Egyptian Myth and Discourse Myth Gods and the Early Written and Iconographic Record

Egyptian Myth and Discourse: Myth, Gods, and the Early Written and Iconographic Record Author(s): John Baines Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 81-105 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/545669 . Accessed: 27/11/2013 11:01 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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EGYPTIAN MYTH AND DISCOURSE: MYTH, GODS, AND THE EARLY WRITTEN AND ICONOGRAPHIC RECORD* JOHN BAINES,

University of Oxford

I. CHARACTER AND HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM

FOR decades, a number of Egyptologists have seen the definition and status of myth as one of the most problematic aspects of Egyptian religion and texts. The essential difficulty with the concept of myth has been, on the one hand, the divergence between the ample attestation of many Egyptian deities and groupings of deities, and, on the other hand, the near absence of narratives about the gods that can easily be termed myths. Scholars have questioned the existence of myths in earlier periods and have been perplexed by the variability of mythical motifs. This attitude contrasts with those of students of many ancient cultures and most complex societies, in which myth is seen as a central repository of values, many myths are known in the literary record, and the problem of defining myth may be given a subordinate position. * Abbreviations of works cited frequently in this article are as follows: Conceptions: Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, trans. John Baines (Ithaca, New York, 1982) (revision of Der Eine und die Vielen: Altagyptische Gottesvorstellungen [Darmstadt, 1971]; French trans. Paul Couturiau [from the English], Jean-Paul Bertrand, ed., Les Dieux de l'Egypte: L'un et le multiple, Civilisation et Tradition [Monaco, 1986], with additional revisions); GOF: Gottinger Orientforschungen IV. Reihe: Agypten (Wiesbaden, 1973-); Lichtheim: Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature:A Book of Readings, 3 vols. (Berkeley, 1973-80); Mythe: Siegfried Schott, Mythe und Mythenbildung im alten Agypten, UGAA 14 (Leipzig, 1945); "Past": John Baines, "Ancient Egyptian Concepts and Uses of the Past: 3rd to 2nd Millennium B.C. Evidence," in Robert Layton, ed., Who Needs the Past?: Indigenous Values and Archaeology (London, 1989), pp. 131-49; Seth: Herman te Velde, Seth, God of Confusion, Probleme der Agyptologie 6 (Leiden, 1967); "Verborgenheit":Jan Assmann, "Die Verborgenheit des Mythos in Agypten," GM 25 (1977): 743; Verhaltnis: Eberhard Otto, Das Verhaltnis von Rite und Mythus im Agyptischen, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften,

[JNES 50 no. 2 (1991)] @by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-2968/91 / 5002-0001$1.00.

phil.-hist. Ki. 1958, no. 1 (Heidelberg, 1958); "Wirklichkeit":Friedrich Junge, "Wirklichkeitund Abbild: Zum innerigyptischen Synkretismus und zur Weltsicht der Hymnen des Neuen Reiches," in Gernot Wiessner, ed., Synkretismusforschung- Theorie und Praxis, Gottinger Orientforschungen:Grundlagenund Ergebnisse 1 (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 87-108; "Zeugung": Jan Assmann, "Die Zeugung des Sohnes: Bild, Spiel, Erzahlung and das Problem des agyptischen Mythos," in Jan Assmann et al., Funktionen und Leistungen des Mythos: Drei altorientalische Beispiele, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 48 (Freiburg, Switzerland and G6ttingen, 1982), pp. 13-61. This article is an initial discussion of the status of myth in Egyptian texts. I do not consider attestation from periods after the New Kingdom, which is uncontroversial. I hope later to present a study of Egyptian myths on the basis of the position presented here. For reasons of space, I omit non-German traditions of scholarship and restrict discussion of questions of definition. A preliminary version was given at the University of Chicago in March 1989. I am grateful for the invitation to attend, to Stephen Parker for organizing my visit, and to participants for many useful comments. That version was later presented to a seminar at the University of Michigan to whose members I am indebted for discussion. I should also like to thank Christopher Eyre, Erhart Graefe, Rolf Krauss, and Peter Machinist for comments on drafts, and Richard Parkinson for much help. Work was aided by a Humboldt-Stiftung fellowship at the University of Mtinster.

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This article offers a critique of the Egyptological approaches and suggests alternatives to them, focusing on the German tradition, which is the only one with a continuing discussion of the status of myth. Outside these discussions the problems of the presence and absence of myths, and of the relation between the written record and whatever myths there were in other contexts, have hardly been raised. The possibility that there were no narrative myths in some periods should be taken seriously because societies with few myths do exist,' but that might be rare in a complex state. It should also be asked whether myths are as ideologically significant as is often assumed. Early scholars, notably Heinrich Brugsch,2 tended to exploit the fragmentary evidence and assume that there had been numerous myths relating to the many deities; the task was to order the material, especially in regional terms, and to reconstruct the cults and assemble evidence for myths.3 The evidence they used is often scattered or consists only of allusions or evocations. Brugsch's principal successor was Hermann Kees, whose work culminated in Der Gdtterglaube im alten Agypten.4 This approach is appropriate for late materials because of the amount of information they preserve, often regionally organized; here it continues to be pursued.5 It assumes that available evidence is only a fraction of what there was both in quantity and in range of genres. Writers who have moved away from these approaches have attended more closely to the form and statements of the sources themselves, partly to the exclusion of their position in a wider context of religious conceptions and action. There has also been a change of temporal focus. Whereas earlier Egyptology tended to concentrate on more recent periods, especially for religion, later scholarship has turned increasingly to earlier times, with their sparser and more problematic evidence. The growing emphasis on sources contrasts with the rather absurd interpretation of Kurt Sethe, who suggested (with reserve) in Urgeschichte und iilteste Religion der Agypter6 that relations between gods could be mapped fairly directly onto events in order to model prehistory as far back as the fifth millennium B.C. Such a construct could be proposed only if contexts and mechanisms of spoken and written transmission were largely ignored. Because of hypotheses such as this one, it is understandablethat these scholars' breadth of approach should have been ignored or discredited.7 Sethe and Kees also showed a certain rationalistic contempt for religion and reduction of its implications to politics and factional struggle. The reaction against these aspects after World War II was probably reinforced by antipathy to this reductionism and to the nationalism of these academically illustrious scholars. I See, for example, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Zande Trickster, Oxford Library of African Literature (Oxford, 1967), pp. 31-32; general context pp. 11-13. 2 Heinrich Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter (Leipzig, 1885-88, 1891). 3 For the nineteenth-century controversy on Egyptian gods, which is closely related to that mentioned here, see Conceptions, pp. 17-26. 4 Hermann Kees, MVAG 45 (1941; 2d ed., Berlin [East], 1956); historical outline: preface, pp. v-vii, introduction, pp. 1-4, with acknowledgement of Brugsch. 5 For example, Adolphe Gutbub, Textes fondamentaux de la thdologie de Kom Ombo, 2 vols.,

Bibliothbque d'Etude 47 (Cairo, 1973). Jean Yoyotte has contributed many studies in this area. 6 Kurt Sethe, Abhandlungen fdir die Kunde des Morgenlandes 18:4 (Leipzig, 1930). 7 See positive assessment of Sethe's work in, for example, Jacques Vandier, La Religion egyptienne, 2d ed., Les Anciennes Religions Orientales 1 (Paris, 1949), p. 31. J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Conflict of Horus and Seth from Egyptian and Classical Sources: A Study in Ancient Mythology, Liverpool Monographs in Archaeology and Oriental Studies (Liverpool, 1960), basically followed Sethe's reconstruction; see Hans Bonnet's comments in his review of Griffiths in OLZ 57 (1962): 472-74; Seth, pp. 74-80.

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The first author of the post-Kees generation to discuss the problem of Egyptian myth was Siegfried Schott.8 The point of departurefor his approach was the vast range of brief statements, particularly in the Pyramid Texts, that allude to events in the world of the gods. Studies of Giinther Rudnitzky9 and Eberhard Otto'o built on Schott's book on myth, and on his study of the hypothetical function of the Pyramid Texts in royal mortuary rituals,1"to elaborate a theory of the close connection between Egyptian myth and ritual. This theory arose almost independently of the wider discussion-now largely ignored-of the relation between myth and ritual and the putative origin of myth in ritual.12

Schott's basic conclusion was that the Egyptians had no "true" myths before Early Dynastic times and that traces of their formation could be seen in the Pyramid Texts. His position has seldom been seriously disputed, as against being ignored or built upon."3He considered that there was a time when "stories"or "folktales" about the gods existed on the one hand-he called narratives Mdrchen and the early Egyptians' mental universe mdrchenhaft14--and rituals were performed on the other, without there being any essential connection between the two." There were thus "myth-free (mythenfrei)" rituals16and myths perhaps developing separately from them. In that period, rituals were believed to be innately efficacious, whereas by the Old Kingdom this conviction withered, so that the rites then came to be associated with myths, whose authority resacralized them and rendered them effective once more." Because ritual thus had priority over myth, myths might be either created or distorted in the process of using them in rituals. Many of the mythical elements encountered in ritual texts can be reduced to just a few motifs, particularly the restitution of the healed eye of Horus. If these important ritual texts were representative of the range that existed, or of oral traditions and religious practices, there could hardly have been a coherent body of myth behind this jumble. The fullest and most sophisticated study in this area, by Jan Assmann,18 takes the argument about myths, rather than the one about rituals, a stage further and proposes 8 Siegfried Schott, "Spuren der Mythenbildung," ZA'S 78 (1942): 1-27; Mythe-dedicated to Kees. Schott reported (p. vii) on difficulties Heinrich Schaifer had experienced in assembling myths for a proposed collection of Near Eastern texts. 9 Giinter Rudnitzky, Die Aussage iiber "das Auge des Horus": Eine altdgyptische Art geistiger Ausserung nach dem Zeugnis des Alten Reiches, Analecta Aegyptiaca 5 (Copenhagen, 1956). 10 Verhiiltnis. 11Herbert Ricke, Bemerkungen zur aigyptischen Baukunst des Alten Reiches, vol. 2, with Siegfried Schott, Bemerkungen zum iigyptischen Pyramidenkult, BABA 5 (Cairo, 1950); cogent critique, often ignored: Hans Bonnet, "Agyptische Baukunst und Pyramidenkult," JNES 12 (1953): 257-73. 12See, for example, Siegfried Morenz, Agyptische Religion (Stuttgart, 1960), pp. 85-88, who stated that in Egypt evidence for early relations between myth and ritual was lacking. Aspects of his approach, which distinguishes between "genuine (eigentlich)" religion and "primitive"magic, are problematic. For a survey of the "myth-ritual" question,

see Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. Peter Bing (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 29-34. 13Schott's exposition is confusing, in organization rather than in style, and has consequently been rather little used. His clearest formulation is the summary "Die alteren G6ttermythen," in Literatur, Handbuch der Orientalistik 1, 1:2, 2d ed. (Leiden, 1970), pp. 90-98. 14See, for example, Mythe, pp. 88-90. 15Essential exposition Mythe, chap. 4, pp. 83-109. 16See especially Otto, Verhiiltnis,p. 9; idem, "An Ancient Egyptian Hunting Ritual," JNES 9 (1950): 164-77; see also "Verborgenheit,"pp. 15-16. Burkert cites Otto in Homo Necans and also assumes a priority of ritual over myth. While this must be true of the evolution of mankind, it does not mean that this priority need be posited for the rituals of any accessible human culture. 17Some points derive from extensions of the theory, notably by Otto. 18"Verborgenheit."

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that there were no narrative myths until perhaps the Middle Kingdom, or more certainly the New Kingdom (see sec. II, pp. 85-92 below). Assmann returned to this theme in a discussion of the motif of the divine child centered on scene cycles of the divine descent of the king and referring to sources ranging as far as the Greek Alexander Romance.19 In this article, which cannot be easily reconciled with the earlier one, Assmann concludes that the irreducible core in a myth is not its "narrativity" so much as its "iconicity."20 This shift allows him to integrate his notion of a Konstellation (see sec. II, p. 86 below) with that of myth, but it strays to the opposite extreme to his first article in virtually eliminating transitivity or narrativity. Assmann's "iconic" analogy is problematic because, as he notes, there is little preserved representation of myth in pictorial compositions. The term iconic is a metaphor for the tableau-like presentation of religious conceptions, especially of solar beliefs,21 rather than a description of the scene cycles or of myths. After Assmann's first article, Friedrich Junge22 published a synthesis of Egyptian "syncretism" and its position in religious beliefs. This usefully integrates relevant approaches. Junge brings together strands of scholarship which have tended to interpret the character of evidence for Egyptian myths in different ways: as exhibiting unusual features of the myths or of the structure of the pantheon. In his analysis, it exhibits both. Emma Brunner-Traut's entry "Mythos" in the Lexikon der Agyptologie23 builds partly on Assmann's first article and accepts his closer circumscription of myth. She sees difficulties with his rejection of mythical content from the Pyramid Texts (see sec. III, pp. 93-95 below) and remarks that so few texts are preserved from the Old Kingdom that the absence of mythical narratives should not cause surprise. By implication, either there could have been such narratives but they have not survived-as is largely true of later periods-or narratives of myths were restricted to the oral domain and so have disappeared; myths could then still have existed in early times. There has been no outside evaluation of the discussion initiated by Schott.24Although most scholars ignore these writings and continue to assume that the Egyptians had myths in all periods25 and that the record for them poses no special problem, the issues raised are important. Among questions that arise are the position of myth in the central Egyptian cult of the gods and in beliefs about the underworld and the next world; relations between the various contexts of use of mythical materials; the media in which mythical materials were or were not recorded; and, more generally, the use of written 19"Zeugung." 20 Ibid., pp. 38-42. 21 Assmann has discussed textual and interpretive aspects of these repeatedly, esp. Re und Amun: Die Krise des polytheistischen Weltbilds im Agypten der 18.-20. Dynastie, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 51 (Freiburg, Switzerland and G6ttingen, 1983); brief exposition: idem, "Die 'Haresie' des Echnaton: Aspekte der Amarna-Religion," Saeculum 32 (1972): 111-16. For pictorial forms, known primarily from coffins and vignettes to the Book of the Dead, see Erik Hornung, "Die Tragweite der Bilder," EranosJahrbuch 48 (1981): 183-237. 22"Wirklichkeit." 23 LA, vol. 4, cols. 277-86. 24 Heike Sternberg,Mythische Motive und Mythen-

bildung in den iigyptischen Tempeln und Papyri der griechisch-r6mischen Zeit, GOF 14 (Wiesbaden, 1985), pp. 14-20, summarizes the positions of Schott and Assmann usefully but does not go beyond them. She announces another relevant work entitled (p. 20, n. 2): "Das Verhaltnis von Magie und Religion im alten Agypten. Untersuchungen anhand der sog. magischen Texten, insb. des NR und der SpZt (Teilthema: Mythische Motive in den magischen Texten. Zur Verkniipfung von agyptischer Religion und Magie), GOF." 25 For example, Rudolf Anthes, "Mythology in Ancient Egypt," in Samuel Noah Kramer, ed., Mythologies of the Ancient World (Chicago, 1961), pp. 15-92, drawing together the conclusions of numerous articles of the 1950s.

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records.26One important reason why sources constrain the way in which the problem presents itself may be that they in turn are constrained by formal restrictions and by their position in written tradition.27 The analysis of myth stretches what can be achieved with available sources and brings out problems of the ancient deposition of evidence. Before addressing some of these issues, I would like to review Assmann's and Junge's views.

II. DISCUSSIONS ASSMANN, "DIE VERBORGENHEITDES MYTHOS":THE LATERFORMATIONOF MYTH

Assmann's views on the scarcity of myth are stated more strongly in his earlier article than in his later study,28 but he hardly indicates in the latter how far his views have shifted. It is convenient to base a discussion on his first, more sharply formulated exposition (cited in this section by simple page number). Assmann does not define myth formally, but he understands a myth as a tale about the divine world that has "true" narrative qualities, such as a beginning, middle, and end.29 He shows that pre-New Kingdom mortuary literature is non-narrative, so that this corpus-the principal body of available texts-cannot be used directly to substantiate the existence of myths in early periods. Events in the world of the gods that are mentioned typically in the Pyramid Texts have been very variously interpreted, but they do not form narratives and hence do not qualify as myths. To call them allusions to myths is to weaken the implications of their presence in the texts, in which they enact, rather than evoke, an identification between a ritual action and a divine occurrence;30 Schott therefore called them "citations," a usage that begs they are "performative.""31 some questions by ascribing to the myth an existence separate from its "citation," while perhaps not suggesting strongly enough the force of the myth's presence in a ritual. Assmann denies mythical character to a category of Pyramid Texts which Schott termed "hymns with a name formula (Hymnen mit der Namensformel)" (p. 14). Similarly, the Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus,32much discussed for possible mythical associations, is not a narrative of a myth, but a ritual (of uncertain identification) that draws heavily on events in the world of the gods (pp. 15-21). Assmann denies "mythical" character to narrative fragments in Middle Kingdom texts, of which the most significant is the Horus and Seth episode in a papyrus from Illahun; he suggests that this is part of a magical spell rather than a separate narrative (see sec. III, pp. 85-86, 99 below).33 It 26 Cf. "Past." 27 Brunner-Traut

(n. 23 above) sees the issue in

this way. 28"Zeugung." 29 Pp. 20-21. The point is expounded more fully, but not very clearly, in "Zeugung," pp. 30-31 with p. 54, nn. 85-86; pp. 56-67, n. 121. 30 A conclusion of Schott that is reiterated by Assmann, for example, pp. 8-9 with nn. 2, 5; pp. 1820, esp. p. 20, n. 28. 31 Assmann has used this term in a related sense

(e.g., Re und Amun, pp. 50-51), but it is absent from this article. 32 Kurt Sethe, Dramatische Texte zu altiigyptischen Mysterienspielen, UGAA 10 (Leipzig, 1928), pp. 83-264. 33 P. 33 with n. 52. Text: F. Ll. Griffith, The Petrie Papyri: Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob (Principally of the Middle Kingdom) (London, 1898), pl. 3, no. VI.12, p. 4; see also Seth, p. 38 with n. 6.

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would follow that the earliest securely attested mythical narratives were of New Kingdom date, most of them being narrowly literary or embedded in magical texts.34 Because no early mythical narrative is preserved, Assmann gives priority to what he terms Konstellationen of deities--relatively fixed groupings of them and relations among them;35this concept is central to his thinking about the pantheon. He sees the divine and human or "real"worlds as being so close to each other in early periods as to preclude people's conceptions of deities from being sufficiently detached for the formulation of myths (p. 14). This view raises questions about the shape and configuration of a pantheon that has no mythical organization. Its apparent implication that myth is in some way not serious, or less serious than a Konstellation, seems to involve assuming that narrative myths of the type that is at issue cannot have a fundamental significance (sec. III, pp. 99-100 below). Although the centrality of myth may indeed have been overemphasized, it would be questionable to generalize this view to the rest of Egyptian society, or more broadly to myths as a whole. It also seems to imply-perhaps unintentionally-that myths can be used for only one purpose in any period; there is no reason why this should be so. Assmann's separation of the divine and "real"worlds is problematic because it could suggest that the world of the gods is not real. For the actors that world is real,36even if its status may be less straightforward than that of the human world. Assmann subsequently distinguishes between the "real"world,37 which includes such sacred activities as temple and mortuary cults, and the "everyday"world (Alltagswelt), in which magical practices take place in an extra-temple setting. Yet although there is a distinction between temple or mortuary cult and other religious practices, this need not be one between the "real" and the "everyday." Many usages of magic occur in less tightly ordered contexts, but in relation to magic and causality-as against sanctity and decorum-the Egyptians do not seem to have distinguished sharply among contexts, and they legitimized magic as something the creator had given to the created world in general.38Magic was a distinct force that could also be personified as a major deity or creator,39 but it was integral to the cosmos. The "real" world which Assmann proposes is the elite Egyptian society and cosmos, excluding anything outside official religious practices and beliefs and those who might have access to them. One could distinguish between narrowly "instrumental"practices and ones in which magic or religion was involved, but this distinction would cut across analytical notions of the "real" and the "everyday." In addition, the instrumental or 34 This applies even to the Destruction of Mankind, which is preserved in royal tombs: see Hornung et al., Der iigyptische Mythos von der Himmelskuh: Eine Atiologie des Unvollkommenen, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 46 (Freiburg, Switzerland and G6ttingen); Lichtheim, vol. 2, pp. 197-99 (part only); Nadine Guilhou, La Vieillesse des dieux, Institut d'Egyptologie Universit6 Paul-Valery (Montpellier, 1989). Scholars have reconstructed the skeletons of numerous mythical narratives from such sources. 35P. 14 with refs.; "Wirklichkeit,"passim. 36 See pp. 10-13, where Assmann argues in favor of a perspective which is not that of the actors; but

see p. 18, n. 24 where he accepts the reality of the world of the gods. 37Junge, "Wirklichkeit,"p. 89, applies Assmann's terms more broadly, and I think more usefully, saying that the "real" world is the "entire factual (tatsiichlich) environment" of a person, the "experiential horizon of the religious subject" in nature and society. This definition could be too broad because it is hard to see what a "fact" would be here. 38 See Hornung, Conceptions, pp. 207-11. 39 Herman te Velde, "The God Heka in Egyptian Theology," JEOL 21 (1970): 175-86.

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obvious is itself culturally constructed and circumscribed.40 Except for its ignoring of magic, Assmann's definition of the "real" world might have been acceptable to the Egyptian inner elite, but a broader measure is needed. These notions may also be largely dispensable. Although there is a significant development in the New Kingdom and later attestation of myths in magical texts, I see no easy way to connect this with changes in the status of the "real," the "everyday," and their sanctity and relations. Further, the apparent predominance of groupings of deities in earlier times may not be as directly related to a strong presence of the "reality" of the gods on earth as Assmann proposes. These groupings continued to exist later, in periods from which myths are more certainly attested, and the groupings are in many ways abstract in character. Assmann, like Morenz before him,41uses a model of secularization, into which this conception of the "real" and the "everyday" is integrated. The model is problematic, and other writers, including myself, have suggested an almost opposite pattern of development. The difference in interpretation here lies partly in using definitions of religion that devalue magic42and partly in views of such central social phenomena as kingship, where I would see complex conceptions from an early date.43If by secularization were meant pluralization or the partial separation of social and power relations from religious life, agreement might be possible. Even then, however, the diversity of social and ideological foci in early periods may have been underestimated. For later periods, especially the New Kingdom, Assmann cites magical spells and calendars of lucky and unlucky days as being rich in narrative elements about the gods.44 He concedes to these a more strongly mythical character, terming them "mythical statements (or 'realizations of myths': mythische Aussagen)," rather than myths. A feature which demonstrates that some examples are not simply narratives of myths is first-person form, which occurs in two texts incorporated in magical spells.45Myths are almost universally narrated in the third person, as Schott implied when he termed them "what people narrate about the gods."46 Epics often include first-person speeches by deities but within a third-person framework. First-person form is characteristic of non-narrative utterances of deities-aretalogies47-or of complex works of literature.48 The first-person form in the magical spells may lie between aretalogy and literature: it adds to the weight of the deity's statement and assimilates the narrative to literary types. 40 See Clifford Geertz, "Common Sense as a Cultural System," in idem, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York, 1983), pp. 79-93. 41 Morenz, Agyptische Religion, pp. 6-15; idem, "Die Heraufkunft des transzendentenGottes in Agypten," reprinted in idem, Religion und Geschichte des alten Agypten: Gesammelte Aufsditze, ed. Elke Blumenthal et al. (Weimar, Cologne, and Vienna, 1975), pp. 77-119. 42 See Morenz, Agyptische Religion, pp. 85-87. 43 For these points, see my articles "Interpretations of Religion: Logic, Discourse, Rationality," GM 76 (1984): 47-50; "Practical Religion and Piety," JEA 73 (1987): 80-83; and "The Origins of Kingship in Egypt," in David O'Connor and David P. Silver-

man, eds., Ancient Egyptian Kingship: New Investigations (in press). 44 Emma Brunner-Traut, Gelebte Mythen: Beitrdge zum altiigyptischen Mythos (Darmstadt, 1981), pp. 18-33; idem, "Tagewahlerei," LA, vol. 6, cols. 153-56. 45 J. F. Borghouts, Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts, NISABA: Religious Texts in Translation Series 9 (Leiden, 1978), nos. 90-91, both Late Period. 46 In Literatur, Handbuch der Orientalistik 1,1:2 (Leiden, 1970), p. 90; cited by Assmann, p. 13. 47 See Assmann, "Aretalogien," LA, vol. 1, cols. 425-34. 48 See my articles, "Interpreting Sinuhe," JEA 68 (1982): 35; "Interpreting the Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor," JEA 76 (1990): 69-70.

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Among other texts that constitute "mythical statements," Assmann cites the stories about the gods, notably the late New Kingdom Horus and Seth, which he characterizes as entertainment literature; for some purposes he also includes the narratives in magical texts. There is an inconsistency here. Assmann grants the status of mythical statement to narratives in New Kingdom magical spells but denies that status to the Middle Kingdom Horus and Seth example because it may come from a spell. The only way that I can see to save this interpretation would be to assume that a single example did not provide the "critical mass" necessary to posit the existence of mythical narratives or statements in the Middle Kingdom (sec. III, p. 99 below). Assmann then presents a model of the relation between myth and "mythical statement." His central category of mythical statements consists of the texts which narrate myths or episodes of myths. Although he states that the essence of myth is narrative structure, the myth itself is not identical with any one narrative of its episodes or of a selection of them. Mythical statements may stand in various relations to (presumably narrative) myths. Assmann proposes three relations, which may be characterized as (i) instrumental or analogical (handlungsbezogen); (ii) argumentative or etiological (wissensbezogen); and (iii) literary or noninstrumental (situationsabstrakt). These types correspond to the use of mythical material in such contexts as (i) magical texts; (ii) encyclopedic or discursive material such as the "Memphite Theology";49 and (iii) literary narratives such as Horus and Seth.so These types and sources correspond one-toone in the model on his p. 37. Assmann seems to assume that these functional relations operate transformations on the "myth"and thus produce the "mythical statement"-the text or text passage. Thus, the myth is in some respects an analytical abstraction. It is a fixed entity to which the different occurrences relate, but it is not available for direct investigation. This status may be one the myth must assume in modern study, but it is unlikely to be that conceived by the actors, and it is necessary to insist on the reality of myths for them. These are detailed problems in Assmann's model. It reifies the relation between myth and mythical statement into a level or process of its own rather than a mode of realization. Such an intervening level can be validly supplied if there is a strong transformation between myth and mythical statement. This may happen with a magical formula, where the narrative's structure is influenced by what the spell is designed to achieve or by its formal properties. The model, however, reifies not just this relation but also the structure of the myth. There is no clear reason for assuming that this structure should be fixed. In many cultures different versions of myths vary widely, either in detail or in basic features of their narratives. The relationship between mythical statement and myth is thus one between two variables, not between a fixed entity and a variable one. In addition, a realization or mythical statement may affect the underlying myth: their relationship can be reciprocal. Some features may prove resistant to transformation. Two magical spells that use the sojourn of the infant Horus in the marshes as part of recipes against snakebite state that 49 Hermann Junker, Die politische Lehre von Memphis, Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Ki. 1941:6 (Berlin, 1941), pl. 1; trans., Lichtheim, vol. 1, pp. 51-55.

50 Alan H. Gardiner, Late-Egyptian Stories, Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca 1 (Brussels, 1932), pp. 37-60; trans., for example, Lichtheim, vol. 2, pp. 214-23.

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Isis was coming from the "weaving shop.""' Although this detail, which J. F. Borghouts suggests alludes to the spinning of the shroud of Osiris, does not seem to be germane to the spells, it is retained as coloring. In Assmann's terms, part of a mythical statement has adhered to the myth and appears, without a specific function, in another mythical statement. The main difficulty with Assmann's three-level model is that it can imply almost the opposite of what he proposes. His position is that myths may not have existed before appropriate mythical statements are attested. Yet his argument otherwise suggests that the absence of mythical statements would say little about the existence or nonexistence of underlying myths. If so, there could have been myths in periods from which no narrative evidence for them is preserved. He concedes this point at first (p. 9), but does not return to it. The essential supporting arguments for the later stages of his exposition are two: (1) the existence of myths implies an ontological distance between the divine and "real" words (p. 23), and yet their inextricable involvement with each other, as shown in early rituals, is incompatible with such a distance; and (2) the detaching of divine and "real" involves a disenchantment and the creation of a temporal frame between them. Assmann dates both of these assumed shifts to the First Intermediate Period and later.52 If the posited resacralization of ritual through association with the world of the gods is added to this picture, three stages would have led to the formulation of myths. In the first stage, there were "myth-free" rituals that were efficacious without divine involvement. The position and status of the gods and any possible myths would be a separate question for this stage. In the second stage, rituals acquired divine involvement, but from a pantheon that was so strongly immanent and, it seems, so pliable in evocation, that myths were not created or invoked; instead, smaller groupings of deities and divine events sacralized rituals. Assmann terms this sacralization a "sacramental exegesis (sakramentale Ausdeutung)" (pp. 15-25). Here his analyses raise no problems and the term "sacramental" is useful and revealing. He does, however, assume that a "mythical presence"would be a contradiction in terms (p. 28, n. 28), and this seems to imply that myths could not be incorporated into rituals, unless an extensive narrative were present." If the parallel of the Passion story and its role in the Mass is used, both the Last Supper and the Crucifixion and Body of Christ contribute to the "sacramental exegesis" of the consecrated bread and wine, but there are also narratives of the Passion in other contexts (including ones that may be read out at another point in the same performance, perhaps fusing two types of liturgy).54 For the outsider, the Gospel story is a myth, and its mythical status and religious centrality will be strengthened rather than weakened by its mobilization in crucial rituals. There are evident differences between the two cultural contexts, but these need not suggest that the use of fundamental narrative events in 51 Borghouts, Magical Texts, pp. 25 (no. 34), 59 (no. 90), with p. 103, n. 91. 52 Esp. pp. 39-43. By implication, there would be little point in looking for myths in a period in which these preconditions were lacking. Assmann suggests, however (p. 6, n. 6), that an effort would be worthwhile.

53 Assmann formulates (pp. 20-21) conditions for speaking of a myth being invoked in a ritual as (1) "narrative coherence" and (2) a location in time and place that would turn a ritual repetition into a mythical evocation. 54 Whether this is a correct historical reading of the origin of the Mass is not relevant here.

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either should not be termed mythical. Neither an Egyptian ritual nor the consecration of the bread and wine contains an extended narrative of a myth, but the treatment of the divine world in this context is not revealing for the question of the presence or absence of myths in the wider religion and culture. In the third posited stage, divine and "real"worlds moved apart and myths came to sanction some ritual actions, notably in magic, while also serving other functions in other types of text. This usage was not "sacramental" and applied to more "secular" affairs. There is solid evidence for the third stage, and, if this were the sole point at issue, it would remain only to discuss to which period such a description should apply. The hypothetical first two stages, however, are based on some extent on arguments from silence. If they are not accepted, a new hypothesis about the early status and presence or absence of myth must be formulated; in part, this could apply the third stage to a period earlier than that for which it was envisaged (sec. II, p. 93 below). The thrust of Assmann's argument is to demonstrate how the formation of myths and their integration into religious and non-religious life can be brought further down in the historical period, beyond Schott's dating to the Early Dynastic Period or Otto's to that time and earlier."5His recognition of this continuing potential for the emergence of myths is valuable: myths could have originated or developed and varied throughout historical times.56 Such development might be blocked if there were a canon of texts encapsulating the truths of a culture or body of belief, like the sacred books of world religions; even there, myths develop and change around a relatively fixed core. Alternatively, a small-scale and short-lived society's myths might focus around episodes of origin which would lose their meaning if new ones appeared that were sited closer to the present. Egypt is not like either of these cases, and Egyptian sources distinguish between myths about the gods and "historical" traditions (which could also be termed myths) about human beings; myths that form a historical charter might merge these two categories rather more. These points do not qualify Assmann's contention about the evolution of myth in later times, but they may suggest a range of possible forms of myth." Conversely, as Assmann initially accepts, the continual evolution of myths does not imply that none could have an early origin. There is evidence against Assmann's view that the First Intermediate Period created a disenchantment which allowed myths to appear. He cites as support for his position Ulrich Luft's statement that only the Instruction of Ptahhotpe provides an Old Kingdom allusion to the notion of the rule of the gods on earth.58Assmann dates that text to 55 Verhiiltnis. Assmann says (p. 9, without references) that for most Egyptologists it is unthinkable that myths originated in the historical period. The approach of Sethe and Kees could tend to exclude late formation, but, beyond an assumption (which he accepts) that myths do not treat the immediate present, it is not clear what he has in mind, and it would be hard to find such views in other fields. 56 Here Sternberg, Mythische Motive, is useful. See also Wolfgang Schenkel, Kultmythos und Martyrerlegende: Zur Kontinuitait des digyptischen Denkens, GOF 5 (Wiesbaden, 1977).

57 The presentation of the origins of society in king lists, with their antecedent listing of dynasties of gods, is relevant here. See Donald B. Redford, Pharaonic King-lists, Annals and Day-books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History, SSEA Publication 4 (Mississauga, Ontario, 1986). For a Mesopotamian parallel, see Piotr Michalowski, "History as Charter: The Sumerian King List Revisited," JA OS 103 (1983): 237-48. 58 P. 29, n. 43, citing "'Seit der Zeit Gottes'," Studia Aegyptiaca 2 (Budapest, 1977): 47-78.

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the Middle Kingdom59and thus would eliminate all such evidence. Although the dating is plausible, the conclusion is invalid because formulas mentioning "antiquity," closely related to that evoking the rule of the gods, are attested from the Fourth Dynasty, among the oldest continuous texts.60 The Egyptians may thus always have had a conception of an ideal, probably "mythical"antiquity, from which the imperfect present world was temporally removed. It cannot be proved that this conception included the rule of the gods on earth, and hence a mediation between divine and human as well as descent from one to the other, but there is no good reason for excluding this possibility.61 On general grounds, it is preferable to credit early Egyptians with a more complex and nuanced view of the cosmos than Assmann and others would allow because their position implies a lasting blindness to the realities of existence which is hard to parallel in other cultures. It suggests that fundamental transformations in cosmology took place during later periods when display did not change so markedly. Political struggle articulated in terms of conflict between gods occurred as early as the Second Dynasty.62 This use of the divine world in human affairs is unlikely to have manifested unreflectingly an inseparability of the two, as Assmann posits when he assumes a lack of "ontological separation." Rather, it may show an awareness of interpretive possibilities-in the sense that people relate human events meaningfully and constructively to divine ones-and of propaganda. A low-level argument for the view that there was no one period when disenchantment set in is that the gods do not simply live on earth.63In all accessible periods, they were worshiped in cult images within shrines in temples, but they were not thought to be identical with those images. The First Dynasty comb of King Wadj,64on which Horus is depicted as a falcon in a bark in the sky while a second falcon surmounts the royal serekh in the field beneath, shows the distant realm of the god while he is also manifest on earth (in this case as the king, who is additional to his cult images). Since the gods were not only or principally on earth, people might not apprehend them in any straightforward way. One of the main purposes of the cult was to invoke their presence on earth in their statues. The connection between myth and disenchantment should be questioned in any case. This notion seems to be derived from societies such as ancient Greece, in which defining myths, for example in Homer, were distant from the present social realities of Classical times and were the objects of some skepticism and open discussion.65 Even there, however, the myths had serious significance and were discussed and mobilized for the 59 Cf. Assmann, "Schrift, Tod and Identitift: Das Grab als Vorschule der Literatur im alten Agypten," in Aleida Assmann et al., eds., Schrift und Geddiichtnis: Beitriige zur Archdologie der literarischen Kommunikation (Munich, 1983), pp. 64-93. 60 Hans Goedicke, Re-used Blocks from the Pyramid of Amenemhet I at Lisht, Publications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition 20 (New York, 1971), nos. 6, 60, pp. 20-23, 105-6; see also "Past," p. 135. 61 This qualifies the position of "Past," p. 134. Schott, "Die alteren G6ttermythen," p. 93, n. 2, suggested that a dynasty of gods could have been

included on the Palermo Stone. 62 See "The Origins of Kingship in Egypt." 63 Conceptions, pp. 227-30. 64 Cairo Museum, JE 47176; R. Engelbach, "An Alleged Winged Sun-disk of the First Dynasty," ZAS 65 (1930): 115-16; excellent photograph in Jaromir Malek, In the Shadow of the Pyramids: Egypt during the Old Kingdom (London, 1986), p. 35. 65 Cf. Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?: An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination, trans. Paula Wissing (Chicago and London, 1988).

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present, as in the tragedies performed at major Athenian festivals. The cults of the Olympian gods continued for many centuries after the first signs of skepticism. There are comparable discussions in Egyptian literary texts66--not as it happens in mythical contexts-which do not seem to have led to any general skepticism. I see no reason why discussions should not have occurred in periods from which they are not attested. One may suggest that no specific time of disenchantment should be sought, and that the gods could have been near and far, taken for granted and questioned in their wisdom, in any period.67 Since they were not purely good, a simple attitude to them would be difficult to maintain. The multiplicity of approaches to phenomena and of relations between divine and human almost requires some detachment. Whereas the "sacramental" use of the gods described by Assmann seeks to bypass detachment, mythical narrative may belong in this broader context of negotiating relations between the divine and the human and comprehending the human predicament. To model a conceptual space for such phenomena is different from demonstrating that they occurred (sec. III, pp. 99-103 below), but the notion that myth performs similar functions is a cross-cultural commonplace. In a sense, the view of early times as a period when divine and human were in close contact is an Egyptological "myth" with some of the etiological function of many ancient myths. In the modern context, such an age of innocence both legitimizes conceptions of the pristine Egyptian state and fits an analogy between the duration of Egyptian civilization and a lifespan that passes from innocence through experience to senescence.68 It is one of many manifestations of the difficulty of comprehending the duration of ancient cultures.69 This argument need not be pursued. The chief conclusions to emerge from reviewing Assmann's contribution are that no easy line can be drawn between early periods, from which myths are not attested in "mythical statements," and later ones in which they are found; and that myths could have emerged throughout the historical period (pp. 39-43). Assmann and Heike Sternberg70are probably right to say that the Late Period was the heyday of Egyptian myths. JUNGE: "WIRKLICHKEIT UND ABBILD"

Junge's rather schematic approach tends to see myth and religion mainly in terms of aetiology and legitimation, but it is significant for its fusion of the ideas of Erik

66 See, for example, Gerhard Fecht, Der Vorwurf an Gott in den "Mahnworten des Ipuwer" (Pap. Leiden 1 344 recto, 11, 11-13, 8: 15, 13-17, 3): Zur geistigen Krise der ersten Zwischenzeit und ihrer Bewiltigung, Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. KI., 1972:1 (Heidelberg, 1972); idem, "Agyptische Zweifel am Sinn des Opfers: Admonitions 5, 7-9," ZAS 100 (1973-74): 6-16; Mordechai Gilula, "Does God Exist?," in Dwight W. Young, ed., Studies Presented to Hans Jakob Polotsky (East Gloucester, Mass., 1981), pp. 390-400. 67 Because early sources do not include general

discussion of the sort known from later, it may be very difficult to establish this point. 68 The purest example of such a vision, which also informs much popular writing on ancient Egypt, may be John A. Wilson's The Burden of Egypt: An Interpretation of Ancient Egyptian Culture (Chicago, 1951). 69 For the assumption that the First Intermediate Period brought on the sense of loss see, for example, "Verborgenheit," p. 42; Fecht (n. 66 above); Erik Hornung, Geist der Pharaonenzeit (Zurich and Munich, 1989), pp. 135-36. 70 Mythische Motive, pp. 15-16.

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Hornung71and of Assmann. Hornung treats as central to the pantheon the ordering of gods in numerical and other schematic groups which is one aspect of Assmann's Konstellationen; he also emphasizes divine hierarchies and concepts of multiple manifestation.72 Gods partake in varying numbers of combinations. Those with more are those who have more power, spheres of action, and prestige, but less clear-cut character. Egyptian major gods tend to lack the coherent identity of the gods of Classical antiquity, or of minor deities associated with single domains of nature or culture. This does not imply that gods and their combinations were manipulated as counters in a power game but that the formulation of such relations was a significant form of religious discourse. This poor definition can have "narrative"implications (sec. III, p. 94 below). Weakly defined figures might not be good protagonists of narrative, and deities may not be easily characterized against one another. Caution is, however, needed because the apparent narrative weakness of "mythical statements" in works of literature might be in part the product of scholars' interpretive strategies. With other writers, Junge believes that groupings and relations of gods can be partially mythical or narrative. An example would be how the sequence of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis from Atum to Horus models a span between pre-existence and "history,"defining cosmogony and cosmos. Gods can emerge from, or be manifestations of, a higher, more primeval and important god;73 this model could belong to the New Kingdom and later. Both these relations are included under the term Konstellation. Something like a mythical statement, even in Assmann's terms, will be present in every discursive presentation of the first of these ideas (sec. III, pp. 95-96 below). Junge's focus on the structure of the pantheon suggests how myth may be subordinate in elite religious discourse and puts a positive gloss on Assmann's findings. His schematism does, however, involve difficulties. He presents this world as being a reflection of models derived from the world of the gods, both in royal "historical" action and in the conjurations of magical formulas.74 Such an understanding by the actors would tend toward the mystical and seems to me not to incorporate adequately the significance of events of this world or the urgency with which some of them are depicted on the monuments. It is not necessary to emphasize models and schemas quite so strongly.

III.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES, RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE

DEFINITION: INTRODUCTORY

So far, I have refrained from defining myth. If concepts of myth and Assmann's ideas of Konstellation or grouping overlap, it may be possible to harmonize different positions. I exclude here modern extensions of the term myth to encompass central fictions or defining ideas, even though these are potentially very valuable.

71 "Wirklichkeit," p. 103, n. 55; Hornung, Conceptions (this book is not about myth and does not present Hornung's views on the subject). 72 See also "Verborgenheit,"pp. 10-15. 73 Assmann, "Primat und Transzendenz: Struktur

und Genese der igyptischen Vorstellung eines 'H6chsten Wesens'," in Wolfhart Westendorf, ed., Aspekte der spitiigyptischen Religion, GOF 9 (Wiesbaden, 1979), pp. 7-42; Assmann, Re und Amun, pt. 2. 74"Wirklichkeit,"pp. 99-102.

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The simplest definition of a myth is that it is a sacred or central narrative. In Egypt, those narratives are almost all about the gods. Narratives are transitive: the situation at the end is different from the beginning, or it involves a restoration. I do not, however, follow Assmann's requirement that a myth have an Aristotelian beginning, middle, and end (see n. 29 above). Assmann is unhappy with the inconsequentiality of some narratives, which he seems to explain by assuming that their episodes are related to those found in magical texts and similar sources and are strung together to form the attested versions.75Here, he may deduce too much from the texts' failure to meet the Aristotelian criteria. Egyptian narratives as a whole contain leaps and changes of focus, and myths need not be different; since they belong in a world where most things are possible, they may exhibit this characteristic the more strongly. Realizations of myths (another possible rendering of mythische Aussagen) might range from a minimal transitive element7"to a tale with many episodes. A myth could be mobilized in a non-narrative context, varying from short segments of ritual to more extensive texts. Such a mobilization is distinct from a narrative realization, but its occurrence is compatible with the contemporaneous existence of narratives. The underlying analytical abstraction of a myth posited by Assmann need not have a very extensive narrative character. Two main strategies emerge from such a definition: to examine early texts and representations for traces of myths, and to suggest a framework for the occurrence and significance of myth in texts and in the dissemination of religious knowledge. Together, these can address the scarcity of myths in early sources where no narrative can be expected. EARLY EVIDENCE

Since myths start with oral tradition, the written record can only point more or less clearly toward early myths and how they entered written usage. This situation did not change significantly until belles lettres appeared in the Middle Kingdom, where the use of myth is within literary traditions and cannot simply reflect oral transmission--quite apart from influences of specific genres on what was composed. Early texts include some suggestions of narratives about the gods. Assmann cites two passages in the Pyramid Texts.7 One, in Spell 467 with a parallel in Spell 691, is rather inconclusive. The other, in Spell 477, runs: 75"Verborgenheit,"p. 35. This is the approach of Philippe Derchain in, for example, Hathor Quadrifrons: Recherches sur la syntaxe d'un mythe ?gyptien, Uitgaven van het Nederlands Historisch Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul 28 (Istanbul, 1972); entries in Yves Bonnefoy, ed., Dictionnaire des mythologies et des religions des socidtis du monde antique (Paris, 1981); "Der digyptische Gott als Person und als Funktion," in Aspekte der spdtiigyptischen Religion, pp. 43-45. 77"Verborgenheit," p. 10, n. 6. Spell 467: PT ?? 886a-c, 2120a-c; see, for example, James P. Allen, The Inflection of the Verb in the Pyramid Texts, Bibliotheca Aegyptia 2 (Malibu, 1984), ?587A; R. O. 76

Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts Translatedinto English: Supplement of Hieroglyphic Texts (Oxford, 1969), ?2120a-c. The passage refers to Re's having expressed the desire for a son and answers that the deceased king is his son. This is so closely fitted to the context and to the king's title of "Son of Re" that it may not refer to any episode outside itself. Spell 477: PT 956a-958a (translation gives metrical divisions); Allen, Inflection, ?667. Later parts of the spell relate to Orion (sih) and are probably not closely connected to the court case, but the introduction of Isis and Nephthys can be so related (?960c). In the Pyramid Texts, beliefs about Osiris are inextricably associated with Orion.

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Reeling of the sky, quaking of the earth. Horus comes, Thoth arises that they may raise Osiris on his side, that they may cause him to stand before the two enneads. Remember, Seth, take (it) to heart this speech which Geb said, this threat (?) which the gods made against you in the Enclosure of the Leader (hwt-sjrw) in Heliopolis, concerning your striking (ndj) Osiris down to the earth, when you said, Seth, that you had not acted against him This uses narrative verbal forms to mobilize the murder of Osiris and subsequent accusations against Seth in a court of the enneads. The passage could be based on a narrative form of the Osiris myth, but, as often, its details are adapted to its poorly understood context and may not report closely on a narrative myth. Brunner-Traut78refers additionally to the clearest instance in the corpus, a statement that "Horus insinuated (ncj, 'navigate') his semen into Seth's behind and Seth insinuated his semen into Horus' behind."79This mentions an episode in the struggle of Horus and Seth that adds a detail, rather than constituting a grouping or transforming a situation (the context seems not to be narrative). The reciprocity of the action has more to do with the structure of magical spells than with a narrative, where an asymmetrical outcome would be normal; in later versions, Seth fails to conquer Horus homosexually. The passage is not a "mythical statement" because it deviates far from a likely narrative, but it is good evidence for a myth because it reports an episode known from an extended version. Features of the wider context support taking these passages as evidence for myths. In a more abstract way, the composition of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis implies two narratives, the first being a creation myth (p. 93 above) in which Atum emerged and fathered Shu and Tefenet, Geb, and Nut and the second the Osiris myth, which is often associated with the first through the epithet "children of Nut," applied to Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys.so A spell which alludes to Atum's erection and describes his masturbation in order to produce Shu and Tefenet points in the same direction.81Before

78 L4, vol. 4, col. 281 with n. 16. 79Jean Leclant, "Les Textes de la pyramide de P6pi Ier(Saqqara): Reconstitution de la paroi est de l'antichambre," CRAIBL, 1977, pp. 278-79, with plate, col. 30; cf. D. Meeks, L'Annie lexicographique, vol. I, 1977 (Paris, 1980), no. 77.2005. The forms are sdm.n.f and past in reference; see Allen, Inflection, ?409. 80 Often noted; see H. te Velde, "Relations and Conflicts between Egyptian Gods, particularly in the Divine Ennead of Heliopolis," in H. G. Kippenberg et al., eds., Struggles of Gods: Papers of the Gronin-

gen Work Group for the Study of the History of Religions (Berlin, n.d.), pp. 239-57. 81 PT?1248. Wb. I, 57, 17, read *jwsDw,"masturbator" here (accepted by Kurt Sethe, Obersetzung und Kommentar zu den altdgyptischen Pyramidentexten, vol. 5 [Gliickstadt, n.d.], p. 148, reading mjsDw;see Faulkner, Pyramid Texts, p. 198, n. 2 ad loc.). Allen, Inflection, ?171B, reads m jw s3w and renders "Atum is... one who comes extended" (referringto an erection of the penis). This removes a hapax from the lexicon.

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the Pyramid Texts were inscribed, Osiris had entered the iconographic repertory,82in reliefs where large series of deities may have included meaningful groupings of gods, such as enneads. Crucial earlier iconographic evidence is in reliefs from a chapel of Djoser at Heliopolis.83The iconography of the gods in these earliest known reliefs with connected texts is that of later representations of enneads. If it can be inferred that the Great Ennead of Heliopolis existed by the Third Dynasty and had a fixed form and iconography, then transitivity and interaction among deities, as well as groupings of them, could have arisen by that time and possibly in that order. The existence and cult of numerous major deities in the first two dynasties, which is demonstrated by personal names and such sources as the Palermo Stone, suggests that transitivity, and so perhaps narratives, could go back further. The period of unification must have been vital for the articulation of the pantheon because regional traditions were fused into a political and cultural unity. A number of deities became identified with the capital and the state more strongly than with particular localities and hence were newly brought together.84 The familiar picture just sketched leaves open the question of the order in which developments occurred and how they might relate in detail to transitivity and narratives. Enneads and other schemas seem to have brought system into profusion. The schemas may have evolved no earlier than relations among groups of the gods they encompassed-as against relations being produced by systematization. If the deities were not strongly characterized, their relative placings might be arbitrary and they would probably not then occur in fixed sequences, as they normally do.85Proximity in a grouping may not be enough to create a relationship with the extended transitivity of a narrative, although the later prominence of divine triads shows that such a process could occur.86 More generally stated, without myths, the many deities who existed by the dynastic period, and who were worshiped in temples and grouped in lists, would have formed a rather abstract and bloodless world. Such pantheons are found, for example, among Nilotic peoples,87 but with a small number of major deities who can easily be kept distinct from one another. Egyptian gods overlapped, and groups of them could have complementary roles. It would be remarkable if their interactions were not to have narrative implications. Many later myths had etiological significance, and this could have been the case earlier, whatever other raison d'ftre they might have had. These arguments suggest that solar creation myths and the core of that of Osiris could predate, perhaps considerably, the time of Djoser. These belief complexes are not prominent in early material, so that their appearance fully formed emphasizes the 82 M. Eaton-Krauss, "The Earliest Representation of Osiris?," VariaAegyptiaca 3 (1987): 233-36. 83 William Stevenson Smith, A History of Egyptian Sculpture and Painting in the Old Kingdom, 2d ed. (London and Boston, 1949), pp. 132-38, esp. 134 with n. 1, figs. 48-53; cf. Winfried Barta, Untersuchungen zum Gotterkreis der Neunheit, MAS 28 (Berlin, 1973), pp. 185-86, who does not comment on the iconographic argument for an ennead. 84 For all these points, see Conceptions, pp. 44-49, 66-74. 85 See examples listed by Barta, Untersuchungen, pp. 61-73; "Bemerkungenzum Gdtterkreisder Neun-

heit," BiOr 33 (1976): 131-34. This material could be extended, and inappropriate sources are frequently cited. 86 Conceptions, pp. 218-20, with refs. An example is deities at Kom Ombo. The consort of Haroeris, Tsenetnofret, "The Good Consort," and the junior member of the triad Pnebtawy "The Lord of the Two Lands" (Gutbub, Textes fondamentaux, indexes, pp. 19, 31, 37), appear to be idealized roles; perhaps a narrative could arise on such a basis. 87 See Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (Oxford, 1956); R. G. Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (Oxford, 1961).

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sparsity of the sources. The earliest record focuses on an iconography of Horus, associated with the king, that has celestial associations but hardly points toward narrowly solar beliefs. The deities of the Heliopolitan ennead appear to be omitted. Reasons for this absence could include both lack of evidence and decorum, but these deities could possibly have been quite recent arrivals in the pantheon.8 A more general argument for a late origin of gods and myths has been that there were no anthropomorphic gods before dynastic times and that the gods had to take on such forms before there could be myths.89 This view is based partly on a hypothetical transition from the representation of gods in animal form to human figures.90 If it were accepted, the political and cultural transformation of late predynastic times would also be a religious one, in the important sense that the perceived and displayed nature of the gods changed radically. This view is, however, untenable, as has been shown by Bruce Williams's reading of the name of Narmer in a secondary graffito on one of the anthropomorphic colossi of Min from Koptos,91 demonstrating that the statues are earlier. Since a group of colossal statues is unlikely to be the point of departure for anthropomorphic deities, their date of origin recedes out of sight. It would not be meaningful to pursue this tradition back before the middle of Naqada II, around the date of the decorated tomb at Hierakonpolis. If Elizabeth Finkenstaedt is right in suggesting that Decorated Ware terminated at this time (Naqada IIc),92 representational media were annexed completely for the state and for the system of decorum. Whether gods are shown on Decorated Ware or not, its conventions are different from those of later times. There was probably some transformation of religion with the origin of the state and related developments, but the forms of the gods and their iconography cannot easily be assessed underneath the complexity and conventionality of pictorial material from Dynasty 0. This should be interpreted within conventions of decorum and should not be expected to show deities interacting with one another, or in human form, or still less interacting with human beings, because it comes from contexts where these iconographies would be inappropriate.93These monuments are thus uninformative about the origin of gods in human form or of myths.

88 Research of Rolf Krauss on astronomical aspects of the Pyramid Texts may suggest that more allowance should be made for stellar beliefs than has been done. 89 Iconographic exposition: Conceptions, pp. 1057; see also Mythe, pp. 88-109. Wolfhart Westendorf has proposed a "mythical" world of animal powers for early times (e.g., Altiigyptische Darstellungen des Sonnenlaufes auf der abschiissigen Himmelsbahn, MAS 10 [Berlin, 1966], pp. 1-9). Although there could have been such a world, much in his approach is problematic. 90 Some examples: Conceptions, 109, fig. 10. 91 Bruce Williams, "Narmer and the Coptos Colossi," JARCE 25 (1988): 35-59. The colossi in Oxford show signs of veneration in the form of pits in the surface. These pits have later parallels into quite modern times, but their form is different and they

were probably made with different implements; the signs of use would then be early. The amount of wear suggests that the statues were accessible for a long time, presumably into the dynastic period. 92 E. Finkenstaedt, "On the Life-span of Decorated Ware in the Gerzean Period," ZA'S 112 (1985): 17-19, overestimating continuity between pottery and tomb decoration. 93 See my Fecundity Figures: Egyptian Personification and the Iconology of a Genre (Warminster and Chicago, 1985), pp. 68-75, 277-305 (system of decorum); see also Bruce Williams and Thomas J. Logan, "The Metropolitan Knife Handle and Aspects of Pharaonic Imagery before Narmer," JNES 46 (1987): 245-85, who argue that essential features of iconography developed as early as the Hierakonpolis decorated tomb, at the beginning of the unification of the country.

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These arguments do not suggest that the gods or their iconography are immeasurably ancient or, conversely, that they cannot have existed before Naqada II, but rather that there is no good evidence for their age. The monuments contain some powerful and perhaps mythical images, such as the cow goddess of the sky implied on the Narmer Palette.94The argument from decorum implies that the anthropomorphic iconography of gods, which existed before the dynastic period, may have been more widely used in lost contexts, perhaps ones similar to the Heliopolis chapel of Djoser. It is then conceivable that myths like those underlying the Great Ennead of Heliopolis existed by the time the system of decorum was devised; such myths could have had anthropomorphic or animal protagonists. I can see no sure way of deciding whether such myths were present at that time or not. The assumption of Schott, Hornung, and, to some extent, Assmann, that gods must have human form for myths to develop, should be questioned. Myths in many societies have animal protagonists, and there is no clear reason why their protagonists in Egypt should have human form. There are attested animal myths, such as that of the Eye of the Sun,95 while many of the strongest iconographies, metaphors, and transformational conceptions of deities exploit animal form. It is inappropriate to restrict mythical status to the anthropomorphic. Even the euhemerism of Sethe and Kees may have been excluded too rigidly. Its rejection has contributed to the later dating of myths because features which those scholars attributed to origins in prehistory have sometimes been related to later events, after which the myths would then have arisen. Yet, if myths may have some historical content or allusion, they could go back a long way toward the period which inspired them (or they could have a referent nearer to present, later times).96Although dynastic forms must have been radically changed by the evolution of pictorial and textual forms, they need not have lost all earlier content. The salient instance of a possible survival is Seth. The importance and antagonism of Horus and Seth are demonstrated by the conflicts of the first two dynasties, which were probably both political and religious.97Earlier relations between the two gods could be irrelevant to these conflicts and how they were formulated, but Seth's early status as the god of Naqada, recalled in his epithet nbwtj, "He of Ombos," probably did affect his later destiny.98Naqada was definitively eclipsed by the early First Dynasty. Since royal titles of the united state seem always to have focused on Horus, the "decline" of Seth may have been contemporary with the decline of Naqada. Later developments in the myth of Horus and Seth and in the character and role of Seth should be interpreted 94 See Kurt Lange and Max Hirmer, Agypten, 4th ed. (Munich, 1967), pls. 4-5. 95 Franqoise de Cenival, Le Mythe de l'Oeil du Soleil, Demotische Studien 9 (Sommerhausen, 1988). 96 Assmann has later emphasized Maurice Halbwachs's contention that "collective memory" can last no more than three or four generations; Egyptian monumental culture would create one version of an alternate "mode" of memory, which he and Aleida Assmann term "cultural memory." See "Kollektives Gedichtnis und kulturelle Identitit" and "Stein und Zeit: Das 'monumentale' Gedichtnis der altdigyptischen Kultur," in J. Assmann and T. H61scher, eds., Kultur und Gedichtnis, Suhrkamp Taschen-

buch: Wissenschaft 724 (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 9-19, 87-114; Aleida and Jan Assmann, "Schrift, Tradition und Kultur," in Wolfgang Raible, ed., Zwischen Festtag und Alltag: Zehn Beitriige zum Thema 'Miindlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit' ScriptOralia 6 (1988), pp. 25-49. On the theme, see, more generally, Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (London, 1985). 97 See "The Origins of Kingship in Egypt." 98 See te Velde's survey, Seth, pp. 8-12. Much in earlier discussions is problematic and suffused with notions of race, but the positions are not to be rejected altogether.

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chiefly by reference to the times in which they occurred, and this principle should be generalized,99 but by the same token, early conflict or change could have provided a point of reference for myths. Such arguments do not imply that the reference of a myth will be fossilized far back in prehistory. They suggest not that a narrative of conflict might arise directly from relations between Naqada and Hierakonpolis or Abydos, but that the form and transmission of the gods' relationship, which could have a distinct religious dimension, might also be mediated by political events. Other indirect arguments are relevant to later periods and materials. Assmann's denial that the Middle Kingdom Horus and Seth narrative is a "mythical statement" (pp. 85-87 above) can be countered from contemporaneous texts. Two narrativeswhich use myth-like motifs are the Shipwrecked Sailor and the Herdsman's Story. Neither is a myth because they are complex, first-person literary texts. The snake's narrative in the Shipwrecked Sailor is formed from conceptions of the end of the world.' ? Myths are not normally conceived as referring to the future, but this belief is quasi-mythical in having a narrative structure and occurring in the realm of the gods. The Egyptians presented special knowledge about past and future as belonging in comparable domains1'oand so supplied a rationale for connecting the two. The Herdsman's Storyl?2 is a narrative of an encounter between a human and a deity, and the deity acts as a seductress, in a role familiar in mythical texts. The human-divine encounter has no good parallel in Egyptian literature, but is widespread in other mythologies. The tomb biography of Simut-Kyky, who was divinely inspired to donate much of his property to the goddess Mut, has the literary structure of a story and may suggest that encounters with deities were expected to take narrative form.103 Such a convention would make narrative more significant in the presentation of the gods than Assmann would allow. Since these narratives are so rare in the written record, the parallel may also suggest that they were more frequent in the oral sphere. This assumption would help to explain how two widely separated texts have a similar structure. Thus, monumental inscriptions and narrowly literary texts can be fruitfully seen in a context of hypothetical mythical narratives, which might have existed in the oral sphere, in other literary compositions, or in both. RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE:CONTEXTSAND FOCUS

Despite these arguments, hardly any direct early evidence for myths is preserved. Is it possible to explain this gap? The first question to ask is how significant myths were. Here, the Classicizing Western view is relevant-,A religion without formal dogmas that is seen from the outside may be 99 See Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad, Image of the World and Symbol of the Creator: On the Cosmological and Iconological Values of the Temple of Edfu, Studies in Oriental Religions 10 (Wiesbaden, 1985), esp. pp. 21-23. loo See my "Interpreting the Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor," pp. 62-64, with refs. 101Hellmut Brunner, "Die 'Weisen', ihre 'Lehren' und 'Prophezeiungen' in altagyptischer Sicht," ZAS 93 (1966): 28-35; reprinted in idem, in Wolfgang R6llig, ed., Das hdrende Herz: Kleine Schriften zur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte Agyptens, Orbis

Biblicus et Orientalis 80 (Freiburg, Switzerland and Gottingen, 1988), pp. 59-65. 102Gardiner, Die Erziihlung des Sinuhe und die Hirtengeschichte,HieratischePapyrus aus den Kdniglichen Museen zu Berlin 5 (Berlin, 1909), pls. 1617; Hans Goedicke, "The Story of a Herdsman," CdE 45/ 90 (1970): 244-66. 103John A. Wilson, "The Theban Tomb (No. 409) of Si-Mut, Called Kiki," JNES 29 (1970): 187-92; Pascal Vernus, "Litterature et autobiographie: Les inscriptions de S?-Mwt surnomm6 Kyky," Revue d'Egyptologie 30 (1978): 115-46.

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easily accessible through myths. Myth may assume a different but comparable importance if, as in Christianity, much of a religion's teaching is integrated into its founding narratives. Yet regular church services are not arranged around the narrative of Christ's life, and this is still more the case with special ceremonies such as funerals, which could be more closely comparable with material from Egypt. Egyptian religion centered neither on narratives nor on dogmas; it was diverse and perhaps centered on ritual and the cult of the gods.104 Few rituals narrate events in the world of the gods, and their organization is more likely to relate to the functions they perform, such as caring for the gods, or to sequences such as the seasons, than to narrative events. Thus, myth may not have been very important to the core of religion. Mythical events could be fundamental to the order of the world but seldom the subject of narratives, rather as with the otiose creator gods of many religions. On another level, the structure and themes of myths could incorporate central truths and values-either for the actors or for analysts, who may identify these elements in texts that might not anciently have had such pretensions. Classical writers, like modern ones, may have perceived the significance of myth differently from Egyptians. They viewed the religion from the outside and could relate to and recount myths; they were excluded from many practices, or felt, as Herodotus sometimes did, that they should not describe them, or they found them distasteful, as they did animal cults. The primacy of ritual can be connected with two features of texts. First, before relatively late times few rituals are attested in coherent form, myths still less so. One reason for this disarray may be that the texts do not belong to central rituals and related text corpora. The ritual of the daily cult of the gods is not known to any extent before the later New Kingdom, or in full until its aftermath.1o5 Mythical content in such rituals is not fully narrative and so can produce only limited evidence. As James P. Allen remarks in a slightly different context, "Reconstructing Egyptian cosmology... from such sources is equivalent to recovering the richness of medieval philosophy from a Roman Catholic missal or the Book of Common Prayer."106The daily ritual is a good example here because it includes a brief creation narrative and enumeration of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis.?07The same passage occurs in Pyramid Texts Spell 600, a spell for dedicating the pyramid, where it is probably secondary. The text of the ritual may thus have been formulated before the Sixth Dynasty, using mythical motifs that were current, if not in written form. The complex position of this text exemplifies factors involved in assessing evidence for myths. Texts from all periods are a tiny fraction of what there once was, and whole 104 For typological discussion, see Morenz, Gott und Mensch im alten Agypten (Leipzig, 1964), pp. 15-40. 105New Kingdom: Amice M. Calverley and Myrtle F. Broome, The Temple of King Sethos I at Abydos, vols. 1-2, ed. Gardiner (London and Chicago, 193335); A. Rosalie David, Religious Ritual at Abydos (c. 1300 BC) (Warminster, 1973). Third Intermediate Period: Alexandre Moret, Le Rituel du culte divin journalier en Egypte, Annales du Mus6e Guimet, Bibliotheque d'Etudes 14 (Paris, 1902). 106Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts, Yale Egyptological Studies 2 (New Haven, 1988), p. x.

107 Thomas George Allen, Occurrencesof Pyramid Texts with Cross Indexes of These and Other Egyptian Mortuary Texts, SAOC 27 (Chicago, 1950), p. 94; add A. Mariette, Abydos: Description des fouilles executies sur l'emplacement de cette ville, vol. I (Paris, 1869), pl. 47b, cols. 3-8. For the spell and its relation with the ritual of offering a broad collar, see Otto, "Zur Oberlieferung eines Pyramidenspruches,"in Studi in memoria di Ippolito Rosellini nelprimo centenario della morte (4 giugno 18434 giugno 1943) (Pisa, 1955), pp. 223-37; Tohfa Handoussa, "Le Collier Ousekh," SAK 9 (1981): 143-50.

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categories are lost. There are scarcely any systematic texts of types suggested by lists of books in late temples, or ones that might be compared to P. Edwin Smith.1'"Such texts could have been kept in lost contexts; their systematic character would not necessarily make them look familiar to us. The daily ritual is an instance of what is missing, and its original form might be more transparent than excerpts in the Pyramid Texts; yet the form of the Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus has baffled scholars. Early systematic texts would not have included narratives, which were not written down until late (see n. 59 above). Non-narrative genres have primacy. Those might be crucial vehicles of religious discourse and more significant than myths. This reasoning suggests three overlapping explanations for the sparsity of early evidence for myths: they were not important to the main types of text;109those texts did not have suitable forms for narratives; the discourse of the texts focused on other concerns. Two positive points should be added: the original prestige form of recording was in the mixed pictorial-written system of decorum, which hedged sacred matter around with restrictions and was inimical to continuous writing and even pictorial sequences;"1 and, when continuous writing appeared, its first known use was for brief ritual speeches by gods to the king, which exclude myth and narrative and place value on a circumscribed immediacy of the gods. The essential early form of prestige record which I posit is the list, evidence for which exists in the temple of Sety I at Abydos. This temple also contains--probably no coincidence-the first longer texts from the daily ritual and such exceptional material as a relief based on a vignette in the Book of the Dead and the earliest temple scenes of the resurrecting Osiris."' A list of sixty-three divine names related to Ptah and Memphis may go back as far as the Early Dynastic Period.112 Some deities in the list are related to myths, examples being: Isis and Nephthys, who are not closely connected with Ptah but-especially Nephthys"3-can hardly be imagined without the Osiris myth; the epithet rs-wdc, "He who Awakes Whole," associated with Osiris but also often used of Ptah;"14and a trio of epithets, "Dry of Tears," "Still of Hand," and "Sweet of Life." These seem to allude to creation. "Dry of tears" may be the creator's condition after his weeping which produced humanity."' "Still of hand" may refer to the end of the creator's masturbation after engendering Shu and Tefenet, while "sweet of life (ndm-c'n)" could allude similarly to his sexual gratification (ndmmjt)"6 in his forming of "life," which is associated 108 See Kent R. Weeks, "Studies of Papyrus Ebers," Bulletin de l'Institut d'Egypte 68-69 (197678): 292-99; Serge Sauneron, Le Papyrus magique illustre de Brooklyn, Wilbour Monographs 3 (New York, 1970), pp. viii-ix. 109This discussion necessarily omits a definition of what would constitute a text in terms relevant to early Egypt. The problem needs separate discussion. l10 As discussed by Assmann, "Zeugung." See my article "Communication and Display: The Integration of Early Egyptian Art and Writing," Antiquity 63 (1989): 471-82, with figs. 1-2. Ill Both in the Chapel of Sokar, location in PM, vol. 6, p. 24 (218)-(221). 112See "An Abydos List of Gods and an Old Kingdom Use of Texts," in John Baines et al., eds., Pyramid Studies and Other Essays Presented to

I. E. S. Edwards, EES Occasional Publication 7 (London, 1988), pp. 124-33. One copy: K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 173, 12-176, 9. Another list, of 120 deities and places, which names three Fifth Dynasty solar temples that can hardly have existed after the Old Kingdom, must be early in part: Mariette, Abydos, vol. 1, pls. 44-45. 113 Nephthys seems to exist principally as a complement to other figures in the myth. comme 6pithete 114 See B. van de Walle, "Rs-wdDE et comme entit6 divines," ZAS 98 (1972): 140-49. 115For example, Assmann, "Schipfung," LA, vol. 5, col. 681. 116 Used for "gratification" in the vision of the end of creation in chap. 175 of the Book of the Dead: E. A. Wallis Budge, The Chapters of Coming

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especially with his first offspring, Shu.117 The organization of the list is hierarchical and topographical rather than mythical: an initial section with the most important names is followed by others arranged according to quarters of Memphis. "Encyclopedic" and tabular material is a suitable focus of arcane knowledge, and the use of part of the list by the owners of two Old Kingdom tombs shows such an emphasis (see n. 112 above). The knowledge is so different from the narration of a myth that it might be inimical to its recording. The underworld books have similar characteristics."11In their fusion of text and pictorial representation, they adhere more closely to early forms of presentation than most material. They parallel descriptions of the solar cycle in hymns and relate to the specialized hymns of the hourly solar ritual, to which Assmann ascribes an early date."119 These compositions are not mythical in that no narrative is presented, but they convey central truths about the solar cycle and royal and human participation in it. As Edward F. Wente has shown, the underworld books state that knowledge of them is good for the knower on earth. Since they were not inscribed in an accessible place until quite late, this knowledge is restricted, and its implications may be different from assertions of knowledge in mortuary texts. The books, which several writers date to the Middle Kingdom, develop the encyclopedic tradition for material that could have a mythical formulation but does not receive it, and they limit access to the truths it conveys.120 These traditions could be inimical in several ways to recording myths as narratives. They place a premium on non-narrative forms of recording and transmission, and look to and legitimize themselves by ancient models. There is a hierarchical restriction of fundamental religious knowledge. Written form, which is a necessary part of these compositions, possesses extra value. Restriction is most effective if it both conceals and proclaims its subject matter, devaluing more widespread and more easily transmitted knowledge.121 All this may have subordinated myths long past the time when writing became capable of recording them. This orientation to restricted, encyclopedic knowledge seems to have become less strong in the New Kingdom, the earliest period from which substantial narratives of myths are preserved. One might connect these developments and assume that myths had earlier formed part of restricted knowledge, but for various reasons this may be incorrect. First, the religious strands which were most productive of myths, notably Osiris and legends associated with him, were the focus of relatively popular beliefsthat is, beliefs spread far beyond the circle with access to the lists and underworld books. Second, myth as narrative has its oral point of departure, and restricted oral knowledge is hardly known. This is not a strong argument because such knowledge is unlikely to leave traces, but nothing points clearly to its being important. Third, the Forth by Day or the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead, vol. 3, Books on Egypt and Chaldaea 30 (London, 1910), p. 73, 1. 12. 117 See Herman te Velde, "Schu," LA, vol. 5, cols. 735-37. 118 Hornung, Agyptische Unterweltsbiicher,2d ed., Die Bibliothek der Alten Welt: Der Alte Orient (Ziirich, 1984). 119See Re und Amun, pp. 22-53. 120 Wente, "Mysticism in Pharaonic Egypt?,"JNES

41 (1982): 161-79. Dating: Wente; Hartwig AltenmiUller,"Zur Oberlieferung des Amduat," JEOL 20 (1968): 27-42 (criticized by Hornung, Das Amduat, Tel III: Die Kurzfassung: Nachtriige, AgAbh 13 [Wiesbaden, 1967], p. ix); Assmann, Re und Amun, pp. 22-39. 121See further "Restricted Knowledge, Hierarchy and Decorum: Modern Perceptions and Ancient Institutions," JARCE 27 (1990): 1-23, esp. pp. 11-12.

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context I propose for myth suggests that it did not have the same prestige as elite encyclopedic knowledge. Finally, it would be perverse to argue away the indications of mythical narratives presented in sec. III, pp. 94-99; yet, even though these come from the privileged context of the monuments, their style of evocation may not fit well with severely restricted access to myths. The oral character of myth could favor a different and less esoteric restriction: the absence of narratives about the death of Osiris, in contrast to endless allusions to the event, indicates that its recording was "taboo,"122 but it was surely narrated in oral contexts, and it was widely known. There might have been systematic narratives of myths in lost contexts, such as temple libraries, perhaps of the New Kingdom and later. These texts would be "mythical statements," not myths, but they might still be nearer to an "ideal" form than anything preserved. This possibility may be suggested by the remarkably pure form of the narrative of Plutarch in chapters 12-19 of De Iside et Osiride,123 which should relate, however distantly, to a form of transmission in Egyptian. Appearances here could be illusory. Preserved documents with several mythical narratives, including Papyrus Jumilhac,124 exhibit different forms of systematization from narrative collections as we might understand them. Complete narratives, such as that of the Eye of the Sun (see n. 95 above), are literary and do not belong narrowly among religious texts. Temple collections seem to have contained a range of literary texts and not to have focused on the mythological.125 A final class of material Assmann discusses is temple relief, which includes hardly any representation of myth.126 The birth cycle he analyzes has been seen as an exception by Hellmut Brunner but on problematic grounds.127 The concept of the king's divine descent may be a myth or mythical charter, but the cycle spells this out in an accompanying text rather than a picture, and it is not a narrative. The cycle's later phases show essentially ritual acts. Reliefs can usefully be related to the parallel notions of discourse and decorum. Like religious texts and perhaps in precedence to them, reliefs are not primarily narrative and should not be expected to contain what is alien to them. This does not mean that the Egyptians could not represent myths or mythical statements pictorially, because examples like figures of the resurrecting Osiris do occur.128 More normally, reliefs are 122Cf. Assmann, "Verborgenheit,"p. 41 with n. 78. 123J. Gwyn Griffiths, Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride (n.p., University of Wales Press, 1970), pp. 135-47. 124Jacques Vandier, Le Papyrus Jumilhac (n.p., n.d. [Paris, 1961]). 125See Gtinter Burkard, "Bibliotheken im alten Agypten: Oberlegungen zur Methodik ihres Nachweises und Obersicht zum Stand der Forschung," Bibliothek, Forschung und Praxis 4 (1980): 79-115. For a collection with a rather narrow focus, apparently without mythological texts, see Sauneron, Papyrus magique, pp. viii-ix. 126 See "Zeugung." Cf. Otto, "An Ancient Egyptian Hunting Ritual," JNES 9 (1950): 170 with n. 24, who remarked that myths could have been represented before the system of decorum (as I term it) crystallized. This is very uncertain.

127 Hellmut Brunner, Die Geburt des GottkBnigs: Studien zur Oberlieferung eines altiigyptischen Mythos, 2d ed., AgAbh 10 (Wiesbaden, 1986). Siegfried Morenz ("Die Geburt des aigyptischen Gottkinigs," Forschungen und Fortschritte 40 [1966]: 366-71) and Winfried Barta ( Untersuchungen zur Gottlichkeit des regierenden Kdnigs: Ritus und Sakralkdnigtum nach Zeugnissen der Friihzeit und des Alten Reiches, MAS 32 [1975]; idem, "Bemerkungen zur Existenz der Rituale ftir Geburt and Krainung," ZAS 112 [1985]: 1-13) have argued questionably that the reliefs depict a ritual; see Brunner, pp. 233-36. 128See n. I11 above. As discussed, the material in the temple of Sety I at Abydos is outside the normal repertory of temple relief.

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"performative"and creative,129bringing into existence a meaningful world of discourse that cannot be reduced to such outside categories as myth. Similarly, decorum excludes a vast range of content from pictorial representation. Genres of scene and decoration need to be seen within its system. Here, the salient quasi-mythical feature is cosmography. The cow heads on the Narmer Palette could suggest a complex of myths not fully attested in text and picture before the New Kingdom,13 but the motif is not a narrative. The New Kingdom iconography, whose underlying myth may be referred to in the earlier Instruction for Merikare,31 presupposes a narrative, and it cannot be excluded that this existed at the time of the palette.

IV. CONCLUSION

My conclusions are both negative and positive. Negatively, attempts to define the date of origin of myths in Egypt have been unsuccessful, except so far as they have opened up the possibility of late evolution. Less than was hoped can be said about the form of early belief. Positively, it may be possible to model early prestige discourse more fully, while areas, such as myth, that appear to be excluded from that discourse, should be allowed for in the wider religious and cultural context. In suggesting approaches to early material, my strategy is directed to the general nature of the preserved record, to identifying its most important and serious elements and asking what can realistically be sought in it. The conventions of high culture influenced strongly what was transmitted and what form the transmission took. In writing, the development of narrative genres was so slow that a context for a myth cannot be posited for many centuries, perhaps not until the Middle Kingdom. Pictorial representation, which might report on myths, was so hedged about by decorum and other conventions that it had little narrative potential. For very early periods, these restrictions mean that much central cultural material must have been confined to the oral sphere, but even then, the high status of iconographic and written forms will have told against recording and attaching value to narrative. The list is one response to these constraints, while the living oral complements to written forms like lists will have been transmitted in the restricted and possibly secret contexts in which such knowledge was mobilized. This bias toward non-continuous recording says nothing about whether myths existed, only that they should not be credited with great significance in the mainstream of tradition. Here, an unquestionable contention of Assmann, that a myth is not the same as any single record of it, involves the inference, which he is reluctant to accept, that a preserved record says little about the form of relations between the gods that was transmitted in the elite oral sphere, let alone in the wider society. In Schott's terms, "what was narrated about the gods" could always have included connected stories-that is, myths. 129 Cf. Derchain, "A propos de performativit6: Pensers anciens et articles r6cents," GM 110 (1989): 13-18. This does not imply that reliefs bring into being something that has literal reality. 130 See n. 94 above. Anthes began his presentation of Egyptian myths with the figure of the cow accom-

panying the text of the Destruction of Mankind: "Mythology" (n. 25 above), pp. 16-22. 131 Wolfgang Helck, Die Lehre fiir K6nig Merikare, Kleine aigyptische Texte (Wiesbaden, 1977), pp. 83-84; trans., Lichtheim, vol. 1, p. 106 with n. 30.

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Although such narrative forms would not have had the prestige of the groupings, numerical sequences, and lists of central written tradition, that tradition was available to few, and narrative structures are more suitable for broad, long-term transmission. Essential features of the Osiris myth were transmitted from the time of the Pyramid Texts and earlier to the Roman period, while the homosexual Horus and Seth episode also has an impressive range of attestation, not to speak of demotic Horus and Seth narratives.132 It is most cautious to assume both that oral tradition partook in this transmission and that it used narrative forms. How stable the incidents of the narratives were, and whether there were later systematizing written narratives of myths, are questions that can be posed only in exceptional cases; for the early elite, they might have seemed irrelevant or meaningless. One early context for writing continuous texts, and a strand of transmission that began to escape the dominance of lists, was ritual. The first recording of ritual texts can hardly have been later than the early Fifth Dynasty. These rituals, which supply material for performance more than for the transmission of knowledge, are not a suitable context for narrative and contain it only in brief snatches like those quoted above from the Pyramid Texts. They do, however, contain many invocations of the world of the gods in the form of Assmann's sacramental exegeses. I consider this world to have been organized in part by myths. The "myth-free"rituals, which were crucial for Schott and Otto, would sit in a context which included myths. If the world of the gods was only secondarily and variably introduced into those rituals, this cannot be explained by reference to a lack of suitable material in early times. My arguments have not contributed to the elucidation of this problem, but it is possible that here, too, decorum is relevant. It is desirable to return to a more diverse model of early religion, in which myths play a part outside the central forms of written transmission. The structure which emerges is more like those found in other cultures than some models that have been proposed. What is distinctive for Egypt is not so much the configuration of belief and practice as the restriction of the monuments and of high culture. Restriction fits well with the dominant elite focus of early times. 132 Karl-Th. Zauzich, "Der Streit zwischen Horus und Seth in einer demotischen Fassung," in HeinzJ. Thissen and Karl-Th. Zauzich, eds., Grammata

demotika: Festschrift fiir Erich Liiddeckens zum 15. Juni 1983 (Wiirzburg, 1984), pp. 275-81.

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