Ancient Egypt is certainly the most popular ancient culture, at least in the West. Semiserious amatuers travel to Egypt and visit the monuments firsthand; more casual consumers of the culture content themselves with museum exhibits, coffee-table books, and TV specials starring Zahi Hawass; and any number of New Age mystics are convinced they are the reincarnation of Nefertiti. Professional Egyptologists, who have to make a buck just like everybody else, feed the need through popular books. The Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, by French Egyptologists Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks, is right on the cusp between a popular work and a scholarly publication. The intent is laudable; an explanation of Egyptian religion from the “point of view” of the gods rather than the populace. There’s a discussion of the creation myths, an explanation of gods’ physical properties, accounts of intra-divine conflict, and the expectations the gods have of their worshippers and the worshippers have of their gods. It’s cogently and coherently told, and very extensively referenced, with endnotes every few sentences using primary ancient sources to justify the authors’ points. The references, in turn, are the most extensive available; for example, the authors use the eight-volume De Buck edition of The Coffin Texts rather than the more available R. O. Faulkner version.


Alas, attempts to popularize any aspect of ancient Egyptian culture always runs into trouble over the length of time that the culture existed and the scarcity of archaeological information. And there’s a second problem: the tendency of Egyptologists to divide into language experts, who base their conclusions on textual evidence, and archaeologists, who use physical data. In the area of ancient religious beliefs, this is most clearly illustrated by the Osiris myth cycle.


The version as presented in most works based on textual data – including this one – is probably familiar. Osiris is an ancient king of Egypt, son of Geb (earth) and Nut (sky). His brother Set becomes jealous and tricks Osiris into entering a coffin, which is then sealed and thrown into the Nile. Osiris’s sister/wife Isis tracks the coffin to Byblos but before she can revive Osiris by magic Set intervenes again, chops the body into 14 pieces, and scatters the parts over Egypt. Isis gathers up the pieces, replaces an essential missing bit by magic, temporarily reanimates the corpse, and becomes pregnant with Horus. Horus, although persecuted by Set, eventually reaches adulthood and regains his father’s throne from the usurper; Osiris becomes King of the Underworld. Set is identified as an evil god and Isis as a goddess of magic and love.


There is an ancient Egyptian text relevant to the story, usually called The Contendings of Horus and Set. In the Contendings, Osiris is dead, Horus has grown to adulthood, and the gods are debate whether Horus will be allowed to reclaim his father’s throne. (He does, after his father threatens to intervene, but Set gets compensated with a couple of Canaanite fertility goddesses). Set is not portrayed as particularly evil – more as stupid and impetuous. Horus is not a particularly sympathetic character either; in fact none of the gods come across as particularly noble.


There are lots of ancient Egyptian texts relating to Osiris’ role as god of the Underworld – he presides over the famous “Weighing of the Heart” scene in the Book of the Dead, which is basically a set of directions on how to get to him and what to do when you get there.


So that’s the story as far as the texts go – at least the lengthier ones – and that’s more or less the story in Meeks and Favard-Meeks as well. The catch is the archaeological evidence tells a somewhat different tale.


The pieced-together archaeological story is:

Horus and Set are originally local gods of Lower and Upper Egypt, respectively. Horus is more popular with royalty; there’s practically no evidence of how the rest of the populace felt.

An afterlife is originally limited to the Pharaoh, who is a god himself and therefore entitled to go somewhere after he dies. Commoners are out of luck, although there’s a possibility that they can somehow tag along.

Eventually commoners get a formal afterlife – but the god in charge is Anubis, not Osiris. The commoner afterlife is fundamentally different from the royal afterlife.

Set, when he appears, is usually a warrior god, particularly charged with defending the boat of Ra against attacks by the Serpent of Chaos, Apep. He is associated with storms and the desert and a weird looking animal that has been variously interpreted as a warthog, an aardvark, and a space alien. When dangerous animals appear in tombs as hieroglyphs, they are usually show damaged so they won’t come to life and bother the occupant; the Set animal is included in this category.

The commoner afterlife gradually changes from one ruled by Anubis to one ruled by Osiris. Anubis remains as a psychopomp. Royal afterlife remains different; royalty gets to sail around the sky with Ra or Amun while commoners go to the Field of the Blessed with Osiris. A cult of Osiris is established at Abydos and, judging from the number of offering found, is a popular place for pilgrimages. A First Dynasty royal tomb is reinterpreted as the tomb of Osiris.

With the establishment of an Egyptian empire in the Near East, Set becomes more popular (at least to royalty) as a warrior god. Three pharaohs (Seti I, Seti II, and, of course, Setnakht) incorporate Set into their names. However, when Seti I (literally “He of Set”) built a temple in Abydos, the traditional burial place of Osiris, he avoided offending local sensibilities by replacing the name “Set” with “Osiris” in all his titles.

With the decline of Egyptian military strength Set becomes increasingly unpopular; he becomes associated with foreign gods, notably the Canaanite storm god Sutekh. By now, it’s apparently considered bad luck to even mention Set, he is called “He of Nubet”, after his cult center at Ombos (Egyptian Nubet). Osiris and Isis remain popular and (especially Isis) spread to foreign countries, especially Greece and Rome. Horus is reimagined as “Horus the Child”.

As Christianity replaces the ancient religion, the story of the resurrected Osiris, Isis the Mother, and the Evil Set all have resonances. Some of the earliest Christian tombs in the catacombs at Alexandria show the deceased being conducted to Heaven by Anubis and welcomed by Jesus.

As the ability to read ancient Egyptian is lost, the only remaining account of the Osiris/Set/Isis/Horus story is in the classical authors.


And that’s the problem with accounts like Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods. Despite the attempt to synthesize Egyptian religion, every statement should be preceded by something like “Based on fragmentary texts and artifacts from widely separated localities and dating from very widely separated time periods, Egyptians from one of those localities and at one of those times might have thought about their gods this way”. Thus, despite the obvious intensive scholarship, I can only recommend it if you keep that warning in mind. ( )

Translated from the French, this work by two Egyptologists looks at the gods of Ancient Egypt like a royal family and considers their interaction with each other, the pharoah (as their earthly representative), and the people of Egypt. Has some photos, a map, and a family tree of the gods. ( )