Works of fiction often give Egypt, both ancient and modern, a special atmosphere, painting it as place where the most miraculous things could come to life at any moment. If the characters do not encounter spellwork during their journey, then they would at least find out about some ancient and terrible curse. Or sometimes, it turns out that the sands of Egypt were hiding a secret, a mystery of a nature that human mind is not truly able to comprehend without mentally preparing for it. But what inspired all these stories?
The previous entry in this series investigated the enigmatic side of ancient Egyptian history. This blog post deals with history as well: cultural history. It will give a glimpse of the magical and esoteric traditions of Ancient Egypt.
The Magic Spells of Ancient Egypt
As I have written previously, Ancient Egypt had a very rich religious life with its many cults, rituals and mystic rites. Mysticism was sewn into the cultural and intellectual life of the country. And as it often happened in the ancient world, mysticism led to the development of magic.
Magic spell formulas were written on papyri, carved on stelae, and painted on the walls of tombs. Thanks to the dry environment of the Egyptian deserts, fragments of many magical papyri have survived to this day. Due to this, we have a picture of how the culture of magic looked like and what spells the ancient Egyptians used.
An Egyptian spell was normally made up of a prayer dedicated to particular deity, accompanied by libations and sacrifices or application of magic potions whilst the spellcaster made their wish. There were a variety of spells in ancient Egypt. Love spells and healing spells were common, but there were spells for many other occasions. Fragments of one papyrus describe the formula of an invisibility spell. There was even a spell that was able to improve a person’s singing voice, as described in a different papyrus. What results the latter two spells achieved is a question that I personally find interesting.
Egyptians used a variety of bizarre ingredients to make magic potions. Examples include crocodile eggs, dung, monkey eyes, herbs such as myrrh and peony, and the milk of a black cow.
Magic Stela. The part below the central panel depicting several Egyptian deities records magical spells intended to protect from illnesses caused by venomous snake bites. Egypt. 360-343 BC. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accession Number: 50.85
One of the forms of magic practiced in Ancient Egypt was necromancy. It was said that that a spellcaster could summon the spirit of a dead person. The method was more or less the same as with other types of magic spells and consisted of a mix of incantations and offerings. The correct ingredients and charms needed in spells to summon the soul of the deceased depended on the manner of their death. So summoning a drowned man and murdered man required different spells.
The Intellectual Capital of the Ancient Mediterranean
A common trope that appears in a significant number of works of speculative and adventure fiction that delve into the matter of Ancient Egypt involves depicting the country as a storage of millennia-old wisdom and a land of lost knowledge. And, technically, this notion has basis in real history. Egypt was indeed the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean world for several centuries.
Alexander the Great, who had conquered vast territories from the Bosphorus to the Indus River, died in 323 BC at the age 33. None of his closest relatives had the skills and characteristics that would have allowed them to rule a state of this size, so the empire soon descended into strife and unravelled in less than two decades. Several successor states emerged on its ruins, one of them being Egypt, where Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s generals, took the throne. Unable to make his powerbase the political hegemon of the region, Ptolemy tried to turn his new capital, Alexandria, into the world's cultural centre. Ptolemy acquired texts and scrolls from across the Hellenistic world; works of literature and science, philosophy and religion. He invited the most renowned scholars of the time to his capital. So it was during that time one of the most famous symbols of Antiquity came to be: the Great Library of Alexandria.
It should be mentioned that the Library of Alexandria was not really a library in the modern definition of the term. It was a type of research institute. The scholars affiliated with the library came to study its collections and to teach students as well just as modern academics do at universities. Strabo, the Roman geographer, who visited the city in the 1st century BC described the Library as having communal rooms, dining rooms, and gardens. The presence of scholars facilitated learning, and many schools opened in Alexandria. And some of the most renowned figures in the cultural history of the Antiquity had connections to the Library of Alexandria. One of them was Callimachus, a Greek poet of the 3rd century BC who is particularly acclaimed for his satirical poems. Another was Apollonius of Rhodes, the author of the Argonautica, the epic poem that tells the most famous version of the story about the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts. There have been claims that the mathematician and inventor Archimedes might have taught or studied at the Library.
It is impossible to say how large the collection of texts stored at the Great Library of Alexandria was. According to a source known as the Letter of Aristeas, the head of the royal library, Demetrius of Phalerum, claimed that the Library already had over 200,000 books in its collection in the 3rd century BC. And the catalogue of books only kept growing. A popular legend states that any ship that docked in Alexandria’s port was searched and any book found on board was taken to the Library where a copy was made. The copy was then returned to the owners whilst the original was kept by the Library.
19th century artistic rendering of the Great Library of Alexandria
The Great Library of Alexandria also has a connection to the story of one of the most famous books in history. Back in the 3rd century BC, the Egyptian King Ptolemy Philadelphus, the successor of Ptolemy I, commissioned the translation of the Torah into Greek. Aside from wishing to have more influential texts in the Library’s archives, Ptolemy was driven by a different motive. Since at least the times of Persian rule, Egypt had a sizable Jewish minority. As they had been living in the country for generations, many had no knowledge of Hebrew, but had adopted the usage of Greek in their daily lives. Though they were an ethic minority, they were an influential group, particularly in commerce, so there is no surprise the king wanted to gain favour with them.
A legend states that the heads of the Great Library wrote to the High Priest of Jerusalem with a request to send scribes to Alexandria in order to make this idea reality. The High Priest agreed and sent his best 72 scribes. It was said that the books were translated in 72 days. The translation became known as the Septuagint in honour of those 72 scribes. As centuries passed, more sacred Hebrew books, both canonical and apocrypha, were translated in Alexandria and added to the Septuagint.
Thus, an important point in the development of the Old Testament and future Christian cannon took place within the walls of the Great Library. Moreover, the versions of the Old Testament used by both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church are based on the Septuagint.
The Library of Alexandria had no rivals in terms of prestige and renown across the Graeco-Roman world. It was a treasure-trove of ancient culture, science, and wisdom. The Great Library’s fame became immortal…but the Library and its collection itself did not. The Library of Alexandria disappeared by the end of Antiquity; its vast collection of books perished. It is still unclear which one of the military disasters or natural calamities that devastated Alexandria during Late Antiquity brought about its end. Even its exact location has not been identified.
Spiritual Growth and the Deserts of Egypt
I previously wrote how harsh and inhospitable Egypt’s deserts can be to those who venture into them. And yet there have always been people who found solace amidst the sands, rocks, and dunes. Already back in the early centuries of the first millennium AD, many Christian monks chose the Egyptian desert as their place of hermitage. Early Church fathers and authors of the New Testament such as John the Evangelist stressed that forsaking the world and worldly pleasures were central to spiritual growth and learning to be close to God.
So it is not surprising that these ascetics chose the wilderness of the desert as their new residence, for the solitude such an inhospitable yet undisturbed environment offered a stark contrast to the bustling lives of the villages and cities the hermits had come from. Some came together to form monastic communities, a few of which can still be found residing in isolated monasteries in the deep of the desert even nowadays. Others chose complete solitude and went on to live as ascetics alone in the wilderness. Either way, there in the desert, they spent their days in prayer and meditation. Some went even further and climbed up specially-erected poles or raised platforms known as stylites where they would spend years or even decades without getting down to the ground.
St Anthony meeting St Paul of Thebes. 18th century Coptic icon. Egypt.
The two men are among the most revered Desert Fathers
I should mention that this phenomenon was not exclusive to the Egyptian desert. Hermits found home in deserts across other provinces of the Roman Empire, such as Syria. And yet the hermits of Egypt were particularly respected by the Church. A collection of texts later emerged, known as the Saying of the Desert Fathers, based on the experiences and sayings of the monks in the Egyptian desert. It told stories about the hermits’ encounters with angels and temptations by demons. It contained advice on a variety of topics, including humility, virtue, and conscience. Not surprisingly, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers went on to become a popular text among different monastic communities of Christianity.
Between Heresy and Esotericism: Gnosticism in Ancient Egypt
As different Graeco-Roman philosophies and later Christianity spread into Egypt, they came into contact with a strong tradition of mysticism. At times, they mingled and fused, resulting in the creation of completely new spiritual movements.
Gnosticism was one of the beliefs that entrenched itself in Egypt during Late Antiquity. Gnosticism was a teaching that derived from early Christianity, but developed its own unique dualistic cosmology. The Gnostics believed the soul originated in the spirit realm and viewed the physical world as a prison. Gnosticism might not have originated in Egypt, but Egypt became a major centre of this movement.
Gnosticism spread across Europe and the Middle East during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages despite opposition from the Church and its attempts to suppress the practice. The most famous offshoot of Gnosticism was a spiritual movement known as the Cathars who flourished in central France in the 12th and 13th centuries. The existence of a Gnostic stronghold right in the heart of Christendom was seen as a threat by the heads of the Catholic Church, and in 1208 the Roman Pope Innocent III actually declared a crusade against the Cathars. But that is a different story.
Fragments of the Apocryphon of John, an ancient Gnostic text
A number of Gnostic texts were uncovered discovered in Egypt. The most notable of them are the Nag Hammadi codices found in the Egyptian desert in the late 1940s. Another notable discovery was made in 1896 when the German scholar Carl Reinchardt bought several partially preserved previously unknown texts at one of the antique shops in Cairo. They came to be known as the Berlin Codex. Known Gnostic texts survived only partially, so we might never find out the full details of the universe as seen by the adherents of Gnosticism themselves.
The Most Famous Esoteric Tradition of Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt is believed to have been the birthplace of another school of esoteric thought: Hermeticism. This tradition too originated during the Antiquity. Its foundation is ascribed to a mysterious figure known as Hermes Trismegistus, who had some connection to the ancient Greek god of trade and oratory craft, Hermes, though it is really hard to speculate to what extent. Hermetic teachings are mainly known from a collection of texts known as the Corpus Hermeticum.
What is intriguing about Hermeticism is how it manages to combine elements of Christianity, Graeco-Roman philosophy, Greek religion, and Egyptian religion whilst clearly being something completely different. The Hermetic texts mainly take the form of dialogues between Hermes Trismegistus and some characters or possibly entities. One of his partners in debates is named Asclepius, who shares the name with the Greek god of medicine. Another one is Thot, the Egyptian god of wisdom. The centre of worship in Hermeticism was a divine entity known as the Mind, from which Light, Nature, and Good originated. Everything in the universe came to be through it. Adherents of Hermeticism believed that the purpose of existence was in understanding the Mind.
15th century inlaid floor panel depicting Hermes Trismegistus in the Siena Cathedral
History’s earliest spells recorded in writing, the most unusual forms of religious syncretism, rational philosophy that basks in occultism, concepts that seem scientific yet cannot be proved by empirical ways, the world’s greatest storehouse of information that disappeared without a trace…all of these were a feature of Ancient Egypt's cultural life. These ideas might feel surreal and incomprehensible. And yet, they are surprisingly memorable, adding more mystique to Egypt as a setting.
There one more instalment left to go in this series. In the meantime, I have a prepared a couple of more questions.
Questions for the readers:
Different sources disagree on when and how the Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed. In your opinion, who was responsible for the library’s destruction?
What ideas or concepts does Hermeticism remind you of?
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