Egyptian and Greek

UNDERSTANDING WORLD CULTURE: Egyptian and Greek
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Understanding World Culture: Egyptian and Greek
Located some 1500 kilometers away from each other are two of the most influential civilizations of the ancient world. One of them has left us unparalleled architectural and spiritual achievements, the other, has brought us discoveries that only the human mind is capable of reaching. These are Egypt and Greece, seats of civilizations in the West – substantially different at first glance, but essentially the same. In this paper, I hope to show the uniqueness of each civilization as well as highlight how their differences may be manifestations of the same archetypal quality.
Describing Egypt
Of all ancient civilizations, Egypt is probably the most recognizable and the most studied. In fact, a separate branch of study that focuses on Egypt’s history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art has been developed. In the United States alone, there are at least 10 universities offering Egyptology as an undergraduate and a graduate course ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/egypt/education/egyptology_universities.htm", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2015", "6", "7" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Hawass", "given" : "Zahi", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "container-title" : "Dr. Zahi: The Man with the Hat", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2015" ] ] }, "title" : "Where to Study Egyptology", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=a5de3428-925c-4f17-908a-f5cbf8fe4146" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Hawass, 2015)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Hawass, 2015)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Hawass, 2015)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }(Hawass, 2015).
Founded in 3000 BC, Egypt continues to fascinate even today. Visitors to the Pyramids at Giza still ask how such a structure can be built without the use of modern equipment. Tourists still gape at old papyrus scrolls and wonder how such a material could survive hundreds of years. Students are still in awe at ancient scribes and their capacity to write with the hieroglyph. We have discovered new insights into Egyptian culture through the different mummies found in various locations in Egypt. Perhaps what makes Egypt even more astonishing is that a civilization started there at all.
Surrounded by the hot Sahara Desert, Egypt would not have been able to support huge populations of people if not for the Nile River that provided fresh water daily and dumped fertile soil for agriculture annually. This annual flooding served as the basis for the entire Egyptian culture; its importance immortalized in the now popular Egyptian myth, reproduced in appendix A of this paper. This creation myth gives us an insight to the consciousness of ancient Egyptians and how their very culture developed. Of the many aspects of Egyptian culture, one of the most glaring is that of its religion. Hieroglyphs (which literally means sacred writing), mummification, and the pyramids all have religious origins, and a study of the creation and various Egyptian mythology will help drive this point.
We know from the creation myth that Egyptians observed nature, and they discovered what we now know about Egypt – that it was impossible to proliferate life in this part of the world. Hence, the explanation of the workings of the nature became the centerpiece of their religion. First, they have seen logic through the natural rhythms: day and night, flooding and receding of the Nile, the growth and death of plants. But what causes this rhythm to exist? It is a mystery; the logic that exists in nature’s movement is unfathomable by the human mind; and so every aspect of nature must be of a different kind of intelligence - a god. Second, these gods are not the benevolent gods we have today. They are not gods that give favor to humans; they are gods who are unknowable and must be feared. To symbolize this, many gods including Seth (god of evil), Horus (god of the sky), Ra (the Sun God), Thoth (god of knowledge), those that represent aspects of nature that not readily understood, have been given the attributes of both animals and humans ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "http://discoveringegypt.com/ancient-egyptian-gods-and-goddesses/", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2015", "6", "7" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Millmore", "given" : "Mark", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "container-title" : "Discovering Egypt", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "1997" ] ] }, "title" : "Ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddesses", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=799e1ff2-158f-4e47-866a-f60924386395" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Millmore, 1997)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Millmore, 1997)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Millmore, 1997)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }(Millmore, 1997) – their will can be impulsive and self-serving, but they are much more intelligent than the common animal. Shu, Geb and Nut have fully human depictions which could mean that ancient Egyptians could relate to these gods because of their constancy – the earth remained separated from the sky, and the air exists in between them, day after day.
Third, the creation myth tells us the various pre-requisites of Egyptian civilization. Like Nun, the Nile carried with it water and destruction. To make sense of the annual chaos it brings, Atum or Ra (the sun) had to stand on a hill (or ray out from high up), allowing the waters to recede and the dark, fertile soil to appear. Before new life could emerge, however, Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture) had to be present. With Shu, humans could breathe, with Tefnut (moisture as the gentle movement of water as opposed to the chaotic Nun), plant life could begin. The presence of Shu and Tefnut was a prerequisite because the Sahara was hot and dry, there had to be a different entity that has enabled life to exist in this part of the world. From the tears of Ra, came the human beings. In Egyptian lore, human beings were created of water – we were born of divine substance, from the first god himself; we were born to be dynamic, and we were born out of love. Ra went on to rule the earth for a long time as nature worked its wonders to shape a world where humans could finally begin to thrive. In the beginning, the humans stayed in the background, until Isis finally dethroned Ra.
When Ra ceased to become the most powerful god, and his magic passed on to Isis, a new era arrived. Isis and Osiris went down to earth and began to live with human beings. But because humans were still savages at the time, Isis and Osiris had to teach the people how they can make their lives more pleasant. Through Osiris’ might, he united warring tribes and he became the first pharaoh of Egypt. The leadership of Egypt was passed on from one generation to the next, but only to the son of the current pharaoh. In this sense, all pharaohs of Egypt descended from Osiris and Ra himself, giving him absolute power not only in Egyptian society but also in the realm of the spiritual. Egyptians believed that their leaders were gods – and because the logic of gods could never be understood by mere humans, no one dared question the will of the pharaoh.
Meanwhile, the wit and cunning of Isis enabled Egyptian women to be seen as equals to men. While her husband led the men, Isis worked with the women and taught them crafts that made the lives of their families more comfortable. Now they could weave clothes from flax, write letters with papyrus and ink, and play music for entertainment! For ancient Egyptians, these capacities were inspired by a divine being and must be conducted with such reverence. In this ancient world, women were not second class citizens – they worked in the background, but they were the power behind the kingdom. Just like Isis, the women gave the basis for a thriving civilization, they counseled their husbands, and provided support by running the household ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2015", "6", "7" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Thompson", "given" : "James C.", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "container-title" : "The status, role and daily life of women in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Rome, Athens, Israel and Babylonia", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2010" ] ] }, "title" : "Women in Ancient Egypt", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=21a6b88a-706b-4357-8308-f63e4bb1fc1d" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Thompson, 2010)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Thompson, 2010)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Thompson, 2010)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }(Thompson, 2010).
Another important preoccupation for early Egyptians is death. Death is a puzzle because none who enter it could go back to explain what can be found there. And so, just like the various rhythms of nature, this was another mystery, and must be the work of gods. Through Seth, the brother of Osiris, Egyptians recognized the presence of evil from the very beginning, and it is this evil that has paved the way for death. In the myth of Isis and Osiris, Osiris was killed by his brother, and Isis, she who paved the way for joy, came to the rescue and gave her husband new life. Osiris was alive, but he could no longer live among his people; he went back to the du’at, the realm of the gods. And so, death was but an interruption of life on earth, anyone who lived morally, in accordance to the rules passed on by the gods through their human counterparts, can live happily ever after with Osiris in this realm. This is the same as the Christian notion of heaven, where the righteous come to live in happiness with their maker. The difference is that the Egyptians believed that their time on earth is important because it serves as a basis for how abundant or miserable their afterlife would be. In a sense, for Egyptians life on earth is but a preparation for the afterlife.
Perhaps this is the reason Egyptian creations are virtually indestructible – they had to be eternal, because it served as the dead’s connection to the real world. For example, bodies had to be mummified because the physical body served as the host of the ‘Ka’ (soul). Without it, the individual cannot exist in the afterlife. In this same respect, Pyramids are not burial chambers, but rather, are resurrection chambers that enabled the pharaoh to directly access the home of the gods; the Book of the Dead, in itself a work of art, is their guide towards their journey to that world.
Describing Ancient Greece
Roughly 2,500 years ago, Greece entered into a Golden Age. This new civilization which arose some 2,000 years after the height of the Egyptian civilization, introduced new "ideals of beauty, science, art and a radical new form of government: democracy" ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Glassman", "given" : "Gary", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2008" ] ] }, "publisher" : "WGBH Educational Foundation", "publisher-place" : "United States", "title" : "Secrets of the Parthenon", "type" : "broadcast" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=fbf10744-5531-409b-9281-21bbf83405dc" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }(Glassman, 2008). As a testament to these ideals, the Greeks created the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena and a "physical embodiment of their values, beliefs and ideology" ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Glassman", "given" : "Gary", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2008" ] ] }, "publisher" : "WGBH Educational Foundation", "publisher-place" : "United States", "title" : "Secrets of the Parthenon", "type" : "broadcast" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=fbf10744-5531-409b-9281-21bbf83405dc" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }(Glassman, 2008). Today, the Parthenon is one of the most visited archeological sites in the world, a symbol of Western civilization, and a "powerful statement of what human beings are capable of" ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Glassman", "given" : "Gary", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2008" ] ] }, "publisher" : "WGBH Educational Foundation", "publisher-place" : "United States", "title" : "Secrets of the Parthenon", "type" : "broadcast" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=fbf10744-5531-409b-9281-21bbf83405dc" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Glassman, 2008)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }(Glassman, 2008), a statement of the highest level of human creativity.
A few decades ago, a philosopher said, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato" ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Whitehead", "given" : "Alfred North", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "1979" ] ] }, "publisher" : "Free Press", "title" : "Process and Reality", "type" : "book" }, "locator" : "39", "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=e8623b3b-6e78-4d0d-84b9-c2db23e1894a" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Whitehead, 1979, p. 39)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Whitehead, 1979, p. 39)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Whitehead, 1979, p. 39)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-sty...