The Alchemical Ziggurat

Most interesting post. You'd be interested in "The Pyramid Source Book" by John DeSalvo, if you haven't read already.

Originally posted by Kantzveldt
reply to post by KilgoreTrout

 

Maybe, but you don't get the sense of the Gods being so present in the everyday scheme of things in Egypt as you do in Sumeria, apart from say Horus as incarnate through the Pharoah, and to a lesser extent Osiris and Isis in later times.

Coincidently, I have been watching a documentary series on the BBC...

www.bbc.co.uk...

....which covers more of the day to day lives of the 'average' Egyptians and from that basis I would have to disagree. Each household had it's own small temple, and in their homes they had frescos, probably painted by the lady of the house, depicting gods and goddesses of the domestic sphere, particularly those relating to fecundity and sexual pleasure. It seems, like with most things, the working class of Egypt have received less coverage in terms of finds. Of course, the Egyptian pantheon is far more straightforward, because life was more straight forward, much like the meditteranean, their beliefs were evolved from fertility cults. Death/Harvest. Spring/Reincarnation, but still, I should imagine, dependent upon vocation, you would find gods and goddesses particular to those professions depicted.

The difference would therefore be, in the terms that you suggest, that due to 'disasters' and 'tragedies' being a personal matter, so was ritual practice, where as in Sumeria, where flash floods, drought, or fires caused by under surface bitumen igniting, were a irregular, but ever present threat, causing widespread loss of life, the need for community worship was far greater. Life was disordered so they sought to control and order it, and explain tragedy when it occured. The Egyptians, for whom everything revolved around the highly predictable Nile, no such need existed.