Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Book

Ancient Egypt's mythology is intricate and multi-layered; and for that reason, it can be a challenge for the modern reader to understand how the gods and goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon, and their stories, interrelate. Lewis Spence's Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends can provide a helpful introduction to classical Egyptian mythology, though the alert reader should approach this book with a sense of its limitations.

Author Lewis Spence (1874-1955), a Scottish journalist and poet, was also a dedicated student of mythology, with a strong interest in the occult. He published Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends in 1915 - or, in other words, seven years before archaeologist Howard Carter turned the world of Egyptology upside down with his discovery of the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922. Accordingly, some readers may find some of Spence's premises and conclusions incomplete - and that's even before we consider the disheartening ease with which Spence uses terms like "barbarian" and "savage" to talk about civilizations that are different from his own.

Spence approaches Egyptian myth in terms of the then-relatively-new field of comparative world mythology. His debt to fellow Scot Sir James George Frazer's great pioneering work in that field, The Golden Bough (1880), is evident; at one point, Spence praises the manner in which Frazer "pertinently" examines various interpretations of the significance of the myth of Osiris. By contrast, he seems hostile to the ideas of E.A. Wallis Budge, the leading Egyptologist of his time, spending several pages of the book's first chapter seeking to refute Wallis Budge's claim that there is no fetishistic or totemic aspect to the Egyptian deities.

Anyone who has toured sites of Egyptian antiquity, such as the Philae temple complex in Upper Egypt, knows that the myth of Isis and Osiris is among the most important in the entire Egyptian pantheon. Briefly, the story is as follows: Osiris was murdered and dismembered by his brother Set, god of evil; Isis, wife of Osiris, recovered the scattered parts of Osiris' body and resurrected her husband long enough that the two could have a child, the hawk-headed god Horus; Horus fought with and defeated Set; and Osiris proceeded to the underworld, where he resides to this day as judge of the dead. Spence comments thoughtfully on the significance of this myth, writing that "We find the myths of the combat between Set and Horus evolving from a simple opposition of day and night into a combat between the two gods….The combat symbolized the moral idea of the victory of good over evil, and those of the dead who were justified were regarded as having overcome Set as Horus had done" (p. 100).

Spence also does well at setting forth the history of religious practice in pharaonic Egypt, providing examples of change and continuity in terms of how the Egyptians practiced their faith, as when he talks of social and religious changes that occurred at the beginning of what Egyptologists call the Late Period, around 700 B.C.:

Toward the end of the eighth century B.C. a great religious reaction set in. Hitherto the brilliant opening of the New Empire, particularly the time of Rameses II, had set a model for the pious of the Late period; now the Old Kingdom, its monuments, rites, and customs, its fervent piety and its proud conservatism, was become the model epoch for the entire nation. It was, however, less a faithful copy than a caricature of the Old Kingdom….All that was most strange and outré in the ancient religion was sought out and emulated. Old monuments and religious literature were studied; the language and orthography of long-past centuries were revived and adopted; and if much of this was incomprehensible to the bulk of the people, its very mystery but made it the more sacred. (p. 301)

Yet not all of the Egyptian stories included in this volume were myths meant to elucidate sacred truths of the Egyptian religion from pharaonic times; some were stories that were set down simply to entertain. These stories of magic and royal intrigue, which might remind some readers of the tales from the 1001 Nights, include the story of "The Prophecy of Dedi" from the Westcar papyrus in the Berlin Museum.

Like a number of the stories from The Arabian Nights, "The Prophecy of Dedi" makes a point of combining magic-oriented plot devices with some historical elements in order to enhance the story's verisimilitude; it is described as taking place in the time of Khufu and his son Khafra (or Cheops and his son Chephren), the 4th-dynasty pharaohs who built the two largest of the Pyramids of Giza back around 2500 B.C.

As the story has it, Dedi's reputed ability to restore life to the dead draws the attention of Khufu, who feels that such knowledge "would perhaps be of use to him in the construction of his pyramid" (p. 201). Dedi is summoned, and proves his magical abilities by bringing a decapitated duck back to life; into the bargain, he reassures the pharaoh Khufu, who is worried about the long-term prospects for his dynasty, by prophesying that "thy son shall reign, and thy son's son" (p. 202) - something that any Egyptian of that time could verify, simply by paying a visit to the three pyramids of Khufu and Khafra and Menkaure.

The expository passages of Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends can be heavy going; by contrast, when Spence lets go of his anxiety to demonstrate his scholarly bona fides, and simply tells the stories, the book is most successful.

Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends is helpfully illustrated with photographs of papyri, statuary, mummies (human and animal), pyramids, and temples, as well as some paintings by book illustrator Evelyn Paul that capture the lush and romantic quality of the myths.

Some of Spence's ideas definitely need to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt; later in his career, he became one of the first proponents of the idea that the Nazi regime in Germany had to have been generated by malevolent occult forces - as if the human capacity for evil had not already been made clear on many occasions before the Nazis came to power, and has not been abundantly demonstrated many times since the Nazi regime's collapse. Yet Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends still provides a rather helpful, if inevitably a rather dated, survey.

And Spence's work still seems to enjoy a degree of respect among at least some contemporary Egyptians. I encountered Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends at a gift shop in Luxor - not the temple complex in Upper Egypt, but rather the Egyptian-themed, pyramid-shaped gambling casino complex in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. The gift-shop staff, in an apparent nod toward authenticity, were all Egyptian; and when the lady at the checkout counter saw that I had skipped the plastic snow-globe pyramids and the "King Tut" T-shirts, and had instead selected the Dover Books edition of Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends, she nodded gravely, looked up at me, and said, "You chose well."