Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt

by Robert Thomas Rundle Clark

Explores Egyptian mythology and symbolism and discusses the universal philosophical concepts that the myths express, focusing on the themes of the High God and Osiris

Genres: Egypt, History, Mythology, Nonfiction, Egyptology, Religion, Egyptian Literature

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

Reviews

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard for me to imagine a better introduction to the world of Egyptian mythology and religion. Rundle Clark is an author of prodigious intellectual powers whose graceful prose conceals the extraordinary synthetic labor that must have gone into organizing scattered fragments and allusions of coffin texts and papyri into a coherent and profoundly persuasive vision of the religious mind of the ancient Egyptian. With the kind of organization and context Rundle Clark provides, the dead masks of the Egyptians come to life as vivid and deeply moving tales every bit as captivating as the narratives of Babylon or Greece. Highly recommended.

[Timothy Bergman · Rating 3 out of 5]

"For the Egyptians, mythology was not a collection of texts but a language. This is fundamental. It explains why the doings of the gods could be altered, be expanded and even reappear with other protagonists without apparent inconsistency. But myths do not have to be consistent. They belong to a way of thinking in which consistency in the logical sense is irrelevant. The myth was a way, and before the emergence of lay philosophy with the Greeks, the only way, to express ideas about the cosmos or the needs of the human soul. This is why Egyptian mythology is so simple, so absurd and sometimes so profound. It is dream, metaphysics and poetry, all at once. "

I would have to begin with the conclusion of the book in order for one to understand what an impact this has made on me. Mr. Clark has done a great service in compiling and explaining the myths and symbols of ancient Egypt in a way that even a total novice could grasp. It can be, at times, somewhat confusing or obtuse, but that is the nature of an evolving myth. Unlike others Mr. Clark does not take myth at an absolute face value as either pure ritual or fairy tale, but places the story in the minds of the ancient Egyptians themselves. Even if this work is outdated by this point, as he mentions in the book itself it would be, I would recommend it to any ancient Egypt aficionado be they beginner or advanced.

[Dustcollector · Rating 3 out of 5]

so much of what the author says seems to be subtly shaped by a Christian or 1959 Western world understanding of things, so i find i start to skim through the details in this book the more i get into it.

a definite highlight is that it includes a lot of translated quotes from the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts, which would otherwise be hard to find in print at affordable price. once again, they are translated prior to 1959, and with so many archeological + linguistic + anthropological changes since then, it's questionable if there is "the truth" about anything of Ancient Egypt in this book. it's interesting, just that there's a lot written since then which contradicts it, and without more context and critical lens for thinking this book through, it might convey a distorted understanding about the Ancient Egyptians and their religious beliefs.

as an example, in Erik Hornung's incredible 'Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt', he shows how Egyptians did not have a linear, end-oriented, historical, binary way of thinking about things. so, Ra and Hoor and Ra-Hoor can all exist simultaneously, just like Osiris' state of being in the underworld can continue existing at the same time as Osiris' state as a resurrected god, along with the moment he was being all chopped up (because, as an event in existence, it continues re-ocurring through infinity, like all objects, events, and motions that exist... cyclical, like the Nile). so, i can't really believe Rundle-Clark really full understands what he's talking about when he frames the Egyptian's concepts and "how they thought about things" as narratives of goal-oriented, linear processes that occur in a progression moving forward to some Perfect End in time. in the whole opening of the book he frames Atum as a sort of monotheist God who, if you can observe Ancient Egypt from our heights with our grand view of history, can be recognized as the reeeeeeeeeal 'One God' (since we of course just know better than the Egyptians did about their own local living religions, who Hornung says would have found this whole line of thinking just delusional and inconceivable). after that, he focuses in on Osiris, presented as the Son of God (Atum) who is killed and resurrected, and then the author says that all the other people of Egypt eventually feel that the door to heaven is open to them too. he says this is reflected apparently in some archeological evidence, but i am suspicious that his projections skew his interpretation to present the Egyptians as an earlier model for the Christian story. the authour seems to be unaware of how much he projects the Christian narrative onto Egypt, probably read a lot of Budge

in The Egyptian Hermes, Garth Fowden shows how in the Hellenistic age, Egyptians maintained a general disdain for their new Greek overlords, and the Egyptians Priests especially still held an elite status in that society, the Greeks thought they were amazing so they were allowed to keep things their traditional way. gradually though over generations, it was inevitable that some Egyptians would intermarry, have jobs that had them mingle with both sides in society, and the old Egyptian myths were were eventually changed to fit Greek tastes, with more flourish and entertaining storytelling style instead of the traditional dry and straight-up reporting style of earlier Egyptian recordings and tellings of their myths. in this book, the author seems to have a sort of need for the myths to take on some more linear, narrative storytelling style, and i wonder if that's because he himself is so deep in the Greek-descended mindset, that he can't consider Egyptians in different terms, or see that he himself as the authour is reshaping the material to fit his unconscious, desired preconceptions. i find i'd like to compare his quoted material to their original context, because i get the impression he's compiling quotes in a way that orders them to seem more like a sequential narrative, and this can get dangerous when he starts saying that changes in the mythology reflect changes happening in the society in historical moments... but i've read that Egpytian culture seems to have held up their traditional myth telling in a much more conservative way, so i don't trust if this book is conveying the truth of it accurately, and this books is misrepresenting Egyptians' as if it's like a Christian / Western theological thing

he writes about how the Ancient Egyptians had a whole theological culture, in which priests and the public were having big public debates about the finer points of religious concepts, but in Priests of Ancient Egypt (published in the same year, 1959) Serge Sauneron presents Ancient Egypt as a culture that basically totally avoided writing theological discourses, they had libraries with lots of lists of materials needed for rituals, and instructional manuals, but did not seem to have more philosophical analytical books... that way of thinking seems to have emerged elsewhere, and it's an anachronistic distortion to say the Egyptians were trying to do that too. the Priest classes, though the ones who took it seriously did engage in lots of meditative contemplation and wordgames with hieroglyphics (similar to Gematria), they seem to have avoided analyzing their own religion. the Ancient Egyptians generally did not try to create linear, objectifying analyses of things, like history and a catalogue of all the objects and specimens that exist in the world, with a motive of "finding the One Absolute Thing behind it all". that was more the style that Greek philosophers, who introduced the binary premise that "it's got to be either This, or That, it can't be both", with the added premise that history is moving towards some New and Improved of finally getting it The Right Way.
this book itself seems really shaped by this Western, discursive linear way of thinking, which is a product of it's times. a current day reader who wants to understand "what the Egyptians thought, and what stories they told" could be mislead by this book, but it does have a lot of direct translations from the oldest of Egyptian writings (pyramid and coffin texts), it has interesting ideas, just needs to be read his a critical distance and taken with a grain of salt

[Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

يحتوي الكتاب علي مجموعة رائعة مترجمة من متون الاهرام و نصوص التوابيت و من كتاب الموتي و العديد من البرديات الاخري .. نسخة الهيئة المصرية العامة للكتاب ..

[Nico Starlight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn’t take long to become tired of being told by the author how to interpret the myths. Would have liked to read the myths with zero commentary. I should have read a different book!

[DAJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, originally published in 1959, gives an outline of the major motifs in Egyptian myth—mainly the creation myths and the myth of Osiris's death and the ascent of Horus to succeed him—and describes how the myths evolved in the course of Egypt's millennia-long history. It captures the fluid and shifting nature of Egyptian beliefs, which baffles most modern people and was treated dismissively by many earlier Egyptologists. Rundle Clark explains why Egyptian myth is so puzzling: "For the Egyptians, mythology was not a collection of texts but a language. This is fundamental. It explains why the doings of the gods could be altered, be expanded and even reappear with other protagonists without apparent inconsistency. But myths do not have to be consistent. They belong to a way of thinking in which consistency in the logical sense is irrelevant." Henri Frankfort pioneered this approach to understanding Egyptian beliefs in the late 1940s, but Rundle Clark's is, as far as I know, the earliest full description of Egyptian mythology to incorporate this insight. In fact, many recent books on the subject don't emphasize this point as much as they should, even though their authors are well aware of it.

The last chapter before the conclusion lists some mythic motifs and the artistic motifs that represent them. This guide is somewhat reminiscent of more recent books, including guides to Egyptian symbols by Manfred Lurker and Richard Wilkinson, though Rundle Clark lists fewer symbols than they do while examining those it does cover at greater length. The book as a whole resembles Geraldine Pinch's guide to Egyptian myth, which is also divided into a section describing myths and a section listing mythic motifs, though Pinch doesn't focus on symbols per se.

Some of Rundle Clark's assumptions feel rather dated, including the excessively sharp distinction between "modern" thought and "mythic" thought contained in the passage I quoted above. But I haven't noticed any glaring errors, aside from his mention that parts of the Eye of Horus represented particular fractions (a long-standing idea that was only recently overturned). Some of his spellings are also dated—Mayet for Maat, Dat for Duat—but as long as you're aware of those spelling variants they shouldn't be a problem. If you're looking for a guide to Egyptian myths, this is the oldest one worth getting.

[Mohamed Ibrahim · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب - ماعدا الفصل الاخير- يعتبر مدخلا مناسبا لدراسة عقيدة قدماء المصريين، اسلوب المترجم جيد، و المحتوى يتطلب من القاريء بعض الصبر، وجود خلفية عن اساطير مصر القديمة سيجعل من تجربة قراءة الكتاب تجربة ممتعة.

[Amr Ibrahim · Rating 4 out of 5]

أساطير مصر القديمة هي حكايات آدم و ادريس و نوح و الروح و الملائكة و الشمس و القمر
هي حكايات تراب مصر و قدرها ..
كتاب جيد أنصح بقرائته بتمعن و بعقل متفتح

[Michael Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only author that reaches the insight of Rundle Clarke is Henri Frankfort [ in his "Kingship and the Gods", originally published in 1948 by the Uni of Chicago Press]. These two researches have outlined how myth in Ancient Egypt profoundly and astonishingly supports and structures not only the practical/temporal aspect, within an integrated metaphysical orientation-of-placement [typified by the King/Pharaoh] to this world and the divine; but articulates a holistic schemata of personal 'positioning' for the individual within the deep waters of Egyptian Myth and Religion while existing on earth. There is no separation of above and below, inner and outer.
Offers a genuine insight into how the ancient Egyptian mind understood the world.