Ancient Egypt was my first love in terms of archaeology. When I was in grade six, my class was given an assignment. We had to write and perform a short speech on a topic of our choice. Most of the kids in the class chose such illustrious topics as “My Pet Cat” or “My Summer Vacation”. I choose “How to Make an Egyptian Mummy.” With full, graphic details on exactly how brains and other organs were removed from the corpses.
Since that initial foray into the strange world of ancient Egyptian funerary practices, I have broadened my research and read up on a variety of topics. I took quite a few university level courses on the subject and learned as much as I possibly could. Again, I was drawn to the stories.
Ancient Egypt lasted a long time. Thousands of years. It went through a lot of ups and downs, unifying, breaking apart, unifying again, being sacked, unifying again, and so on. The civilization as a whole started out in the early 3000’s BCE and ended when Rome kicked their butts and made it a province in 31 BCE. Three millennia is a long time. Just think of what the world was like only 200 years ago. The 1800s. A different world; socially, scientifically, politically. Now think of what sort of changes could occur over a few thousand years. Most people have heard of the Great Pyramids of Giza and of famous pharaohs such as Rameses and Tutankhamen. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that an enormous amount of time passed between them. The Pyramids were ancient history when King Tut was alive, by over a THOUSAND years.
So, in some ways, it’s hard to say that something is simply from “ancient Egypt” because they were around a heck of a long time and changed a fair bit throughout their history.
One of the coolest things about ancient Egypt is that we have a pretty decent grasp of their language. The language itself has been around for ages. It is probably the oldest written language in human history and was used for several thousand years, spoken even longer. Hieroglyphs have been quite extensively deciphered and tons of surviving literature has been translated and is quite freely available for our perusal. And there is some good stuff there! Tons of gods, epic heroes, great stories. I love the fact that I can grab a book, sit down and read entire stories written down by people who lived five thousand years ago. That is so cool.
This week’s Sunday Sermon is brought to you by the 19th Dynasty, New Kingdom, Ancient Egypt. The original source is the Papyrus D’Orbiney (currently in the British Museum). It’s been dated to about 1225 B.C.E. My secondary source is “The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures”, edited by Pritchard. Enjoy.
Once upon a time, there were two brothers. The elder brother was named Anubis and the younger one was called Bata. Anubis had done pretty well for himself and had a nice house and a nice wife. His younger brother lived with them and helped out as best he could. He made their clothes and drove the cattle in the fields. He also did the plowing, the harvesting, and he worked hard in the fields - all to benefit his elder brother. He was a good man, a good brother and everyone liked him. Even the cows liked him and decided to start speaking to him.
“Hey! Bata!” The cows said. “The grass over there is way better than the grass over here, take us there instead!” And since Bata understood them, he took them where they wanted to go and the cattle flourished under his care, doubling their calving. Everyone was pretty darn happy with life.
One day, Bata was seeding the land for the next years crop with his brother when they ran out of seed. Anubis sent his younger brother home to grab some more seed so they could finish the job.
Bata ran home and found Anubis’ wife sitting around, doing her hair. “Hi there!” Bata said. “Would you mind grabbing some more seed for us in the village? We ran out.”
The wife looked at him rather scornfully. “Just go to the bin and grab some yourself. Don’t mess with me when I am doing my hair.”
So Bata went to the stable and took a giant jar and filled it up with seed. He could carry a lot and loaded up on barley and emmer.
The wife saw him emerge from the stable, holding an enormous amount of grain, muscles bulging spectacularly (also, he was probably shirtless). She was rather impressed by the sight.
“How much are you carrying on your shoulders?” She asked, scrutinizing him carefully.
“Umm, three sacks of emmer and two sacks of barley so….five sacks?” He said, as politely as he could.
“Wow.” Said the wife. “You are pretty strong. I watch you working everyday. You know what? Let’s have sex.” She grabbed him and pulled him closer to her. “Come on! Let’s spend an hour together! You’ll feel great! I will even make some fine clothes for you in exchange.”
This behaviour shocked Bata and he recoiled from her clutches. He looked down at her, disgusted and yelled out, “You are like a mother to me! You are married to my brother! He is like a father to me! What kind of man do you think I am? Don’t you dare even mention this again. I will not let a single person even know that you once suggested this.”
He grabbed his bags and stormed off, leaving the wife behind. He returned to his brother and threw himself back into the fieldwork.
But the wife was now very afraid. And also a bit angry at being so blatantly rejected. So she grabbed some fat (to make herself look bruised and ugly) and some grease (to make her vomit) and planned to tell her husband that his younger brother had beaten her.
When the older brother came home that evening, he found his wife lying down. She did not offer to wash his hands or light the lamps; she just lay there vomiting. Thinking that this was probably not normal behaviour, the husband went up to her and asked, “To whom have you been talking?”
“No one!” She replied. “Except for your younger brother.” Somewhat taken aback by this statement, the older brother pressed for more details.
“Well,” she said, warming to the story. “When he came back to the house today to get some seed, he saw me sitting alone. He ran up to me and totally demanded sex!”
“Of course,” she added, with a few tears and a cute sniffle, “I rejected him. ‘How could you ask such a thing!’ I said, ‘Aren’t I like your mother to you?’ But he was afraid and beat me up instead and told me not to tell anyone.”
She looked up craftily at her husband. “So, you totally need to go kill him now. If he lives, I’ll just have to go kill myself. Just make sure that you kill him before letting him speak to you. Because you know he will just tell a bunch of lies and then he will want to come kill me in revenge for speaking!”
The elder brother was instantly thrust into revenge mode. He sharpened his lance and hid behind the door of the stable, ready to kill his younger brother when he came back to put the cattle away.
As the sun set, the younger brother loaded everything up and started herding the cattle back to the stable. When the first cow passed through the door, she saw what was going on and mooed back to her herdsman, “Hey! Dude! Your brother is here with a sharp stick and he totally plans on killing you. You might want to run away now.” The next cow went through the door and relayed the same information. The younger brother peered carefully under the door on the stable and saw his brother’s feet through the cracks, clearly waiting there, lance in hand. The younger brother decided that he should probably listen to the cow. So he dropped whatever he was carrying, turned around and started running away. The older brother heard him leave and stormed after him, waving the lance in the air.
As he ran, the younger brother started praying to the god Ra-Harakhti, saying “Umm, Ra? You know that whole punish the wicked and protect the innocent thing you keep going on about? A little help here?”
The god agreed that it was a pretty good idea and he made a giant body of water appear between the two brothers. He also added a bunch of crocodiles to it for good measure.
The elder brother was rather upset by this. He really wanted to just kill his little brother and be done with it.
“Just wait until dawn!” The younger brother called across the water. “The sun will rise and the god will judge us then! You will see that I am right and that you are wrong. I will never live with you ever again. I’m going to the Valley of the Cedar!”
The following dawn, the Sun God rose, and both brothers glared at each other. The younger brother called out again. “Why do you want to kill me, without hearing what I have to say? I am your younger brother! You are like a father to me! Your wife is like a mother to me! But, when I went to get the grain yesterday, she came up to me and totally wanted to have sex with me! Don’t you see how she is twisting everything? I didn’t do anything!”
As he explained exactly what happened, he pulled out a knife and swore to the Sun God, asking him to hear his oath and confirm his honesty. “My brother!” He cried, holding the knife up high. “You tried to kill me falsely, without even trying to hear my side of the story. You carried your lance against a family member based on the word of a dirty whore. I did nothing wrong!” To confirm his oath to his god, he thrust the knife down and cut off his own penis and threw it into the water, where a fish promptly swallowed it. He became faint and weak.
His elder brother saw what was happening and fell to his knees, weeping for his little brother, understanding at last. But he could not cross over to him because of the crocodiles.
The younger brother went on to travel to the Valley of the Cedars and his elder brother went home, smearing himself with dust in grief for his brother and what he had done to him. He reached home, killed his wife and fed her to the dogs. And then he sat at home, quite alone, mourning the loss of his younger brother.
