Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods: Images of the Commune

By D. Meeks - C. Favard Meeks, Christine Favard-Meeks, Dimitri Meeks

Book Overview

This is the first English translation of a highly appealing volume originally published in French in 1993. Informed by a sense of wonderment at divine doings, it treats the ancient Egyptian gods as if they were an ethnic group that captured the fancy of ethnologists or sociologists.The book begins with a discussion of the gods' community as a society unto itself. The authors describe the structures of the society of the gods and some of the conflicts that frequently upset it, with individual gods acting to protect their own positions in an established hierarchy and struggling to gain power over their fellows. The nature of their immortal but not invulnerable bodies, their pleasures, and their needs are considered. What did they eat, the authors ask, and did they feel pain? The second part of the book cites familiar traditions and little-known texts to explain the relationship of the gods to the pharaoh, who was believed to represent them on earth. By performing appropriate rites, the pharaoh maintained a delicate equilibrium, balancing the sky home of the sun god, the underworld of Osiris and the dead, and the earth itself. While each world was autonomous and had its own mythological context, the separate spheres were also interdependent, requiring the sun's daily course and the pharaoh's ritual actions to ensure the cohesion of the universe.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801482488
• ISBN13: 9780801482489
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Excellent introduction to egyptian mythology

This is a very readable introduction that allows the reader to know not only the mythical stories about the gods but also its relation to ancient egypt culture and politics, and the conceptions that egyptians themselves had about them.

Intriguing approach makes for a wonderful treatment...

As both an Egyptologist and student of the Egyptian religion, I found this book a welcome addition to my library as well. By presenting the "gods" as a family and writing the book as if they were studying a group or tribe of everyday mortals, much information is gleaned about the structure and organization of Egyptian religion and its expression that can be missed in more lofty, philosophically or theologically-oriented texts. Where else can you read about the bodily functions of a divinity? Bravo to the Meeks' for adding a "foundation level" to our understanding of this most beautiful faith structure.

most original book on Egyptian religion to date

I am an Egyptologist, and I have read the manuscript of the English translation. This book is filled with a wealth of details missing from the other general books on Egyptian religion. It is my opinion that those wishing to read just one book on this subject will now have to read two: one of the other books, and this one