Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [41]
For centuries, the worship of Re had been based in Heliopolis, but gradually he was worshipped throughout Egypt. As a sun god, Re traveled in his boat through the sky and was reborn each day. In one story, man was said to be formed from Re’s tears. (The words for “tears” and “man” were very similar in Egyptian, just as in ancient Hebrew the words “earth” and “adam” found in the Genesis Creation story are also related.) Gradually, Re was fused with other Egyptian solar gods, and one way the Egyptians explained this was to identify Re with the sun at different times of the day. For instance, he was called Re-Horus as the morning sun and Re-Atum as the evening sun. In the Creation myth of Heliopolis that produced the Great Ennead, the god Atum was merged with Re into a single deity called Re-Atum. In this manifestation, he emerged as the creator god who fathered the first divine pair.
During the Middle and New Kingdoms, when Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power and wealth, Re and Amun—a powerful god worshipped in the cities of Thebes and Hermopolis—were also joined together to become Amun-Re and were viewed as an even more powerful national god. Amun-Re, king of the gods, creator of the universe, and father of the pharaohs, also became the lord of the battlefield. At the crucial Battle of Kadesh in 1286 BCE, when Ramses II defeated a Hittite army, legend has it that Amun-Re supposedly comforted the pharaoh when the battle was going against the Egyptians and promised, “Your father is with you! My powerful hand will slay a hundred thousand men.” Faced with defeat, Ramses II was saved by the seemingly miraculous arrival of reinforcements. After the battle, Ramses II apparently decided to make love, not war. He took the daughter of the Hittite leader as one of his seven wives, cementing a peace between the two ancient rivals.
If that notion of gods intervening in battle strikes modern readers as preposterous, primitive superstition, remember: there are many examples throughout history of similar divinely inspired victories. Various “war gods” have been credited with triumph in battles, especially against overwhelming odds. From the Greeks at Troy, to Joshua at Jericho, David and Goliath, and other biblical battles, the notion continued in the Christian era with Emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity after a religious vision led him to victory in 312 CE, and Joan of Arc, whose religious visions enabled her to lead French armies. The notion of gods interceding in battle is an old and revered tradition, and more than a few twentieth-century American generals have credited God with victories in America’s wars. It’s one reason football coaches still make their players pray in the locker room.
MYTHIC VOICES
Hail to you Osiris
Lord of Eternity, king of gods,
Of many names, of holy forms,
Of secret rites in temples.
—The Great Hymn to Osiris
Which god became Egypt’s lord of the dead?
After Re, no god was considered more important or greater in Egypt than Osiris, and no story was more important than the myth of his life, death, and rebirth. The son of Nut and Geb, Osiris had succeeded his father as the ruler of Egypt. With his sister Isis as his wife, this divine pair first civilized Egypt, and then Osiris decided to do the same for the rest of the world, leaving Isis in his place as ruler. After several years, he returned and found everything in order, as Isis had ruled wisely in his absence.
But his brother Seth was jealous of Osiris’s power and success, and plotted to kill him. In some versions of the myth, Seth’s jealousy was compounded when Osiris slept with Nephthys—their sister who was also Seth’s wife. In anger, Seth cursed their child, who became the jackal-headed god Anubis.
But Seth was not finished with Osiris. He invited his brother to a banquet attended by seventy-two of Seth’s accomplices. At the banquet, there was a beautifully carved wooden chest. In a Cinderella’s-slipper scenario, Seth offered the coffinlike box to whoever could fit inside it. All the guests tried to fit