see me. No, our listeners can't see me.
[00:06:30] Preston Meyer: We have no viewers.
[00:06:30] Katie Dooley: We have no viewers. That would be weird, because I'm literally always wrapped in a blanket with a dog. And I am an old lady talking about religion. Anyways, so they believe that the best bet to preserve order on earth was to preserve order in heaven by keeping the gods happy with offerings and performing rituals.
[00:06:51] Preston Meyer: That's pretty standard for the people we've been talking about. Maybe not a perfect overlap, but pretty close.
[00:06:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Like the Greeks, their cults supported mystery schools that trained mages who operated not only with the secret knowledge of the gods, but with powers of illusion.
[00:07:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the magic tricks that are so... Popular is not the right word. Most people don't look at magicians and go, yeah, that's awesome. Most of us like a trick here and there, but if somebody says, hey, I'm a magician, you don't go, oh, you're cool. Even though what they do is kind of cool.
[00:07:34] Katie Dooley: Yes, I think Neil Patrick Harris is a cool magician. He's like part of the Magicians Guild in Hollywood. Which you actually, like, need to be good to get into.
[00:07:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, sure. I like Penn and Teller. They're a lot of fun. And so this, this tradition of illusory magic tricks does come from Egypt. As far as I've been able to find.
[00:07:59] Katie Dooley: That's amazing.
[00:07:59] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:08:00] Katie Dooley: Hey, Preston, here's a coin.
[00:08:03] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:08:04] Katie Dooley: There's no coin.
[00:08:05] Preston Meyer: No, that's that's one of the the cheaper illusions, but it's one that most people are familiar with because every grandpa learns to do it for their kids. Their grandkids. Like the old traditions that we've been talking about for the last couple of months. The Egyptians didn't have any unified, authoritative scripture, but like the Greeks, they did have a lot of writings that help us understand what they believed and how things had changed over time and also space. Things weren't always the same from one region to the next. So it's kind of cool and diverse and like we've mentioned before, complicates the study of the tradition. Like we see in modern magical groups, the Egyptians preserved their magical spells on paper, and they actually kept pretty great libraries in their temples where people could study all of these collected spells that people had been doing for generations, which is pretty cool. They had a I don't want to say a monastic tradition, but their magicians did spend a lot of time in these libraries just studying, and they had a decent scholarly tradition.
[00:09:18] Katie Dooley: Well, I mean, if we compare it to the other religions since we've been talking about. This one's very old.
[00:09:25] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:09:26] Katie Dooley: And we do actually have quite good records between their hieroglyphics and their papyri and everything that's been dug up. So it is actually I mean, it's not perfect. It's still 5000 years old. But in comparison, we have a pretty good record compared to some of the Norse stuff that we were trying to piece together and the Celtic.
[00:09:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this one's a lot easier to get robust information on. They also had a really rich poetic tradition. They kept volumes of hymns for worship services and initiatic rituals as well, which is really interesting that we only have a time to get into a little bit. And some cults were really interested in oracles, kind of like what we saw in Greece and Rome and as the kingdom formed, eventually a state organization was put in place to keep the various religious groups friendly and cohesive, much like we saw in Rome, where there was just a lot of effort to keep the peace. And not that there was a lot of conflict between cults, but, a unified national identity always helps. And of course, the most important state cult was built around the pharaoh, kind of like we saw in the Roman Empire.
[00:10:43] Katie Dooley: But they take pharaohs to, like, a whole new level.
[00:10:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Really intense.
[00:10:50] Katie Dooley: So I... Most people have heard of the divine right of kings. Right? Right up until I don't even. I couldn't actually find record on it, although I found a little bit of record on it. But do we still still think Elizabeth is divinely appointed, or are we beyond that now?
[00:11:06] Preston Meyer: I think mostly we're beyond that, but there's definitely somebody out there who's fully on board still.
[00:11:11] Katie Dooley: So my record said that people that sort of fall off the tracks in about the 1600s was the divine right of kings. And the divine right of kings basically states that your're king because God wants you to be king.
[00:11:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense that monarchs would say, of course, I have the divine right to my title.
[00:11:33] Katie Dooley: Right and that was common across all monarchies is this idea of divine right of kings. But ancient Egyptians, for the most part, believed that their Pharaoh was a god on earth. Not just divinely blessed with being a pharaoh. Nope. They are a god on earth. A god on earth. So they weren't so you know, blind that they didn't realize that he could get sick and die. But other than that, they thought he was as close to the gods as you can get and acted as an intermediary for humans and their large pantheon.
[00:12:15] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's not a far leap to say that a lot of people, even today, still worship their civil leaders. This is just another step beyond.
[00:12:28] Katie Dooley: Right. And I mean, we've had these conversations over the last year and a half now about, you know, some people worship George Washington as a god, but this is next level, sort of, I guess, day to day. And you're right. Again, it comes into how do you define worship? Are we going down that rabbit hole today, Preston?
[00:12:45] Preston Meyer: No, we don't have time for that. We've done it before and we don't have time today.
[00:12:51] Katie Dooley: Specifically, the king was seen as a direct representation of Horus and Horus in the pantheon is the son of Ra. So the king was also seen as the son of Ra. After the king dies or the Pharaoh dies, he becomes associated with Osiris and Ra and was fully deified.
[00:13:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The King's role was to set order in place. Order in this tradition is called Maat. And I don't know if that's terribly useful information, but I like it.
[00:13:23] Katie Dooley: Well, say I put maat a lot in the notes.
[00:13:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So as we refer to it, we're talking about the order of the universe as well as civil order locally as order in every aspect of order.
[00:13:37] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I put in our notes if you'll remember, kind of like Dharma in Hinduism. It's like this is what you're supposed to do. This is the way things are. And when we do all of that, things are good.
[00:13:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah and that's really the main focus of religious life is keeping everything organized, because there's so much possibility where things can go wrong. When you're surrounded by desert that can wake up, that can whip up terrible sandstorms, that destroy stuff.
[00:14:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah and I mean, just any sort of organization of a society of who does what and how do things happen.
[00:14:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah. All right, let's take a look at these gods.
[00:14:25] Katie Dooley: Are you ready to talk about ejaculation, Preston?
[00:14:29] Preston Meyer: I'm ready. Go for it.
[00:14:31] Katie Dooley: So the first, uh, the first big deity is Amun. He is considered the king of the gods and has a hidden name. He has a ton of characteristics that we will eventually see in monotheistic religions, one of those being the hidden name. But he is also omnipresent and all-powerful. So this is something we haven't really seen in the other old religions, is someone who has it all together, if you will. And he's unknowable to the rest of the pantheon. He has many other names, but my personal favorite is Bull who ejaculates Nun. And that's N-U-N. It's a name, not a lady in a habit.
[00:15:20] Preston Meyer: I figured just going on the sound of it, you could also interpret that as the bull who doesn't ejaculate, but that's not the deal.
[00:15:29] Katie Dooley: No, it's Bull who ejaculates nun. Formal name. So I have a quick story, and then I know we have a bigger story later, but yeah, just to explain this ejaculation, the universe was born from the waters of Nun. And from these waters emerged eight gods that would create the rest of the world. So because Amun was around before these gods and before the waters of Nun, Amun is technically his own father.
[00:16:03] Preston Meyer: What a mess.
[00:16:03] Katie Dooley: Bringing the world into being. One of the records I read is that he's self-generating.
[00:16:09] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that makes sense within this own tradition, not within the world of chemistry and science.
[00:16:19] Katie Dooley: Yes, so he ejaculated the waters of Nun from where the rest of everything came from.
[00:16:30] Preston Meyer: What a mess.
[00:16:31] Katie Dooley: Wow, right? That makes me feel really dirty about this world.
[00:16:36] Preston Meyer: Don't think too much about where you actually came from then.
[00:16:43] Katie Dooley: Amun was often combined with other gods, most commonly Ra, Amun-Ra is, you know, I've heard. I heard of it before.
[00:16:51] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:16:53] Katie Dooley: As they share many similarities to the point where I was like, Ra is hard to write about because it's basically Amun.
[00:17:00] Preston Meyer: Basically.
[00:17:03] Katie Dooley: His popularity grew from a small local deity to king of the gods as he absorbed other gods and got more popular. So these other small regional traditions started to co-mingle everyone was like, oh, that's Amun and he just got stronger and more powerful by absorbing other myths.
[00:17:25] Preston Meyer: Good deal.
[00:17:26] Katie Dooley: Which means he's identified as the sun god, the wind God, the creator of the universe, the protector of kings, etc. so he has a lot of attributes to him.
[00:17:35] Preston Meyer: Nice.
[00:17:36] Katie Dooley: He was also the God of the city of Thebes and only took on his role of High God after Thebes rebelled against the Hyksos when he was combined with Ra.
[00:17:48] Preston Meyer: Which is another name for Atum, which I'll get into a little bit later.
[00:17:54] Katie Dooley: When his fancy new hat made him famous outside of Egypt, he was equated with Zeus.
[00:18:00] Both Speakers: Yeah.
[00:18:02] Katie Dooley: And he has the head of a ram in some depictions, especially when he's combined with Zeus. So you'll see as we go through these, all of these are anthropomorphic, not all of them 95% of them.
[00:18:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah, an awful lot of them. Yeah.
[00:18:21] Katie Dooley: It's like two that don't.
[00:18:23] Preston Meyer: It's usually if they if they don't have an animal figure attached to them, they're women. There are some men in that case, but mostly they're women that don't have animal associations. I thought that was kind of interesting. All right, let's take a second to look at Ra, the god of the sun and the moon. One of the oldest gods. He's sometimes considered the creator. Or he was created right after the universe.
[00:18:54] Katie Dooley: In the waters of Nun.
[00:18:55] Preston Meyer: Exactly. Usually, though, he's equated with Atum which is another name for the the original creator based on another tradition. Kind of fancy, complicated stuff because old things get complicated. He also had a lot of other gods assimilated into his character as the Egyptian religion spread, just like we saw with Amun. Ra had a solar boat, not a solar-powered boat, but one that would sail on the sun and drag the sun across the sky, so he's usually depicted with the head of a falcon because his power to fly across the sky and falcons are just great, powerful birds. He's also believed to have a secret name, and makes it kind of obvious why he would have been easy to combine with Amun. And I think there's a good reason to suspect that the secret name of both Ra and Amun is Atum, which is the head of the Osirian Aeneid, which I'll get into a little bit later.
[00:20:09] Katie Dooley: [00:20:09]Nice story, eh? [00:20:11] so then we have Osiris. He is the god of the underworld, and we'll talk more about the afterlife a little later on and he would pass judgment on who was worthy of reincarnation. He is often shown as a partially wrapped, mummified king, and any of his exposed skin is either green or black, which represents the cycle of nature, life, and death. So green for plants, life.
[00:20:36] Preston Meyer: Or just gangrenous flesh.
[00:20:40] Katie Dooley: But what I read is that it's about nature and rebirth and all that fun stuff.
[00:20:44] Preston Meyer: It's definitely meant to be more positive than gross.
[00:20:47] Katie Dooley: Preston's taking this to another level. Of course, then they would mash up your brains and pull them through your nose, so who knows?
[00:20:54] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:20:56] Katie Dooley: He carries a crook and a flail. These are those very Egyptian looking tools. If you Google it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
[00:21:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Katie Dooley: He marries his sister and then took his sister as a lover which...
[00:21:08] Preston Meyer: It makes a lot more sense when you realize how small the population is.
[00:21:12] Katie Dooley: Small population and then gotta keep that godly bloodline godly. So. But I think taking your other sister as a lover is excessive.
[00:21:23] Preston Meyer: Not when there's no other options.
[00:21:25] Katie Dooley: You're married, though. You don't need to have an affair.
[00:21:28] Preston Meyer: What?
[00:21:29] Katie Dooley: He marries one sister and then has an affair with his other sister.
[00:21:31] Preston Meyer: That depends on which sources you look at but okay.
[00:21:35] Katie Dooley: So one is enough one is definitely enough. So Egyptians believed that the body and soul were two separate entities, which is still a common belief today. And if you led a good life, you would be reunited with your body in the underworld, which is partially where mummification comes from, is to preserve your body so you can get it back. If you were not so good, though, you would be removed from existence by a beast with the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and a hippo butt. And I thought this was really interesting when we talk about the beast in the revelation, which is just this weird hodgepodge, and I was wondering if there's any.
[00:22:20] Preston Meyer: This to me sounds more like just the traditional Mediterranean creature known as the Chimera. It just happens to have a slightly more Egyptian flavor than the Greek one that we've seen.
[00:22:33] Katie Dooley: It's got a hippo butt.
[00:22:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah because hippos are a very scary creature that live in the Nile.
[00:22:39] Katie Dooley: It said the haunches of a hippo. And I was like, I'm writing hippo butt. We know that he was worshiped in the first dynasty, but probably even earlier. It seems that much of his importance is derived from connecting him to Horus. The Greeks put a lot of work into replacing Osiris with Serapis. A weird construct that mirrored Pluto.
[00:23:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, what a mess and Osiris' cult to actually manage to last into the fifth century of the common era.
[00:23:11] Katie Dooley: Very old.
[00:23:13] Preston Meyer: I mean, yeah, from potentially prehistory until only about 1500 years ago.
[00:23:20] Katie Dooley: That's pretty good.
[00:23:21] Preston Meyer: That's a good chunk of world history.
[00:23:24] Katie Dooley: Especially surviving Christianity in the Middle East. Huge. Yeah. And then eventually Islam too.
[00:23:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah. All right, next on our list, we have Isis, the wife of Osiris. She is the goddess of healing and compassion. And she's known as a loyal wife and mother. She is almost always depicted in human form, which, like we mentioned before, not very common. She's one of the longest-lasting Egyptian gods. Isis cult still exists today, although they're not very big numbers, but that's pretty impressive after all of the efforts Christians have put into putting those down.
[00:24:03] Katie Dooley: And the records I read is that it's almost continuous. Not none of this. I mean, it is. You would look at these and we'll talk about the cult of Isis now, um, neopaganism. But to have an almost unbroken worship of Isis in 5000 years is pretty impressive.
[00:24:20] Preston Meyer: Right? Images of the Virgin Mary definitely have a little bit of debt to this figure of Isis, the way that she is worshiped as a goddess among some parts of Christianity, like the Catholic Church, for example, is really borrowing some aspects of Isis's power and there's a lot of statues and images of Isis breastfeeding Horus and some people want to say this idea is directly stolen from Isis for the Mary and Jesus image. It makes sense to me that, you know, a motherly figure would do that in art, but there's definitely some strong connections between these two. Later on, as she grew more popular, Isis took over some of Hathor's traits. Just Hathor lost popularity. Her aspect had to go somewhere. Isis is the natural destination for that. Her cult was officially supported by the Roman state when they took over, which I thought was kind of interesting. And it's also really important to note right now that ISIS, the jihadist group, has no connection or interest in the Egyptian goddess.
[00:25:35] Katie Dooley: I also was reading how the name Isis has dropped massively in popularity. I mean... Nothing to do with the Egyptian goddess. Everything to do with ISIL or Daesh. Um. My friend's daughter is named Isis.
[00:25:53] Preston Meyer: It's a rough time.
[00:25:53] Katie Dooley: Now it is, yeah.
[00:25:54] Preston Meyer: I mean, we don't talk about ISIS in the news anymore. So five years from now, I'm sure it'll be fine.
[00:26:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but her daughter is a teenager, so there was a rough time.
[00:26:05] Preston Meyer: Five years ago or whatever. That was rough.
[00:26:07] Katie Dooley: It was a rough time to be named... Yeah. Sorry, that was a digression. Has nothing to do with Egyptian. Then we have Horus. He is the son of Osiris and Isis. Ancient Egyptians believed he had several forms, um, as well as being both young and old at the same time. And he can also take the form of a falcon. He is usually depicted with his falcon head. Horus is known to have been worshiped in Kemet before recorded history, so he is very old and under Greek influence, Horus was eventually equated with Apollo, and again he is the king god.
[00:26:51] Both Speakers: Yeah, he's one of the most important. And his story is something we'll get into a little bit later, too.
[00:26:57] Both Speakers: Okay. I'm excited.
[00:27:00] Preston Meyer: Anubis.
[00:27:01] Katie Dooley: Nay! That's not the sound a jackal makes.
[00:27:07] Preston Meyer: Anubis is one of the oldest, most popular Egyptian gods. He was originally the god of the dead until Osiris and Isis became more popular. But he is also the god of mummification. Anubis has a human body, but a jackal's head and tail, in most depictions. He is capable of shapeshifting, however, and there are records of him turning into a lizard. Fancy stuff. His father is Osiris and his brother is Horus. In a lot of versions, because of course, things change from one place to another. When his role changed to the God of mummification, he became the escort to take people to the afterlife. The jackal head is symbolic of him being the keeper of the dead, as wild jackals would dig up shallow graves dug in the desert. So kind of an interesting connection.
[00:28:03] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:28:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, before the first dynasty, Anubis was represented as fully animal. He used to be fully independent of the Osirian Aeneid but eventually became the son of Isis. In the Nubian tradition, Anubis was the son and second husband of Nepthys. Yeah... Marrying your son is never a good thing. Even when you have a limited breeding pool.
[00:28:32] Katie Dooley: Oedipus.
[00:28:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:28:34] Katie Dooley: This pre-Oedipus, isn't it?
[00:28:36] Preston Meyer: It is pre-Oedipus. Yeah, what a mess. Yeah, well, speaking of Oedipus, under the Greek influence, Anubis was merged with Hermes.
[00:28:47] Katie Dooley: Oedipus.
[00:28:48] Preston Meyer: Definitely Hermes. Mostly because of the whole psychopomp deal carrying the dead around.
[00:28:58] Katie Dooley: Don't marry your mother's, listeners.
[00:29:02] Preston Meyer: I really think that the people that are on the level to listen to us aren't worried about that possibility.
[00:29:07] Katie Dooley: I just want all our bases covered. Then we have Thoth. I really like Thoth. He felt like a bit of a standalone.
[00:29:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, he was.
[00:29:18] Katie Dooley: He's meant to be a standalone. He's the god of medicine, science, wisdom and magic. He invented writing.
[00:29:25] Preston Meyer: I mean, there's a lot of people that claim that. But here we are.
[00:29:28] Katie Dooley: Here we are. He did it, guys. He invented writing. He often played the role of advisor and messenger for the gods. He plays a big role in enforcing maat, or order, and has been depicted both as an executioner and as a diplomat. Toth was the leader of the Eight Gods of Hermopolis, and he's usually depicted with the head of an ibis, but sometimes a baboon. I prefer the ibis.
[00:29:56] Preston Meyer: Baboons... most apes don't qualify as pretty creatures. Birds very often do, so I definitely understand the preference.
[00:30:05] Katie Dooley: I love the personality of a moderately domesticated ibis.
[00:30:09] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:30:13] Katie Dooley: Thoth was also equated with Hermes because of his writing power.
[00:30:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and also Hermes Trismegistus that we talked about a while back Thoth that is an important element of all of that.
[00:30:26] Katie Dooley: Of the threefold.
[00:30:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. All right, so story time, I got a couple stories that I really enjoyed.
[00:30:36] Katie Dooley: All right, I'm ready.
[00:30:37] Preston Meyer: The world was first in the form of expansive waters called Nun, as we had mentioned earlier, which came to be personified in four pairs of primordial gods, each bearing an aspect of the dark waters. According to a Hermopolis text, they were named Kek and Kauket, the god and goddess of darkness. Amun and Amunet, the god and goddess of invisibility. Heh and Hauhet God and goddess of infinity and Nun and Naunet, God and goddess of water. From these waters, Atum emerged by saying his own name. Quite the power.
[00:31:16] Katie Dooley: Wow. Katie!
[00:31:20] Preston Meyer: Pyramid texts say that Atum emerged in the form of a Bennu bird, which is like a heron, then flew to the place that would become Heliopolis, where he built a nest on top of an obelisk and subsequently caught fire and died.
[00:31:36] Katie Dooley: Oh, dear. That was quick.
[00:31:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Luckily, he's able to command himself into existence. So he came back from the dead like a phoenix.
[00:31:44] Katie Dooley: Katie!
[00:31:47] Preston Meyer: Presumably in the form of a bird, Atum started making children all by his lonesome. I suspect they were like in eggs because the bird thing. But this is mostly me making things up in this little detail. But it makes sense, right? A bird pushes out eggs. Bam! Now you got children.
[00:32:08] Katie Dooley: Could come out of his penis live birth. There's a horrifying webcomic of that. I might send that to you. I feel like I have to.
[00:32:16] Preston Meyer: No, but you're going to have to.
[00:32:17] Katie Dooley: I'm going to have to. Yes. It's horrifying.
[00:32:20] Preston Meyer: Well, anyway, his two children were Shu and Tefnut. Shu was the god of dry air and later on, the god of peace. And Tefnut was the goddess of moisture and rain. These two had two more kids, Geb and Nut. Geb is the god of the earth. Nut is the goddess of heaven, the firmament of heaven. Not air or in the clouds or anything like the dome of the sky. So after Geb was born, there was dry land where Ra could finally land on firm ground. Ra is the name they put on Atum's cup at Starbucks every morning. They're the same person in most forms of the tradition that his name changes throughout the day, depending on...
[00:33:10] Katie Dooley: What starbucks he goes to.
[00:33:12] Preston Meyer: Sure. Exactly.
[00:33:14] Katie Dooley: We've all been there.
[00:33:16] Preston Meyer: So Geb and Nut had four children. Osiris, god of order and fertility. Isis, the goddess of healing, Set the god of chaos and later on, storms in the desert in general. And Nephthys, the goddess of darkness. One day Atum's eye popped out for a wander and didn't come back. Shu and Tefnut went looking for it and like any good game of Quidditch, when they found the eye, it put up a fight. The eye ended up shedding a few tears, and from that moisture, humanity was born. When the humans rebelled, Atum turned into the forceful lion goddess, Sekhmet, and after the humans decided to behave, Sekhmet turned into the benevolent cow goddess Hathor. Atum is always referred to as masculine, but everything he does is fully feminine, as far as I can tell. But he can't command himself into existence, so gender persistence and conformity really aren't important to him. Later on, Hathor mates with Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris. So that's kind of weird.
[00:34:27] Katie Dooley: You know what? It's not as weird as Loki turning into a female horse and bearing a child, so I can't even be upset.
[00:34:34] Preston Meyer: Sure. One thing that I thought was really interesting, going through the aspects of these gods and goddesses, is that a lot of them are the opposite gender of their Greek equivalents.
[00:34:46] Katie Dooley: Counterpart, yeah.
[00:34:46] Preston Meyer: In Greek, Gaia is Mother Earth and Uranus is the the father heaven. And the exact opposite is what we have here in Egypt, with Geb being the God earth and Nut being the goddess heaven. That's kind of nifty stuff.
[00:35:04] Katie Dooley: They were trying not to plagiarize you, just like, reverse the order of things.
[00:35:09] Preston Meyer: So I'm pretty sure we've talked about this before, that there's a lot of thought that goes into that. Maybe all of these came from a common source, and something that is so consistently different has to have come from a unique source. I think.
[00:35:30] Katie Dooley: Interesting, I like that.
[00:35:33] Preston Meyer: That this isn't plagiarism that's been adjusted. It's a fully unique set of gods and perception of the universe. I've got another story. If you got the patience.
[00:35:45] Katie Dooley: Do I have the time for you, Preston?
[00:35:47] Preston Meyer: The patience?
[00:35:48] Katie Dooley: I'm locked in this room until we're done. So. Yes, please. I'm kidding. I have freewill.
[00:35:54] Preston Meyer: So the even more important to Egyptians than this origin story, which definitely varies from place to place.
[00:36:01] Katie Dooley: Than the Ejaculation of Nun? More important than the Ejaculation of Nun?
[00:36:03] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah. For sure. The most important story that everyone agrees is the most important story is the story of Osiris. That most stories seem to at least refer to this pretty regularly. It actually, oddly bears a little bit of similarities to the story of Persephone in some tellings of the story. Where there's passage to the underworld, that's not usually an important part of the story, but interesting anyway and it's it looks to me like this story is actually a sacred rite in the old mystery schools. Which is pretty interesting, but varies a lot from one group to the next. Osiris was probably a real guy, as his story begins with him as the King of Kemet. His brother Set kills him, embodying the struggle between order and chaos. And then the details are pretty fuzzy because the Kemetic people were way into verbal magic, and speaking about the murder was liable to send the world into chaos. Since, you know, we're talking about killing the God of order, kind of a big deal. Cults all over the kingdom claimed that a portion of Osiris body had fallen in their neighborhood. Which is kind of interesting. Many of them would say just his body fell here, but because everybody was saying it, it had to be a part of his body. But all of that kind of weird because when they found his body, they found his body.
[00:37:45] Katie Dooley: Ew, David.
[00:37:49] Preston Meyer: So Set takes over in the power vacuum while the sisters Isis and Nephthys go looking for Osiris' body. When they find him, with the help of various gods, depending on the cult telling the story, sometimes it's Thoth, sometimes it's other gods that are local to the area. They embalm Osiris to keep his body from decaying. Some even say that this practice reverses the decay, which is kind of interesting. Though chemically doesn't make a lot of sense. Then Isis goes ahead and breathes life into Osiris and immediately jumps his bone to conceive Osiris baby, a boy named Horus.
[00:38:28] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:38:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:38:30] Katie Dooley: Wasting no time.
[00:38:31] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. Of course, Osiris dies right after the surprise necrophilia.
[00:38:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah!
[00:38:40] Preston Meyer: Because she could heal things, but she couldn't permanently breathe life back into somebody.
[00:38:47] Katie Dooley: So she literally did it just to make a baby. Wow.
[00:38:53] Preston Meyer: So Isis has to hide her pregnancy from Set because the whole persecuted baby messiah trope that we've talked about before and the boy grows up in secrecy until he's old enough to challenge Set. He pleads his case to the more senior of the gods, then ends up having a wild variety of sexually abusive conflicts with his uncle.
[00:39:15] Katie Dooley: Oh. Trigger warning.
[00:39:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and the details vary by sources, of course, but sexual abuse is definitely almost always part of this story. And at some point Horus loses his eye, and its restoration, which also varies by source, marks the restoration of the moon's light cycle. In some versions, they're reconciled by agreeing to split the kingdom, usually leaving Set to rule the desert, while Horus rules the habitable lands of the Nile. Other versions have Set fully exiled, or sometimes even actually destroyed/vanquished. Either way, Osiris is avenged, and from that point forward is never really mentioned as anything other than the king of the Duat. The Kemetic heaven.
[00:40:04] Katie Dooley: Interesting. So we're gonna talk about afterlife. We know that the Egyptians have a huge funerary process of mummification, which we're not gonna talk too too much about the physical aspect, more the religious/spiritual aspect of the afterlife. So the ancient Egyptians first and foremost believed in immortality. People would sacrifice to the gods with the intent of having the shortest possible interruption between death and rebirth. Again, as I mentioned, bodies were mummified so that they would stay intact for the soul to return, and part of this involved the opening of the mouth ceremony, which was how they would prepare dead bodies for the journey to the underworld, involved anointing the body and touching it with the ritual objects to return the five senses to it.
[00:41:00] Preston Meyer: Fancy.
[00:41:00] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Then, there was the weighing of the heart ceremony. So now you're in the underworld. And this is performed by Osiris and recorded by Thoth. The recently deceased would plead their case for innocence in front of 42 divine judges. Next, your heart was weighed, which recorded all the good and bad things you did throughout your life. Your heart was weighed against the feather representing maat or order, and if the scales balanced, you moved on to the afterlife. You kept order, and if they did not, you were met by the crocolionputt-putt puttpus... I made that up.
[00:41:52] Preston Meyer: I can tell. I like it, though.
[00:41:56] Katie Dooley: Thank you. The crocoliontomus.
[00:41:59] Preston Meyer: The Egyptian chimera.
[00:42:00] Katie Dooley: The crocodile, lion, hippo butt. The afterlife is a reflection of the real world. Um, if you're a fan of Stranger Things that, but more pleasant.
[00:42:13] Preston Meyer: I like to think of it more. Like very similar to what we see in the fields of Elysium. Yeah. In fact, like the Greeks, there was talk of a heavenly land for the dead out to the West. Usually people talked about it being underneath as the underworld, but there was a little bit of talk of it being out west, which I thought was conspicuous, that some royal crypts had cocaine residue in them, which is native to the Americas.
[00:42:41] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:42:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:42:42] Katie Dooley: Fascinating.
[00:42:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's weird. And there is a lot of people who are like, did they travel all the way to the Americas? Was there a trade there or did they actually have cocaine in Africa? And then just like the Romans and the whole birth control plant, just eat it into extinction. That's the question.
[00:43:09] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:43:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah and the pyramids. Well, everyone's always,"What's the pyramids for?" And it's kind of nifty, that part of the symbolism of the pyramid. And they got really big in Giza for some reason. It's meant to mirror that final or that first landing point when Atum landed on the top of an obelisk, when there was first or before there was land to land on. And that was the point from which magic could send them off into the afterlife. In a little bit of a Stargate kind of way.
[00:43:54] Both Speakers: Nice.
[00:43:55] Katie Dooley: Did you know? Fun fact. Random fact that I'm just gonna throw over here that the pyramids weren't built by slaves?
[00:44:01] Preston Meyer: I did know that. People love that part of the story so much. Especially if you grew up watching the Prince of Egypt. That's not the way it goes.
[00:44:08] Katie Dooley: Now, again don't get me wrong, I don't think they were treated very well. They definitely didn't work eight hours a day and get long weekends, but they were paid. So fun fact for all of you at your next family dinner. What does this look like in the 21st century? It's actually called Kemetism.
[00:44:29] Preston Meyer: I wonder where they got that.
[00:44:30] Katie Dooley: I wonder where they got that name from, which is the modern name for Egyptian neopaganism. Which is also acceptable. People would know what you were talking about. Just like the Celtic religion, these range from eclectic spiritualism to reconstructionist and everything in between. But there's three main categories. We have Kemetic orthodoxy, syncretism and reconstructed Kemeticism. And they're all very... They're all really weird. This is the first one. I was like, these websites are really weird. Clear your browser history. Anyway.
[00:45:10] Preston Meyer: I like that you went to their own website.
[00:45:12] Preston Meyer: I did, and I just at some point, I had to call it quits.
[00:45:17] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:45:20] Katie Dooley: We're very tolerant here. Please don't get me wrong. Kemetic orthodoxy is not the Reconstructionist branch of Egyptian neopaganism, though it claims to be. I had to do some digging on this one. So it was founded in 1988, in the United States. So, very new. Just as old as Preston.
[00:45:40] Preston Meyer: Almost. Oh.
[00:45:42] Katie Dooley: You're. No. You're. Wait.
[00:45:44] Preston Meyer: I was born in 89. This is older than me.
[00:45:48] Katie Dooley: The main temple is in Illinois, of all places. And the current pharaoh and founder, Tamara Sweda incorporates rites invented by her and from traditional African religions. So this is where it's not reconstructionist because she's making her own stuff up, which is fine.
[00:46:04] Preston Meyer: I'm a little disappointed they weren't started in, say, Memphis, Tennessee.
[00:46:10] Katie Dooley: Right?
[00:46:12] Preston Meyer: Or, wait. No, there's a Cairo in Illinois.
[00:46:16] Katie Dooley: They don't say. They don't pronounce it Cairo.
[00:46:18] Preston Meyer: No, it's Cairo.
[00:46:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah, Americans. I'm kidding. We love our American listeners. So they have five tenants. They have the number one belief in upholding Maat. Cool. Belief in Netjer or a supreme being. Aku, or ancestor worship or veneration. Participation in and respect for the community, nice, and acknowledgment of the founder as the Nysut. Uh Nysut is like a generic Egyptian name for a lady in power.
[00:46:57] Preston Meyer: Well, that's fine then. It's pretty. I thought you were going to say like this founder who just started the religion out of nowhere is like this specific goddess.
[00:47:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the new stuff is actually like a Christ figure. No it's not. It's just like a it's like Dame Maggie Smith.
[00:47:12] Preston Meyer: Okay. I accept. Yeah.
[00:47:15] Katie Dooley: Members of the faith are known as Shemsu.
[00:47:19] Preston Meyer: Mm.
[00:47:20] Katie Dooley: So that's Kemetic orthodoxy, which, though it claims to be Reconstructionist, is not reconstructionist. Then we have an example of a syncretic Kemetism, which is the fellowship of Isis. Uh huh. Mhm. This one was founded in Ireland in the 70s. It's just really weird to me that none of these were founded anywhere near Egypt. Like at least Greek neopaganism has an actual Greek movement. Anyway. This one is like really hippie dippy, um, and it's syncretic and it says it's syncretic. I don't even know if I would give it that much credit. It just believes in the divine feminine. And they worship all goddesses across all religions and cultures. Like that's their jam. So it's not even...
[00:48:11] Preston Meyer: That sounds syncretic.
[00:48:12] Katie Dooley: I guess so.
[00:48:13] Preston Meyer: It's loosey goosey for sure.
[00:48:14] Katie Dooley: It's very loosey goosey. It's like, oh, you like Athena? Come join us. Um, and then they have no regard for any of the other pantheon, from what I can tell. So very hippie dippy. And then for the Reconstructionist movement. They have three temples again in the United States. There's the Kemetic Temple of San Francisco, the Temple of Ra Sacramento, and the Per Akhet Temple in Denver. While they try to be as true as possible to original rights and practices, they also do not feel compelled to follow them to the letter. They actually wrote a great article on their website that they are fully aware that they are citizens in the 21st century, and not everything from 3000 BCE applies to them.
[00:48:59] Preston Meyer: You know what? I'm on board with that.
[00:49:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but they do believe in the pantheon as what rules the heavens.
[00:49:08] Preston Meyer: Cool.
[00:49:08] Katie Dooley: So those are three examples of Kemeticism. There's a lot of groups, though. Like a lot, a lot of groups, which was surprising compared to like the Greek reconstructionists. There's like 2 or 3, but there's a lot of these. And they like I said, they fall on that spectrum of everything from Orthodoxy to reconstructionist to syncretic hippie dippy.
[00:49:35] Preston Meyer: Cool, cool. There's a lot more to the Egyptian religion, just like there's a lot more to all of the religions we've been talking about for the last couple months. Lots of gods that we never listed and didn't have the time to explain, and what we usually try to stick to an hour for you guys.
[00:49:52] Katie Dooley: I was just going to throw in there if there is a detail or a god, if any of these last five episodes that you'd like us to do something more in-depth on, please shoot us an email or post on our Discord, or send us a DM on our social media because we're happy to do it.
[00:50:09] Preston Meyer: And if we've only inspired you to go and do your own research, I count that as a win, too.
[00:50:14] Katie Dooley: I count that as a win too. Post your findings on our discord. Do you see where I'm getting at, Preston?
[00:50:19] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Discord is a place where you have great discussions and share some wonderful memes.
[00:50:26] Katie Dooley: So many good religious memes.
[00:50:28] Preston Meyer: We've got Facebook, we've got Instagram, we've got...
[00:50:32] Katie Dooley: Patreon!
[00:50:33] Preston Meyer: Patreon. We've got a shop run by Spreadshirt right now, and we've got a YouTube channel. We got all kinds of things going on.
[00:50:42] Katie Dooley: Find us literally anywhere you want to find us, except hopefully in our own homes but please get involved in the community and send us some love and some supports that we can keep doing this great podcast and share. Share this episode with a friend right now.
[00:51:01] Preston Meyer: That would be great. Before you forget.
[00:51:03] Katie Dooley: Right now, copy the link. Say Hey, Barbara Sue, I listen to this and thought of you.
[00:51:12] Preston Meyer: I like that. It sounds real poetic.
[00:51:14] Katie Dooley: Thank you. We're going to shift gears next episode talking about why these are all mostly dead religions.
[00:51:20] Preston Meyer: And it's not just because of Christianity, though they definitely played a role.
[00:51:25] Both Speakers: Peace be with you!
