Egyptian Culture and Magic
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This research examines elements of Egyptian culture that seem closer to magic than to religion as they are commonly understood. Any discussion of Egyptian religion and magic must be prefaced by a caution against a bias, particularly a western bias, that positions the conventions of modern, particularly western, religion as evaluative of the inferiority of magic to it. According to Ritner, this was more or less the attitude adopted by scholarship of an earlier period, notably by Frazer in The Golden Bough, "assuming distinctions between magic and religion because we in the West have made such a distinction." More than this, Ritner cites a tendency of Western scholars of Egypt to frame the distinction in a way that privileges the religious practice of Judaeo-Christian culture in the West. But the bright line between magic and religion that appears in the West does not appear to have been the dominant operation in ancient Egypt. In the Egyptian case, indeed, the term magic is not associated with tricks and illusions but rather with the issues of high religious seriousness, such as a fundamental universal creative principle:At the beginning of time, before the creation of the world, the creator conceived in his heart the force of hkr, at once creative logos and source of all cosmic dynamics . . . [which] became embodied as a divine personality, Heka. Ritner cites a passage from the Coffin Text Spell 26 attributed to Heka: "I am he whom the Unique Lord made before duality h
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es his own intentions or requires things from gods . . . often touches on his magical aspirations." This means that the wording of spells/prayers can be important.
Borghouts cites a number of inscriptions that make use of the words 3h.w and hk3.w (also rendered hekau) that are meant to accomplish a specific goal, such as get rid of poison or a scorpion, or to "ward off the stroke of an event." The real point of the discussion, however, seems to be to arrive at the conceptualization of magic as an instrument of protectiveness. Another passage attributes to hekau properties such as "the force of life," as opposed to eternal death. The magical property of 3h.w is associated in other texts, including inscriptions on amulets, with "the spiritual output of the divine essence itself" or "divine energy." This connects magic with the very life force of the universe, and Borghouts concludes that both concepts, while being distinct, overlap with each other to form a bulwark against the prospect of chaos triumphant, which is the same as the extinction of a life force. In that light, the Egyptian idea of magic can be connected to the idea of immortality.
Magic as totem. According to Barb, the common idea that primitive Egyptian religion wa
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3851
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)
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