Download PDF The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization Robert K Ritner Books

Product details Series Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization (Book 54) Paperback 322 pages Publisher Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago; 3 edition (December 1, 1997) Language English ISBN-10 9780918986757 ISBN-13 978-0918986757 ASIN 0918986753

The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization Robert K Ritner Books Reviews

• This amazing volume, more footnotes than text, makes a great read on several levels for those interested. It tackles many individual issues in Egyptology whose status may be unclear otherwise. The first two chapters attempt to define 'heka', which is usually translated as 'magic', which is dealt with at great length as well as the meanings of many other terms whose true meanings do not translate easily. It is one of the few publications that discuss the nature of pH nTr, the encounter with the god(s). That alone would make it a great book. Ritner goes on to cover magical actions, materials, and the nature and social status of practitioners as well as the decline of practice in Roman times. This isn't just a summary mentioning execration figures and red pots. The summary of findings on the Mirgissa deposit is well worth a read. His writing is clear and in-depth with numerous references cited per page. The sheer volume of footnotes and references to other publications makes it a great resource for tracking down sources of information.
  
  The only drawback is the limited index of subjects covered. I ended up sticking endless post-it bookmarks in this large book to mark subjects of interest worth returning to.
• This is absolutely more for the academic than a pop culture book, so if you're looking for some light reading, look elsewhere. However, if you want something that is truly informative and you want to have a comprehensive understanding of Egyptian magical practice and it's application, look no further.
• Ritner has a low tolerance for what he sees as sloppy thinking and often sounds ill-tempered in writing. He's usually right, though, and never more importantly than in this book, his most fundamental contribution to Egyptology. He demolishes a lot of over-broad anthropological theories about the distinction between magic and religion and argues that scholars' prejudices about "magic" have gotten in the way of understanding Egyptian beliefs, as well as those of many other cultures.
  
  Ritner examines the concept of "heka", the Egyptian word that roughly translates as "magic", and points out that it was a morally neutral force that the creator god used to form the world, that all the gods used (including evil ones like Apophis), and that humans could take advantage of for beneficial or malicious purposes. He then discusses several other terms related to the concept of heka, followed by a selection of ritual practices encircling, spitting, licking, swallowing, images of bound prisoners, execration texts, the breaking of red pots, ritual violence to both people and images, and letters to the dead. This sample set of techniques isn't comprehensive. Unlike Geraldine Pinch's Magic in Ancient Egypt or Maarten Raven's Egyptian Magic, which are more wide-ranging but not as intellectually rigorous, this book is meant to define magic rather than describe every aspect of it.
  
  Ritner then discusses the close similarities between state-sponsored rites, such as those in temples, and the private rituals done for personal reasons such as healing the sick or cursing personal enemies. He asks who practiced the private rituals and concludes that the practitioners were invariably trained priests, who had plenty of off-time from their temple duties. Thus, although temple and personal rituals were performed for differing reasons, they used the same techniques and were performed by the same people, so there is no hard distinction between "magic" and "religion" on those grounds.
  
  Ritner concludes that heka is the power that binds things together, so that one thing, often a physical image, is a double (or ka) of another thing. By manipulating one, the ritualist can affect the other. The creator god first envisioned the world, then turned his idea into a physical form through the power of heka. Statues of gods are manifestations of those gods, figurines of human enemies are damaged or destroyed as a way of attacking the people they represent, and a human takes on the role of a god in both temple rituals and private healing spells. Words represent the things to which they refer (and in Egypt, the written word is literally an image), so that both spoken and written words are imbued with the power of heka. Heka is thus the common thread in such disparate elements of Egyptian culture as the beliefs about the gods, beliefs about the soul, the mystical power ascribed to writing, and the symbolism that pervades art. In short, heka "unites the tenets of Egyptian religion to the techniques of Egyptian religion". In my opinion, this is the most significant insight into Egyptian religion since Erik Hornung's Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, twenty years earlier.
  
  Better yet, this book is one of many that the Oriental Institute allows you to freely download from its website.