El Andalous - Myths and Legends

 

Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt

I’m currently reading some non-fiction in the hope that it will inspire me for my next novel (on the basis that life can be stranger than fiction). I want to set my next book in Egypt, so I’ve been reading the Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley. It also means I’ve finally worked out how nice it is to highlight things in kindle, have the citations all collected, and I haven’t even ruined my copy of the book.

Some sections of the book have amused me, so I thought for this week’s blog, I’d share those (to my mind) funny moments with you.

“Myth, like logic, is a word derived from the Greed world. The Egyptians had no equivalent word or concept, and they did not feel the need to separate their thoughts into “fact” and “fiction”.

[I’m tempted to say that this explains a lot about pricing in Egypt]

“They wrote using either the elaborate and time-consuming hieroglyphic script or the more speedy hieratic and demotic scripts. None of these scripts included vowels, not because vowels did not exist, but because there was no perceived need to write them down.”

[Interesting, because to this day Arabic script is also generally written without using vowels]

“Great Honker [was] the goose who created the first sound”

[Sorry, I just found that amusing!]

“… the long-established Egyptian reluctance to commit anything bad to writing, lest that bad thing should bring its own bad luck”

[I found this interesting because in modern Egypt, Egyptians are very unwilling to say they can’t do something. I wonder if it’s connected to the Ancient Egyptian unwillingness to admit to anything bad?]

“…  no town was able to declare a link with the dead god’s penis, as that most important member had been eaten by the rapacious oxyrhynchus fish. Henceforth…. The Egyptians avoided eating fish…”

[That amused me, although Egyptians eat a lot of fish, at least in the Red Sea area. But it maybe explains why I don't like eating fish...]

“But the Universal Lord was angry again, as the judgement had not gone the way he intended. Turning on Horus he hurled a childish insult at him: ‘You are too feeble to be a strong king, and what’s more, your breath stinks.’”

[Ha ha!]

“Mild-mannered Osiris …. Is a powerful fertility god …, yet he demonstrates the ultimate in self-control during his famous coupling with Isis, when he himself remains inert (admittedly because he is dead).”

[Ha, ha, ha!]

“Egypt was, and of course still is, a hot, fly-infested country”

[I had to highlight that because it was so true]

“No deceased could arrive at the weighing ceremony with a heart, so hearts which were accidentally removed were sewn back, not always in the correct place.”

[This might be why people ask me what I’d do if I needed an operation while over here…]

Have a good week, everybody!