This is one of several posts I have had in draft form on my blog for a while. It was originally started at 9:33 PM on 9/15/09. Since I was in the middle of reading a lot of stuff on ancient Egypt, it summarizes my coursework involving Egypt. Most of this was written a year and a half ago.
In college I took three classes on ancient Egypt. Fall of my freshman year I took a seminar about Egyptian artifacts in the Hearst Museum (NES 24). It explained what could be learned from the provenance (the fancy term for where an artifact was found and its history of ownership) of objects and examined the collection of objects not on public display.
As an aside, when I was looking at some of the pictures and history of the campus on display in Doe, I discovered there was a plan to build a museum to house the collections from Egypt and other artifacts next to Doe where Memorial Glade currently sits. Unfortunately, the plan was abandoned sometime around World War II.
Class number two on Egypt was an Introduction to Ancient Egypt (NES 18). I took it in the Fall of my sophomore year. The first time I walked into this class it felt like a real archaeology class. It was a big lecture hall (101 Morgan) with only a few scattered people in it. The lights were down the entire time as the professor lectured and the slide projector hummed and clicked. The treasures of kings thousands of years past were highlighted through sight and explanation, while students fell asleep or counted down the minutes until it was over. The lectures were neither boring nor useless, but a class from 5-6:30 in the evening where the lights are low is conducive to napping. I often brought coffee to help me stay awake.
This class offered an overview of Egyptian history. It also offered a textbook list which I bought and did not sell back at the end of the semester. For some reason it also fulfilled the college's social and behavioral science breadth requirement.
The third class I took was NES 103, Ancient Egyptian Religion. It was at the more reasonable hour of 12:30-2 in Barrows. The class covered religion as it was practiced and how it was set up with myths.
A big concern of Egyptian religion was the maintenance of maat, the right order and balance of things. If sacrifices or rituals were not properly observed to maintain maat, the forces of darkness would gain too much power. This would have dire consequences such as the Nile not flooding correctly or the sun not rising. Since the king was ultimately in charge of maintaining this order, religious duties were an important function of the government.
Another function of Egyptian religion was preparing people for the afterlife and preserving the souls of the dead. This went from teaching people knowledge so they could overcome any obstacles in the afterlife to how to offer food to the dead. My favorite death ritual was putting small people like figures in the tomb with the deceased. When the person was called upon to work the fields in the afterlife he could say a spell and send the small figures out to do the work for him and fulfill his responsibility. For anything that came up in the afterlife the Egyptians had a way around it. It was awesome.
Egyptian religious myths are scattered and inconsistent. For example, there were three different creation stories which conflicted with each other. However, the people knew all of the conflicting myths and were not troubled by their differences. They took the important lessons from each of the stories. Certain myths and gods were associated with specific cities and their popularity rose and fell with the political fortunes of their home cities.
My Egyptian knowledge is useful once in a while. When I was at the Cal bookstore I opened a book that was titled Egyptian Treasures in the British Museum (or something similar to that). When I saw a picture of a stela I said "This is a lie! That is Wepy. It is on display in Kroeber Hall." This is the piece I was referring to. Otherwise, my Egyptian knowledge is helpful when I watch Stargate SG-1.
If you ever want to know something about ancient Egypt, I have around a dozen books on the topic.
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