Hi Bernard,



What a wonderful question!

While Eliade (the name to mention in this kind of a topic, I presume ) was right, as fas as ancient Egypt is concerned, when saying that traditional societies placed their known world at the center of everything, because from their perspective their known world is the realm where any recognisable order, as opposed to chaos, is maintained. And that from this it naturally follows that it must be the realm where the sacred and divine manifests itself, while foreign regions are outside the order established by the divine force itself. Actually he couldn't have been more right. This is exactly how the ancient Egyptians thought.

However, the sacred manifesting itself in Egypt, and Egypt only, didn't have the effect of the Egyptians having a direct link to the sacred by means of shamans, as in many other cultures, or all of them as Eliade claims, suggesting shamanism to be an universal phenomenon.
Stangely enough, shamanism seems to be completely absent in the ancient Egyptian culture.

There are no evidenced rites, where intoxication, trance or ecstacy would be the key factor in communicating with the divine. Actually, it doesn't seem to be included at all. While the Greeks may have given an impression of the contrary by translating Hm-nTr (servant of the god) as "prophet", this translation is directly linked to the later periods' oracles, where the priests were "translators" of the divine will. These "oracles", however, could mostly only answer by "yes" or "no" and the priests were not in an altered state of mind, nor did they directly communicate with the divine, but simply interpreted the divine will, which expressed itself with movement of the object in question (boat of procession etc.).

The concept of "another reality" was naturally present in the ancient Egyptian view of the universe. Other than Afterlife, accessible only by the deceased, the concept of "akh" (can be trabnslated as "radiant power") certainly is there. There are many indications that knowledge concerning this sphere was obtained by special training or initiation, but no evidence nor indication of this being ever done by rituals of shamanistic nature. However, the initiated speaker (most often the lector priest) was able to "actualize the realm" (Assmann's words, and I like them). And this was, apart from the sacred writing with glyphs, the main point in the priestly functions in the context of a burial and the deceased's access to afterlife (but that's another story).

Likewise with the AE magic. The "radiant power" which the divinities posessed was on the "human level" directly linked to speech and scared words (yes, hieroglyphs!!): the right spells would give the right result, and this no mater who the speaker was. Naturally, specialised spells (for serious healing etc.) were reserved for "doctors", but others, such as driving away the snakes, charms for love, protection etc. could be performed it seems by anybody who could read the magic words.
But again, the magicians or shamans are completely absent from this picture.

Of course, the very nature of the ancient Egyptian kingship could possibly be considered somewhat shamanistic (geez! What on earth is "somewhat shamanistic?). After all, the king was half divine himself due to being a Horus and the son of Ra, but while he was the link between his people and the divine, he didn't seem to have the direct ability to communicate with the divine realm, nor to interpret it. He was more of a mediator in the other direction: he made offerings and had stelae carved and temples built to pacify the divine, to keep Maat on earth.

So as you can see, Bernard, the typical shamanistic features are not there. I'd personally think this is very much due to the nature of the AE kingship. How could a magician or a shaman possibly have more abilities in the context of the divine realm, than the half divine king himself?


(Sorry, I am not a shaman in typing, had to edit many times )



Ritva



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2007 11:32AM by ritva.