Venturing Into Egyptian Myth: Time and Personal Gnosis

[qos]

One of the concepts that fascinated me the most during my graduate studies in comparative religion was that adherents of different religions inhabited different conceptual worlds or cosmos. How time is perceived and experienced subjectively is one of the key elements of those differing cosmologies. The classic example is that Christian time is linear, moving from creation through the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, and ending in an Apocalypse. A human being gets one birth and death as Creation progresses toward the Second Coming. Time as I've usually seen it in Pagan belief tends to be perceived as cyclical, with creation/birth-maturation-death-rebirth conceived of as ongoing cycle, even for humanity.

One of the holes in my religious knowledge is Egyptian myth and spirituality. I have enough of a familiarity to not be completely lost when a reference is made, but no expertise to speak of. The Passion of Isis and Osiris is already helping with that, and one of the fascinating insights of the early part of the book is the ancient Egyptian concept of time.

As Sir Alan Gardiner noted in his Egyptian Grammar, the ancient Egyptians had only two verb tenses. These revealed the singleness of an event or its repetition -- they recognized only the "present" or the "eternal present." Although the "present" could have happened today or yesterday, the significant distinction in the two verb tenses was revealed in a difference in whether perceived events occurred in man's time or in the gods' time.

The dual notion of time permeated all of Egyptian life. The mud brick and thatch houses of the people were temporary affairs, never meant to last, for the Nile floods came annually and washed everything away. But the houses of the gods, the temples, were built of stone. They were to last for eternity, the lifetime of a neter.

This is fascinating to me just in itself -- but beyond that, it strikes a chord with what I experienced of Isis yesterday.



One of the unexpected qualities of that encounter was the very distinct impression that while the death of Osiris and the grief of Isis and their painful separation is eternal, so is the eternal now in which they are joyfully alive together. She showed me that very powerfully, and although I didn't dwell on it at the time, it now strikes me as being very different from the impression that I get from The Descent of Inanna in which the ongoing state of Inanna and Dumuzi is the cyclical togetherness and separation of his sentence to spend half a year in the underworld. Ditto Hades and Persehpone. Their cycles of change/movement are part of the essence of their stories. That's not what I got from Isis. It's as if joy and grief coexist eternally.

Of course every year the divine calendar celebrates the succesion of events that the myths recount, but each time it happens, it's as if for the first time -- or so it seems to me.

Hurm. When I started writing this, what I'd just read about time seemed to suggest that during my brief contact with Isis I'd picked up on something that was -- in my experience -- unique to Egyptian cosmology, not something that I would have expected. What I just read confirmed that it wasn't just me, it was an actual aspect of these beliefs, adding an extra sense of validity to the theophany.

At least maybe. . .

Comments

[blessed-harlot.livejournal.com]

As I read this, it sounds as though it bears similarities to the concept of time I've been told permeates some old Jewish thought, and is a part of my understanding of Jesus' worldview and teaching. If it is also in Egyptian thought, it would not be the only theological similarity that the Hebrews had to other Near Eastern cultures.

My understanding of the Kingdom of God is that it is both constantly here and now, and constantly coming, on its way, waiting for us. God is always breaking into the world, always chasing us down, aching to spring forth in larger and larger ways... and is also always looking for ways. There is always more to come. It is both incomplete and complete, utterly, in this moment now. It is akin to the old Jewish story about the world always balancing precariously between utter good and utter evil, and every decision we make as to who we will be tips the balance... every single time we make it, over and over and over again.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

There's always been that interesting duality to realized eschatalogy: both "among you" and never fully realized. But I think the concept of The Kingdom is slightly different than what I'm looking at with the Isis/Osiris story because Jesus was presenting the Kingdom as something -- perhaps a 'state of being' -- in which humanity participates, not specific events which can be recounted as a story.

I don't want to take this too far, because I'm already in over my head where my own very limited expertise is concerned, but I think the Hebrew Bible has the same sense of linear time for the Divine as well as the human: the beginning of creation and a forward-moving line. I don't recall that the ancient Hebrews observed the re-creation of the cosmos as an annual/eternal event.

When Passover is celebrated, it's remembered as a historical event, not something that is happening anew, and I get the sense that that's the same with other holidays which are connected to specific sacred events.

What I'm pondering as different is that YHVH is perceived as eternal and unchanging, without a "history" separate from that of the Israelites, whereas the Egyptian gods had a busy time and history before humanity appeared on the scene. Those events of the prehistory and "heroic humanity" are eternal, both predating and existing beside human time.

What do you think?

[blessed-harlot.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't surprise me if there are slight differences, but I also suspect it's closer than you realize. The overlay of linearity that's now embedded into Christianity is entirely foreign to Jesus' teachings and upbringing, and many scholars in both traditions write about a different, much more cyclical view of time present in Hebrew thought originally.

And Passover is experienced as something anew. Every time people gather around the table and celebrate it, they are saying that they, personally, were brought out of slavery by God. When they say "we were brought out of slavery", it's not a vague sense of solidarity with the past. The linearness in our own heads blinds us to a lot of that meaning. There are Jewish holidays from historical events, it's true, but those events are treated differently than we might expect. There's also elements of a cycle of harvest, and of course the weekly cycle of creation. The origins and the undergirding of the that is, I would say, much closer to what you are describing about Egyptian thought than to what is assumed to be true about imperial Christianity, or about how imperial Christianity uses the Hebrew scriptures.

I don't always retain enough historical information to be useful in this regard outside my own path, but you're touching on elements of time that are very close to a part of my understanding as well. I don't know that undoing your understanding of Christian time is all that useful to you, but I offered it up as a further confirmation of what you're finding, as historically Hebrew culture would have been influenced by nearby cultures from the beginning. These ideas are growing from the same roots.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the insights. :-)

This obviously is not an area of expertise for me!

[makhsihed.livejournal.com]

You have it exactly right.

There's an integral Kemetic concept called "Zep Tepi", the First Time. It's the concept of the world as just-formed, just conceptualized, before isfet (unmaking/unnaming) set in.

Every sunrise is a return to Zep Tepi, a "soft reboot" of the universe. Every Wep Ronpet (New Year, in August, when Sirius rises over Egypt) is a return to Zep Tepi, a "hard reboot" of the universe.

Every morning we begin anew. Every year the cycle starts all over again and is wiped clean. So yes, it's cyclic, but each time it happens, it's as if for the first time.

That's really neat that you picked up on it without having the grounding in lore. :>

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Yes, I think this may be the first time I've had an experience of UPG that was followed -- quite rapidly -- by an unexpected confirmation from an external source.

[alfrecht.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit on it perfectly...

However, I do have a sense that some of the other deities and their pantheons have a similar way of understanding things as well...even though there is a linear time in the Indo-European languages (almost all of which have at least past, present, and future, if not further verb tenses), nonetheless there's an eternal quality to all of the different occurrences.

This is one of the things I'm trying to get across in The Bus Station, i.e. that because Antinous is "new" in the divine realm and bound to his human perspective because he was a deified human rather than a "born divine" god, he has trouble seeing all of the divine events happening at once, and while he does eventually overcome the limitations of linearity, it takes a lot of false starts and stops, which will be reflected at various stages in the narrative...Which is why the comics medium is so good for this story!

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Interesting!

I must confess that I need to go back and read more about The Bus Station.

I think that the Divine, pretty much by definition, exists in an eternal now. It's the human perception of time that differs between religious cosmologies. In this case, it may be simply a matter of Isis pulling together an image of great emotional impact for me (an eternal now of happy marriage, despite the pain of concurrent separation) with a striking concept in a book she knew I was going to pick up, to add impact to the theophany and reassure me that yes, I'm on right track as I take up something new.

[rainstardragon.livejournal.com]

I understand what you're saying, and in my own very limited experiences with the Egyptian deities I have to agree with you. Granted I have more experience with Baast than Isis and Osiris due to the large amount of cats that I grew up with and always asked her to protect and help me care for (which pleased her enough that when I moved away, one of the trailers I lived in had in the woodgrain Her image at the foot of my bed).

I'd like to add a similar observation for Amaterasu's hiding in the Celestial Cave and her re-emergence. It isn't as fresh and as if it's happening for the very first time every year, but every Winter Solstice, there is a definite "feel" to it for me. Rather like she didn't go into the same cave for the exact same reason, but of the past repeating in a similar way. Then again, this is my observances.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Your comments about Amaterasu's cave reminds me of one of my Christian friends who feels very strongly like she spends the month prior to Easter "at the tomb." Each year she's in a slightly different place, but she comes back each year and experiences the tomb in a new way.

[watersusurrus.livejournal.com]

Yes. Each time is Zep Tepi, the first time. Just as each new day is Zep Tepi, which I see others have explained much better then I. :)