Ritva Kurittu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Katherine,
>
> Greg wrote:
> > I do not understand your distinction between
> magic wands and Thoth using these wands to
> transfer divine power to the deceased king.
>
> You answered:
> For one, Thoth isn't 'using wands' - the staffs
> symbolically represent the Two Lands in a
> political way - the northern lands by the papyrus
> and red-crowned cobra, and the lotus staff with
> White crown cobra, the southern lands of Egypt.
> Hence my comment about Thoth as a 'divine vizier'
> conveying the symbols of the Two Lands to the
> deceased king as he rules from the afterlife.
>
> While I agree about the word "using" being
> incorrect in this context, I still have to agree
> with Greg. Thoth was the great magician par
> exellence!

---

That he may be, but that is not the function in this scene. Recall what Thoth is saying here:

'Receive for thyself life, O thou good god Horus, who appears in Thebes. The /Sma.s/ crown and the /mHw.s/crown are affixed upon thy brow, the Two Banks are united for thy portion by Ra, who says with his mouth. My Majesty writes it down in writing; moreover, thou art my son upon the throne of his father, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, who cannot be excelled.' (citation already given in prior message)

>I'd read this scene more as Thoth
> symbolically offering the use of magic to the
> deceased king. Because lt's face it, the deceased
> king does not rule anymore, not on the level of
> kings and viziers, but on a spiritual one.

As a god, Thoth can convey life breath to the deceased king - that is the nature of divinity, but not a magical act. So his status as a magician is not the issue here, IMO (Thoth as a 'magician' is a fairly late concept, BTW, known primarily from the Contendings of Seth and Horus, in which Thoth heals teh injured eye of Horus under his epithet of /wr.t hkAw/ "great of magic," which reflect his ability to cause "...any activity which seeks to obtain its goal by methods outside the simple laws of cause and effect," as Ritner put it (Ritner 1993: 69).

Kings are still kings, unhindered by the nature of being dead. They continue to rule in the afterlife, and their dominion is the Two Lands. It is their spirits which guide the living Horuses who succeed them (hello? Egyptian ancestor worship is a two way street, after all). So Thoth, as the divine vizier he is, is assigning the regalia of authority to Seti I in the afterlife so that he may take his place among the other deceased and deified kings. Thoth's words, above, say as much, and Seti I is still recognised as the King of Upper and Lower Egypt - even after death.

> I see this scene as identic to the one alluded to
> in the CT spell 313, where the new Horus receives
> his regalia to rule the kingdom on earth and the
> deceased Osiris is given his regalia by Thoth. Two
> different rules, two different regalia.

But the New Kingdom has a different concept of what deceased kings do: they don't simply become static deities in the afterlife, as may have been conceived in the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts. In the New Kingdom afterlife books, particularly after the Amarna period, deceased kings continue to represent, and to fight for, the Two Lands after death.

EXAMPLE: In the Book of Gates imagery on royal tomb walls, the king travelled not only through a wilderness of a non-temporal physical landscape, but was also subjected to the internal questioning and challenges from gods, guardians, and demons. The afterlife texts were concerned with judgment, punishment and overcoming the enemies of Re. It was during this phase of the journey the king was found to be either worthy or unworthy in the eyes of the divine gods to enter the next phase of existence, where he would be allowed to observe the great mysteries of the Solar-Osirian unity. But this battle against Re's enemies reoccurred nightly, and every night he had to prove himself worthy of sitting on the barque of Re. To fail in this battle was to be condemned to the /Htmy.t/, the "Place of Destuction", a place for the punishment of evil and a place of primeval darkness (Hornung 1994: 137; Darnell 1995: 555). Even the king could not escape this fate, if he failed.

This is a reflection of the rather pessimistic view of Egyptian religion after the Amarna period: no longer was a king presumed to be found worthy due to his station, he must continually prove his worth to the gods* (Griffis 2002:43; Hornung 1999: 62).

* This is how I expressed it in another publication:

The character of the king's journey in the Book of Gates was established immediately by the words of Re in his opening address to the Desert, the landscape of the journey’s beginning:

The Desert is bright, I give light with what is on me.
(O thou) who destroyest me, who art filled with the chosen ones
of the gods.
Breath be given you, among who I am.
Let there be rays for you, dwellers of the Region of Offerings.
My Glorious Eye is for you,
I have ordered their destruction, destruction is for all of them.
I have hidden you from those on earth,
you to whom the diadem is restored in the Desert.
(Piankoff and Rambova 1954a: 141)

From this, we see the new landscape of the afterlife: not a free-flowing river of a celestial Nile was envisioned, as seen in the Amduat; rather, the bleakness of the desert, where the enemies of Re were set for destruction, but the righteous dead and divine entourage could partake of the sun-god’s light. The text as written is read in reverse (Piankoff and Rambova 1954a: 141), informing us the “you” were those who already existed in the next world who were addressed – the recently deceased king was not yet considered part of this group. (Griffis 2002: 45-46)

Reference:

Darnell, J. C. 1995. The Enigmatic Netherworld Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity: Cryptographic Compositions in the Tombs of Tutankhamun, Ramesses VI, and Ramesses IX. (4 Vols.). Ph. D. Dissertation (Unpublished). Near Eastern Studies and Civilizations. University of Chicago: Chicago.

Griffis, K. 2002. Traversing the Far-Land: Post-Amarna through early Ramesside Royal Tombs as Sacred Landscapes in Ancient Egypt. M. A. Thesis (Egyptian Archaeology) (Unpublished). Institute of Archaeology. University College London: London.

Hornung, E. 1994. Black Holes View from Within: Hell in Ancient Egyptian Thought. Diogenes 165, 42/1: 133-156.

__________. 1999. The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. D. Lorton Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Piankoff, A. and N. Rambova. 1954a. The Tomb of Ramesses VI. Texts. Vol. I. Bollingen Series XL-1. Egyptian Religious Texts and Representations. New York: Bollingen/Pantheon Books.

Ritner, R. K. 1993. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization (SAOC) 54. T. A. Holland and R. M. Schoen. Chicago: Oriental Institute.

HTH.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom