If you go to the exhibit, which shows until mid-January, you should definitely get the audio program. The audio has three parts: an adult commentary, a children's commentary, and a translation of any hieroglyphics you see. You should listen to all three parts. The adult commentary has lots of information not found on the signs. The children's commentary adds more of the mythic stories to what you are seeing and is just plain more fun. The hieroglyphic translations will let you hear what invocations and rituals should sound like after your tradition matures for a few thousand years and everyone isn't just making it up. You should allow at least three hours to see everything and listen to all the commentary.
There are all sorts of cool artifacts covering many aspects of life in ancient Egypt. Most everything you could want is here. There are so many artifacts that I am not going to try to describe them. Instead, I am just going to present my impressions from looking at everything and tell you that you should go and see everything for yourself. These are just my impressions. I am not an Egyptologist and I may be wrong about some of these things. These are just what occurred to me as an experienced, practicing pagan looking at the artifacts of a pagan culture. That said, on to the impressions.
First, let's talk about the people. Egypt being a farming, culture the people were very in tune with nature and the turning of the seasons. Unlike in Europe, however, Egyptian nature is predictable. The river comes and goes at the same time every year, the crops always grow the same way. Farming, and the society based on it, was very ordered. Deviations from the natural order such as severe floods or droughts were rare and were great catastrophes. Order was good and unpredictability or chaos was evil. One manifestation of this was in the way they treated hair. Hair was wild and untamed. Lice and bugs could live in hair. Hair was unclean; only the poorest people were hairy. To be shaven was to be more pure. The priests had special barbers who shaved them completely every three days so that they would be pure enough to perform the daily rituals.
To fight the chaos, there were wards. To protect things, the Egyptians would carve an image of the God/King/Pharaoh doing battle with a chaotic enemy on whatever they wanted to protect. Often the enemy was blurry and changing. This image would scare away similar beings. The Pharaoh was a living God. He or she was powerful and magick. Since there was only one Pharaoh, he or she had to spend much of his or her life traveling all over Egypt to different palaces and temples performing rituals. That way everyone everywhere could benefit from the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh became a god when he or she became Pharaoh. After 30 years or so, perhaps corresponding to the Saturn return, the Pharaoh had to have a royal jubilee party where he or she would get recharged with the divine power.
Most of life was hard manual labor and people tended to be thin. Body fat was seen as a sign of wealth and power. And the most wealthy and powerful position that people could aspire to was that of scribe. Scribes were those 2% of people who could actually read and write. Scribes were the bosses. They were the ones who knew what needed to be done and gave the orders to do it. I'm talking about daily life kind of things, not wars and the like. They were managers, trained from childhood in writing and everyone wanted to be a scribe. Of course, some of this view may come from the fact it was the scribes who wrote the accounts of society we read.
The main thing about scribes was that they could write. Writing was a mystery to most people, and more importantly, writing was magick. The hieroglyphs were words, but they were also magick runes. Hieroglyphics actually means "holy writing." To write something with the runes gives it power and helps make it so. Hieroglyphics were written on the walls of all the buildings to give them purpose and empower them magickally.
Magick was part of everyday life. The magick signs were on all the walls, the priests were always doing rituals, and everyone had magick charms and tools to work with. One of the fascinating items in the exhibit is a carved hippopotamus horn. A mother would have used the horn as an athame to draw magick circles around the beds of children at night to keep out the evil, chaotic spirits. The horn is carved with the image of various animal gods themselves wielding carved horns and drawing circles. People also carried images of different gods on amulets or rings as magick to call that god's influence to them.
There were an amazing number of gods. There were, of course, great and powerful gods like Ra, Isis, and Set who represented a natural force or idea. But there were also an amazing num-ber of small gods (almost like the Catholic saints) who represent something small and specific. For instance, there was Neith, one of the four goddesses who personally guard different internal organs that have been removed from mummified bodies. Or there was Nefertem, the God of Perfume and Floral Design.
The small gods were often mix and match. Animal forms have power and the gods were often portrayed as part animal. If you wanted a god for an endeavor that involved strength, he or she would be part lion. Want hunting skill? Throw in some house cat. Courage was the domain of the fly. Flies are small and weak but they fight things many times their size and they never give up. This mix and match approach to god building makes it hard to identify many god statues. A statue with a lion head, for instance, could be any of dozens of gods for the various construction and warrior professions.
Anyway, go see the Gifts of the Nile exhibit. You'll like it....
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