These links
lead to factsheets containing important data regarding Ancient Egyptian civilization :
General Preface to these
Egyptian Studies
Thematical Map of Egypt
Genetico-Cognitive
Correspondences
The Egyptian Language
Literary Heritage and
Translations
Hieroglyphs of translated texts
Bibliography
"It must never be forgotten that we
are dealing with a civilization thousands of years old and one of which
only tiny remnants have survived. What is proudly advertised as Egyptian
history is merely a collection of rags and tatters."
Gardiner,
1961.
Nevertheless, thanks to recent scholarship and acquisitions in the area
of Mediterranean culture (which do not exclude new discoveries), we shall be able to focus
more sharply on the most central component of Ancient
Egyptian civilization, namely its religion, which involved a Pharaonic,
Dynastic spirituality which was later Hellenized into Hermetism. The former was the foundation of Egypt's theopolitical organization,
temple-religion and scribal wisdom teachings.
The
institution of the "Great House" ("pr-aA") or
"Pharaoh" created ca.3000 BCE, if not earlier, excelled in the Old Kingdom and
achieved even greater glory in the New Kingdom. It continued to be the
best way to rule Egypt untill 30 BCE (death of Cleopatra). This was a
formidable achievement, ignored by our schools and
universities, starting history with the Archaic Greeks (ca.700 BCE) and
not with the Mesopotamians, nor with Pharaonic Egypt.
We shall also
address Hermetism, in order to identify
important contrasts and similarities between the Egypt of Pharaoh
and Alexandrian Hermetism under the late Ptolemies and the Romans. The
figure of Hermes Trismegistos and his writings (of which the Corpus
Hermeticum and the Emerald
Table are extant) served to articulate a Graeco-Roman interpretation
of the perennial initiatic cults of Egypt, reintroduced at the dawn of the
European Renaissance and later (XIIIth - XVIIth century). The so-called "philosophical"
treatises of Hermetism are outstanding examples. Indeed, these Ptolemaic
texts
"(...) consist, in effect of a kind of Gnosticism, but pagan, and
essentially philosophic in its inspiration although it chooses to give
itself an Egyptian appearance ; and one feels that it ows much to
certain oriental myths."
Doresse,
1986, p.275.
We try to show that Pharaonic religion underlined regeneration, eternal
life, transformation and the "plummet of the balance" of
truth, daily returned by Pharaoh as righteous ruler to his divine
father, the principle of light and creation, deemed incarnate (or
filial) in he who held the balance (of truth) and pacified (unites) the
"Two Lands" (Upper and Lower Egypt) by speaking
the Great Word.
In the Late Period, the latter, "noetical" perspective was
emphasized, for rational thought had made this imperative.
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