Through a Glass Darkly: Magic, Dreams and Prophecy in Ancient Egypt

289 Pages·2006·9.142 MB·English

by  Kasia Szpakowska

Through a Glass
Darkly
Magic, dreams and prophecy
in ancient Egypt
Edited by
Kasia Szpakowska
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T h r o u g h a g l a s s
d a r k ly
Magic, dreams & Prophecy
in ancient Egypt
Editor
Kasia Szpakowska
Contributors
John Baines, Maria Centrone,
Carolyn Graves-Brown, Leonard H. Lesko, Alan B. Lloyd,
Scott B. Noegel, Daniel Ogden, Richard B. Parkinson,
Joachim F. Quack, John Ray, Robert K. Ritner,
Anthony Spalinger, Willeke Wendrich
The Classical Press of Wales
First published in 2006 by
The lassical Press of Wales
15 Rosehill Terrace, Swansea SA1 6JN
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
www.classicalpressofwales.co.uk
Distributor in the United States of America:
ISD, LLC
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www.isdistribution.com
© 2006 The contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-910589-52-6
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by Ernest Buckley, Clunton, Shropshire
Printed and bound in the UK by Gomer Press, Llandysul, Ceredigion, Wales
The Classical Press of Wales, an independent venture, was founded in 1993, initially to support the
work of classicists and ancient historians in Wales and their collaborators from further afild. More
recently it has published work initiated by scholars internationally . While retaining a special loyalty to
Wales and the Celtic countries, the Press welcomes scholarly contributions from all parts of the world.
Thesymbol of the Press is the Red Kite. This bird, once widespread in Britain, was reduced by 1905 to some
fi e individuals confined to a small area known as ‘TheDesert of Wales’ – the upper Tywi valley. Geneticists
report that the stock was saved from terminal inbreeding by the arrival of one stray female bird from Germany.
After much careful protection, the Red Kite now thrives – in Wales and beyond.
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CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Tomorrow is yesterday ix
Kasia Szpakowska (University of Wales Swansea)
1. Display of magic in Old Kingdom Egypt 1
John Baines (Oxford University)
2. Corn-mummies, amulets of life 33
Maria Centrone (University of Wales Swansea)
3. Emergent flints 47
Carolyn Graves-Brown (University of Wales Swansea and
University College London)
4. The end is near 63
Leonard H. Lesko (Brown University)
5. Heka, dreams, and prophecy in Ancient Egyptian stories 71
Alan B. Lloyd (University of Wales Swansea)
6. On puns and divination: Egyptian dream exegesis from a
comparative perspective 95
Scott B. Noegel (University of Washington)
7. Lucian’s tale of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in context 121
Daniel Ogden (University of Exeter)
8. Sinuhe’s dreaming(s): The texts and meanings of a simile 145
Richard B. Parkinson (The British Museum)
v
Contents
9. A black cat from the right, and a scarab on your head:
New sources for Ancient Egyptian divination 175
Joachim F. Quack (University of Heidelberg)
10. The dreams of the twins in St Petersburg 189
John Ray (Cambridge University)
11. ‘And each staff transformed into a snake’: The serpent wand in
Ancient Egypt 205
Robert K. Ritner (University of Chicago)
12. A lost dream episode 227
Anthony Spalinger (University of Auckland)
13. Entangled, connected or protected? The power of knots and
knotting in Ancient Egypt 243
Willeke Wendrich (University of California)
Index 271
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost I would like to thank Professor Alan B. Lloyd. Without
his continual encouragement, help, and expertise, the conference that was the
genesis of this book would not have taken place. Professor Lloyd has always
displayed a remarkable degree of , and it was he who first suggested that
sia
we hold such a conference – in part to complement the newly-developed
Egyptology degree schemes at the University of Wales Swansea, and in part
to develop those fertile areas of Egyptological research that clearly deserved
more attention. It has been an honour to work with him.
I am also much obliged to Anton Powell both for helping to organize
the conference in such a delightful location as Baskerville Hall, and also for
agreeing to publish this volume. His hard work and that of Ernest Buckley
(who has had the onerous task of wrestling with multi-lingual transliteration
systems) is deeply appreciated. I would like to express my sincere thanks to
Stephen Quirke for his comments, advice, and support, especially when confi-
dence wavered, and to Ellen Morris for her laughter and encouragement.
I am most grateful to the contributors for braving the travel into Wales,
and for entering into the spirit of the event wholeheartedly, both at the
conference and in the papers which they have generously submitted for this
volume. In particular, I am indebted to that master of Robert K. Ritner,
heka
our keynote speaker, for his eloquent presentation and his astute observations
that helped shape the conference and resulting papers.
Finally, 1 would like to thank Jon Thirlby for his creativity and for
rendering the snake that protects the cover of this volume. Theimage is based
on the apotropaic snake-staffwielding deity who appears along with other
fearsome creatures on a Middle Kingdom hippopotamus birth tusk (BM EA
18175) that can be seen in the British Museum.
Kasia Szpakowska
vii
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Introduction
TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY
Kasia Szpakowska
In September of 2003, a group of Egyptologists met in the unique setting of
Baskerville Hall in Wales, near the village of Hay-on-Wye, to offer presenta-
tions highlighting current investigations of phenomena related to magic,
dreams, and prophecy in Ancient Egypt. The event was sponsored by the
University of Wales Swansea and the University of Wales Institute of Classics
and Ancient History, and was organized by Professor Alan B. Lloyd, Anton
Powell, and myself. We hoped that the idyllic and creative environment that
had hosted the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would stimulate our discourse
and that the diversity of specialists would illuminate the many different facets
of these topics and approaches to their study. In this we were certainly not
disappointed. The papers gathered here all amply demonstrate that the final
word has not been spoken, and perhaps there is no final word to be spoken on
these aspects of ancient cultures. As scholars, what we can offer are reasonable
and reasoned interpretations based on the evidence available to us. Each of us
can offer only a glimpse into a single aspect of Ancient Egyptian life, based
on just one methodology – one turn of the kaleidoscope. This volume offers
several examinations of topics related to magic, dreams, and prophecy, each
offering a specific perspective, and together covering a wide span of time.
In his paper, Alan Lloyd introduces us to magic, dreams, and prophecy
on a broad scale by focusing on their roles and techniques in the narrative
literary texts of the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. He notes that the
appearance of heka in a particular tale corresponds to a large extent with the
function of the text as well as the author’s desire to emphasize the nature of
the experiences. Thus, the fabulous stories of the Westcar papyrus feature
multiple examples of the use of heka, unlike the story of Sinuhe, with its
action firmly rooted in reality. Lloyd points out that of the three activities,
dreams, prophecy, and magic, it was the praxis of heka that played the most
prominent role in narrative literature of the Middle and New Kingdoms.
In addition, he analyses the demotic Setna Cycle, a complex series of stories
that reflect the changing roles of dreams and magic in Ancient Egypt.
ix