Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt

Product Information

This list is primarily, but by no means exclusively, for beginners with little or no familiarity with ancient Egyptian mythology and religion. #1, #2, and #3 are introductory books on ancient Egyptian mythology and religion for adults, and #4 and #5 are introductions for kids. #7, #8, #9, and #10, however, go well beyond the basics and delve deeper into more specialized topics – ancient Egyptian theology, views on death and the afterlife, intellectual history, etc. As such, they’ll be a great delight for those at a more intermediate or advanced level, and/or those who want to jump right into those more specialized areas. No books on this list assume any prior knowledge of ancient Egypt, so even though some are more consciously designed to be introductions to the topic than others, you could theoretically start with any of them. As with Assmann’s The Mind of Egypt (#9 above), the scope and ambition of this book are extremely impressive. It discusses the many different things that death meant to the ancient Egyptians, from hopeless isolation to continued social connectivity to dismemberment to an ascent to the blissful Field of Reeds to cyclical rebirth. Funerary rites are also discussed at length and in great detail. And as with Assmann’s other books, the writing is clear, jargon-free, and should be perfectly comprehensible to the lay reader. Conman, Joanne (2003). "It's About Time: Ancient Egyptian Cosmology". Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur. 31. Meeks, Dimitri; Favard-Meeks, Christine (1996) [French edition 1993]. Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8248-8. There is no doubt that this mythology has it all, it has no shortage of fascinating stories and surprising related facts, such as beliefs about death and the soul. From the physiognomy of the gods, with bodies half human and half animal, to the mummies, the pyramids, their forms of expression, everything is truly worthy of study.

Women of Myth: From Deer Woman and Mami Wata to Amaterasu and Athena, Your Guide to the Amazing and Diverse Women from World Mythology by Jenny Williamson and Genn McMenemy The ancient Egyptians believed that some powerful gods and goddesses ruled over their daily lives in all seasons. The book takes you on a journey through ancient Egypt during the time of the pharaohs and the sphinxes. Foreign nations are associated with the hostile deserts in Egyptian ideology. Foreign people, likewise, are generally lumped in with the " nine bows", people who threaten pharaonic rule and the stability of maat, although peoples allied with or subject to Egypt may be viewed more positively. [60] For these reasons, events in Egyptian mythology rarely take place in foreign lands. While some stories pertain to the sky or the Duat, Egypt itself is usually the scene for the actions of the gods. Often, even the myths set in Egypt seem to take place on a plane of existence separate from that inhabited by living humans, although in other stories, humans and gods interact. In either case, the Egyptian gods are deeply tied to their home land. [58] Time [ edit ]

And there you have it! The 25 best mythology books! What are your favorite myths?

Allen, James P. (1988). Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts. Yale Egyptological Seminar. ISBN 0-912532-14-9. The Harvard University Press originally published this book in 1996, written by Jan Assmann and translated by Andrew Jenkins. Many Egyptian stories about the gods are characterized as having taken place in a primeval time when the gods were manifest on the earth and ruled over it. After this time, the Egyptians believed, authority on earth passed to human pharaohs. [62] This primeval era seems to predate the start of the sun's journey and the recurring patterns of the present world. At the other end of time is the end of the cycles and the dissolution of the world. Because these distant periods lend themselves to linear narrative better than the cycles of the present, John Baines sees them as the only periods in which true myths take place. [63] Yet, to some extent, the cyclical aspect of time was present in the mythic past as well. Egyptians saw even stories that were set in that time as being perpetually true. The myths were made real every time the events to which they were related occurred. These events were celebrated with rituals, which often evoked myths. [64] Ritual allowed time to periodically return to the mythic past and renew life in the universe. [65] Major myths [ edit ] Treasury of Egyptian Mythology: Classic Stories of Gods, Goddesses, Monsters, and Mortals by Donna Jo Napoli Mythology is defined by Merriam-Webster as an “allegorical narrative,” a “body of myths,” and “myths dealing with gods, demigods, and legendary heroes of a particular people.” When we think of mythology books for adults, we tend to just think of fantastical stories, epic poetry, and folktales, but most of these stories began their lives as religious narratives or mythologized history. The line between religion and mythology is quite thin. Myths helped create the basis for some religious rituals and practices, and help pass down cultural identity and religious teachings to the future generations of its culture.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day as translated by Raymond Faulkner and Ogden Goelet Jan Assmann’s The Search for God in Ancient Egypt is another one of the best introductions to ancient Egyptian mythology and religion on the market today.Several attempts have been made to eliminate her from records so that it appears that she does not exist. But, with Senenmut as her high priest, she needs Talibah’s help to reclaim her rightful place in history. The adventure is filled with riddles, old stories, and a surprising connection to Talibah’s and Adom’s mother’s mysterious death. Some myths may have been inspired by historical events. The unification of Egypt under the pharaohs, at the end of the Predynastic Period around 3100 BC, made the king the focus of Egyptian religion, and thus the ideology of kingship became an important part of mythology. [11] In the wake of unification, gods that were once local patron deities gained national importance, forming new relationships that linked the local deities into a unified national tradition. Geraldine Pinch suggests that early myths may have formed from these relationships. [12] Egyptian sources link the mythical strife between the gods Horus and Set with a conflict between the regions of Upper and Lower Egypt, which may have happened in the late Predynastic era or in the Early Dynastic Period. [13] [Note 1] Feucht, Erika (2001). "Birth". In Redford, Donald B. (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Vol.1. Oxford University Press. pp.192–193. ISBN 978-0-19-510234-5.

The nature of the sky and the location of the Duat are uncertain. Egyptian texts variously describe the nighttime sun as traveling beneath the earth and within the body of Nut. The Egyptologist James P. Allen believes that these explanations of the sun's movements are dissimilar but coexisting ideas. In Allen's view, Nut represents the visible surface of the waters of Nun, with the stars floating on this surface. The sun, therefore, sails across the water in a circle, each night passing beyond the horizon to reach the skies that arch beneath the inverted land of the Duat. [55] Leonard H. Lesko, however, believes that the Egyptians saw the sky as a solid canopy and described the sun as traveling through the Duat above the surface of the sky, from west to east, during the night. [56] Joanne Conman, modifying Lesko's model, argues that this solid sky is a moving, concave dome overarching a deeply convex earth. The sun and the stars move along with this dome, and their passage below the horizon is simply their movement over areas of the earth that the Egyptians could not see. These regions would then be the Duat. [57] As the title implies, this book allows readers to view ancient Egypt through the lens of ancient Egyptians. It spans almost all of predynastic to post-pharaonic Ancient Egyptian history. When we mention Egyptian mythology, we are referring to the historical period of Ancient Egypt, which goes from the Pre Dynasty to the Christian era. It spans some 3000 years, making it a period very rich in diversity of beliefs. Our books on Egyptian mythology will introduce you to its study for free. After these early times, most changes to mythology developed and adapted preexisting concepts rather than creating new ones, although there were exceptions. [14] Many scholars have suggested that the myth of the sun god withdrawing into the sky, leaving humans to fight among themselves, was inspired by the breakdown of royal authority and national unity at the end of the Old Kingdom ( c. 2686 BC– 2181 BC). [15] In the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC), minor myths developed around deities like Yam and Anat who had been adopted from Canaanite religion. In contrast, during the Greek and Roman eras (332 BC–641 AD), Greco-Roman culture had little influence on Egyptian mythology. [16] Definition and scope [ edit ]

How to Vote

Andrews, Carol A. R. (2001). "Amulets". In Redford, Donald B. (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Vol.1. Oxford University Press. pp.75–82. ISBN 978-0-19-510234-5. The book combines a gripping family story with a historical tale that enthralls and entices readers. Talibah and Adom follow their father to modern Egypt during a research assignment for him. As they explore an ancient Egyptian mystery, they learn about a lost pharaoh—a rare queen ruler.

So flexible were Egyptian myths that they could seemingly conflict with each other. Many descriptions of the creation of the world and the movements of the sun occur in Egyptian texts, some very different from each other. [32] The relationships between gods were fluid, so that, for instance, the goddess Hathor could be called the mother, wife, or daughter of the sun god Ra. [33] Separate deities could even be syncretized, or linked, as a single being. Thus the creator god Atum was combined with Ra to form Ra-Atum. [34] Greek, Mesopotamia, Egypt & Rome: Fascinating Insights, Mythology, Stories, History & Knowledge From The World’s Most Interesting Civilizations & Empires by History Brought Alive Dunand, Françoise; Zivie-Coche, Christiane (2004) [French edition 1991]. Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE. Translated by David Lorton. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8853-2. Assmann, Jan (2001) [German edition 1984]. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt. Translated by David Lorton. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3786-5. Over time, the Egyptians developed more abstract perspectives on the creation process. By the time of the Coffin Texts, they described the formation of the world as the realization of a concept first developed within the mind of the creator god. The force of heka, or magic, which links things in the divine realm and things in the physical world, is the power that links the creator's original concept with its physical realization. Heka itself can be personified as a god, but this intellectual process of creation is not associated with that god alone. An inscription from the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070–664 BC), whose text may be much older, describes the process in detail and attributes it to the god Ptah, whose close association with craftsmen makes him a suitable deity to give a physical form to the original creative vision. Hymns from the New Kingdom describe the god Amun, a mysterious power that lies behind even the other gods, as the ultimate source of this creative vision. [71]

Follow us

Baines, John (1996). "Myth and Literature". In Loprieno, Antonio (ed.). Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms. Cornell University Press. pp.361–377. ISBN 90-04-09925-5. Jan Assmann’s The Mind of Egypt takes up the ambitious task of presenting an intellectual history (or “history of ideas”) of ancient Egypt – that is, it describes the ideas through which the ancient Egyptians perceived their world, and how those ideas and perceptions changed over time. And it succeeds brilliantly. What else would you expect from the author of The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (#3 above)? Richard H. Wilkinson’s The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt is an introduction to ancient Egyptian mythology and religion that, as the title implies, has a particular focus on the remarkable gods and goddesses, which is what draws many people to learn about this topic in the first place. The Red Pyramid earned him the 2010 School Library Journal’s Best Book, 2011 Children’s Choice Book Awards: Fifth Grade to Sixth Grade Book of the Year, and the 2012 Indian Paintbrush Award.