johnshaplin: June 2023

All the prayers in the world can only hope to postpone the inevitability of death. When the end came, it often did so swiftly and unexpectedly for the kings and commoners of ancient Egypt alike. The death of a pharaoh was a particularly dangerous moment, politically and ideologically. The stability of the state was threatened, as was the continuation of the cosmos. As a result, the preparations made for the proper burial and successful resurrection of the monarch were especially careful, and nowhere is this better attested than in the elaborate sepulchers carved for the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings.

But everyone in ancient Egypt, whatever their status and means, aspired to be ready for the hereafter; as a result, pharaonic civilization can appear to us today as a society obsessed with death. Pyramids, mummies and tombs, sarcophagi, grave goods and afterlife books: the most distinctive elements of ancient Egyptian culture belong to the mortuary sphere. However, in making elaborate preparations for burial, the inhabitants of the ancient Nile Valley were focusing not on leaving this world, but on entering the next. Their motivation was a love of life, not a death wish.

The objects from the Tomb of Tutankhamun comprise the most extensive and complete funerary assemblage ever discovered in Egypt. From his simple funerary garland to his elaborate shrines and coffins, the material remains of one young man's untimely demise reveal wealth of information about the soul of ancient Egypt and their entire civilization.

Ptah

By comparison with the Hermopolitan and Heliopolitan accounts, the third creation myth of the ancient Egyptians is the most theologically sophisticated. It was composed, probably in the nineteenth dynasty –so a generation or two after Tutankhamun (1332-1322 B.C.) – by the priests in Memphis, Egypt’ traditional administrative capital. From the beginning of history, the principal god of Memphis had been a craftsman god called Ptah, so it is no surprise that he is at the center of the so-called Memphite Theology. In the sole surviving version of the text, carved in the twenty-fifth dynasty when pharaonic culture was looking back to earlier periods for inspiration and affirmation, Ptah is said to have created the world through his thought and word. First he devised all deities, people and living creatures in his heart – a process known as sia or ‘insight’. Then he gave them form through his ‘authoritative utterance, hu. The echoes in the account of creation in St. John’s Gospel – ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ – are striking. As for Ptah himself, like the god of the Judeo-Christian tradition, he was self-engendered, the ‘father of the gods from whom all life emerged’.

In order to link the Memphite Theology with the other creation myths, the theologians of Memphis associated Ptah with the primeval mound (personified as Ta-tenen, ‘the land which becomes distinct’) and cast him as creating Atum as the agent of his thought and word. It was by such means that the edifice of Egyptian religion was built over many centuries, with regional traditions systematically incorporated into a country-wide mythology. This enabled local allegiances to be maintained while forging a national religion, and the cult of Ptah provides a instructive illustration of this process.

The earliest known representation of the god of Memphis in his characteristic form (mummiform, wearing a close-fitting skullcap and holding a scepter) is on a bowl from the city’s main cemetery at Saqqara that dates from the middle of the first dynasty ( 2950-2575 B.C.).

It is therefore likely that the cult of Ptah came into being at, or before, the beginning of dynastic civilization. Herodotus, who drew much of his information from the Memphite priesthood, claimed that the temple of Ptah ha been founded by Menes, the first king of Egypt. In origin, as well as being a local city god, Ptah seems to have been closely linked with craftsman ship. His name may derive from a root meaning ‘to sculpt’, and the high priest of his cult during the Pyramid Age was known as ‘the great craftsman’. From this association, casting him as a creator deity who brought the world into being, fashioned the gods, sculpted the earth and shaped humanity was a small step.

Ptah’s syncretization with Ta-tenen gave him a role in the afterlife – the primeval mound being one of the most potent symbols of regeneration – and he soon absorbed the cult of the ancient falcon-headed mortuary god, Sokar. In due course, Ptah-Sokar came to be associated with the supreme underworld god, Osiris, to form a tripartite, Ptah-Sokar- Osiris. It was as a chthonic deity that Ptah was represented in the sanctuary of Ramesses II’s great rock-cut temple at Abu Simbel, alongside the other major gods of the nineteenth dynasty (1292-1190 B.C.)

While the temple was oriented so that the rising sun would illuminate the sanctuary on two days each year, the figure of Ptah remained in the shadows. A shadowy presence or not, Ptah’s prominence in the state religion of the time is confirmed by his inclusion in the names of two of its pharaohs: Ramesses II’s successor, Merenptah (‘beloved of Ptah’) and the last king of the dynasty, Siptah (‘man of Ptah’).

A rather different aspect of Ptah was his approachability. At some point in history, he absorbed the powers of the sacred tree that grew in the precincts of Memphis. The cult of ‘Ptah under his moringa tree’ became popular with ordinary citizens who, denied access to the inner sanctum of the city’s main temple, could petition their god in the open air. This notion of direct access developed into ‘Ptah the hearing ear’: votive stelae outside the walls of the Ptah temple in Memphis were often carved with images of human ears, in the belied that the god would hear the prayers of his faithful supplicants.

By the time of the Middle Kingdom, he bore the moniker ‘Lord of Ankhtawy’, signaling his elevation to the god of the whole Memphite region; and in the nineteenth dynasty, his popularity as a god spread to other parts of Egypt, including Thebes. A stela from Deir el-Medina shows him surrounded by ears; ‘chapels of the hearing ear were erected beyond the perimeters of major temples, including at nearby Medinet Habu. He also had his own chapel within the great temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak.

It must have seemed entirely natural to the composers of the Memphite Theology to ascribe to him the creation not just of the other gods and goddesses, but also of all the towns and shrines throughout Egypt.

Despite a growing national popularity, the pre-eminent cult center of Ptah remained the home city of Memphis. Today, the site is a jumble of scattered stones and tumbledown ruins, overgrown with vegetation. But in its heyday, the temple of Ptah was one of the grandest, most imposing centers of worship in the Nile Valley. It was located to the south of the royal citadel, and the ancient model of the temple of ‘Ptah south of his wall’ shows a high enclosure with crenellation and buttressed towers.

Indeed, from the outside, it resembles a fortress as much as a place of worship. The architecture was designed not only to overawe but to exclude: Egyptian temples were the preserve of the king and his closest circle, out of bounds to the general population. As one of the most venerable and important deities of Egypt, Ptah was the regular recipient of royal largesse. One of Tutankhamun’s first acts of succeeding to the throne was to restore the temples of the gods that had fallen into ruin during the preceding reign, and the god of Egypt’s capital city was a major focus of his patronage:

He fashioned (the image of ), Ptah south of his wall, lord of Memphis . . . his sacred image of electrum, lapis lazuli, turquoise and every precious stone.

Perhaps it was to recall this benefaction that a gilded figure of Ptah was included among the ritual statuettes buried in the boy king’s tomb. Like its companion deities, it was made of wood, coated with gesso and covered in gold foil. Embossed decoration depicts the god’s broad collar and his tightly fitting feathered cloak. In his protruding hands, he holds his distinctive staff that combines the symbols of ‘power’(user), ‘stability’ (djed) and ‘life’ (ankh), fashioned from gilded bronze. He is also characterized by a straight beard and a smooth, shiny skullcap, formed from blue faience. To reinforce his identity as the god of craftsmen, he stands on a wood pedestal shaped like a measuring rod – although it could just as easily represent the mound of creation or the hieroglyph for truth, such are his myriad associations.

While the patron deity of Memphis is not the best-known ancient Egyptian god – that accolade surely belongs to the sun god Ra or the Theban Amun – he is, perhaps, the most multi-faceted member of the pharaonic pantheon. Craftsman, creator, underworld power, royal protector and hearer of prayers; immanent in a holy tree, the all-hearing ear and accessible in a community shrine – thanks to the ingenuity of his priesthood and the desire of the Egyptian people for divine succor, Ptah cornered the market in every sphere of Egyptian religion. He even gave his name to the country itself: when the Greeks conquered Egypt, they were so impressed by the ‘temple of the spirit of Ptah (Hikuptah) at Memphis that they applied its moniker, suitably Graecisized, to the whole land – Aigyptos. Hence, in the last two letters of the word ‘Egypt’, the name of the god Ptah lives on, 5,000 years after his cult began.

The Dialogue of a Man and His Soul (@ 1759 B.C.)

John A. Wilson describes this text as “thoroughly un-Egyptian in spirit,” insofar as it abandons life and embraces death, gives up the customary funerary ceremony and psychology, and accords the individual the liberty to question the existing order. However, he acknowledges, the language of the text and its conception of the ba are purely Egyptian; the problem is that the text belongs to an atypical period of pessimism that is itself not characteristic of Egyptian culture or history.

[“A Dispute Over Suicide,” from Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James B. Pritchard, tr. John A. Wilson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950. Descriptive material in introduction from John A. Wilson, The Burden of Egypt, republished as The Culture of Ancient Egypt (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1956); Ahmed Okasha and Farouk Lotaief, “Egypt,” in Lee A. Headley, Suicide in Asia and the Near East (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1983), p. 335; and from Ewa Wasilewska].

I opened my mouth to my soul, that I might answer what it had said: “This is too much for me today, that my soul no (longer) talks with me. It is really too great to be exaggerated. It is like abandoning me. Let [not] my soul go away; it should wait for me because of. . . . There is no competent person who deserts on the day of misfortune. Behold, my soul wrongs me, (but) I do not listen to it, dragging myself toward death before I come to it and casting (myself) upon the fire to burn myself up. . . . May it be near to me on the day of misfortune and wait on that side. . . . My soul is stupid to (try to) win over one wretched over life and delay me from death before I come to it. Make the West pleasant for me! Is that (so) bad? Life is a circumscribed period: (even) the trees must fall. Trample down wrongs—(yet) my wretchedness endures. Let Thoth, who propitiates the gods, judge me. Let Khonsu, the scribe in truth, defend me. Let Re, who pilots the sun barque, hear my speech. Let Isdes. . .defend me. My wretchedness is heavy. . . . Pleasant would be the defense of a god for the secrets of my body.”

What my soul said to me: “Art thou not a man? Art thou. . .whilst thou livest? What is thy goal? Thou art concerned with [burial] like a possessor of wealth!”

I said: “I have not departed as long as these things are neglected. He who carries (men) off forcibly will take, without caring about thee, (like) any criminal saying: ‘I shall carry thee off, for thy (fate) is still death, (though) thy name may live.’ (But) yonder is a place for setting down, the guide of the heart; the West is home. . . . If my soul will listen to me, an in[noc‌]ent man, and its heart agrees with me, it will be fortunate. (Then) I shall make it reach the West like one who is in his pyramid, at whose burial a survivor has stood. I shall make a shelter [over] thy corpse, (so that) thou mayest scorn another soul as inert. I shall make a shelter—now it must not be (too) cool—(so that) thou mayest scorn another soul which is (too) hot. I shall drink at the watering place and shall. . ., (so that) thou mayest scorn another soul which is hungry. If thou delayest me from a death of this fashion, thou wilt not find a place where thou canst settle down in the West. (So) be [patient], my soul and my brother, until my heir has appeared, he who will make offerings and will stand at the grave on the day of burial, so that he may prepare the bed of the cemetery.”

My soul opened its mouth to me, that it might answer what I had said: “If thou art thinking of burial that is heart’s distress. It is a bringing of tears, making a man sad. It is taking a man out of his house, (so that) he is left on the hillside, (whence) thou shalt never go up above that thou mightiest see the suns. They who build in granite and who hew out chambers in a pyramid, good men in good work, as soon as the builders have become gods, their offering-stones are as bare, for lack of a survivor, as (those of) the weary ones, the dead on the dyke—the waters take hold of an end of him, and the sunlight as well, and the fish of the water-banks talk to them. Listen to me. Behold, it is good for men to listen. Pursue the happy day and forget care!

“The poor man plows his plot of ground and loads his harvest into a ship’s hold. He makes the journey by towing (the boat), (because) his feast day is approaching. When he sees the forthcoming of an evening of high water, he is vigilant in the ship when Re retires, (and so) comes out (safely), with his wife. (But) his children are lost on the lake, treacherous with crocodiles in the night. At last he sits down, when he can take part in speech, saying: ‘I am not weeping for that girl, (although) there is no coming forth from the West for her, for another (time) on earth. (But) I am concerned about her (unborn) children, broken in the egg, who saw the face of the crocodile-god before they had (even) lived!’

“The poor man asks for an afternoon meal, (but) his wife says to him: “It’s for supper!’ He goes out-of-doors to grumble for a while. If he comes back into the house and is like another man, his wife is (still) experienced in him: that he does not listen to her (but) grumbles, unresponsive to communications.” I opened my mouth to my soul, that I might answer what it had said: