EGYPT'S LIGHT
Alfred D.
Byrd
Copyright 2011 Alfred D. Byrd
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Chapter 1: MYTHOLOGY
OF THE LAND of Ancient Egypt,
Legend
tells of a beginning
In which order was established
By a
process of creation
That began in lightless ocean.
Here appears
a single story
Of the many taught Egyptians
To explain the
world's unfolding.
From the vast primeval waters
Filled with
darkness born of chaos,
Life emerged, and land to bear it.
Light
arose and from the heavens
Shone on humans looking upwards
At
the sun, the god that ruled them,
And the moon, which marked out
seasons
For the planting and the harvest.
Law was spoken and
then written
To ensure that life continued
In an ever-turning
circle
Born again each day at sunrise.
In the vision of Egyptians,
Gods and goddesses
abounded.
Over all was Ra, the sun-god,
Maker of both
earth and heaven
In his early name of Atum.
Gods made he
from his own body,
Which gave birth as well to humans;
All else
spoke he into being.
Ra, each day, would sail in glory
In his boat
across the heavens
To give light to lands below him,
But each
night would sail through darkness
Where the demon Apep
waited
To consume his light forever.
Only if the sun-god
conquered,
Slaying Apep before morning,
Could the day come back
to Egypt.
Ruler and his priests with prayers,
And with endless
rites of magic,
Aided Ra in his dire combat
And ensured each
new day's dawning.
Gods and goddesses could marry
And give birth
just like us mortals.
Geb, the god of earth below
us,
Wedding Nut, the cow of heaven,
Fathered four
outstanding children —
Seth, Osiris, Nepthys, Isis —
Who
determined Egypt's future.
Like the kings whom Egypt honored
In
the days when mortals ruled there,
Brother took as wife his
sister:
Nephthys lived with Seth as husband;
Isis wedded with
Osiris.
Seth was dark, a lord of Chaos,
Kin to pigs and
males of hippos,
And to crocodiles and serpents.
Light, though,
shimmered on Osiris,
Teacher of the arts of living
In
communities of justice.
In a time set down in legend,
Egypt's
ruler was Osiris,
Bringing order out of conflict.
Godhood, though, was not perfection.
Sometimes,
even judges stumble,
Doing what they hate in others.
When
Osiris slept with Nepthys,
Sister-wife of Seth, his brother,
She
conceived a son, Anubis,
Who became the god of
mummies.
Jealous of his brother's glory
And enraged at Nepthys'
treason,
Seth, in vengeance, asked Osiris
To attend a splendid
banquet
Where Seth sealed his hated brother
In a chest and cast
him in it
To be drowned in Egypt's river.
Isis, grieving, claimed the body,
But, in fear
of her reviving
Dead Osiris through her magic,
Seth took back
his brother's body,
Cut the body into pieces,
And dispersed
them through all countries.
Isis, mourning murdered husband,
Vowed to make
him ever living.
Nepthys and Anubis helped her
Seek Osiris'
scattered organs.
Isis found what Seth had hidden,
Put her
husband back together,
And conceived by him a man-child
Who
would win his father justice.
Still, her triumph was not total.
Isis won no
life in Egypt
For her resurrected husband.
He must travel to
Amentet,
Land beyond the dusk's horizon,
Where he ruled
the dead in judgment,
Giving or denying mortals
Life eternal by
a river
Bearing Egypt's light and pleasure.
When the son of lost Osiris
Came of age, he
wanted vengeance
On the killer of his father.
Eighty years did
Seth and Horus
Fight each other in dark battles
In which
Horus nearly perished
Many times before his triumph.
In one battle born of vengeance,
Seth put out
the eyes of Horus,
But the goddess Hathor healed them,
And
Osiris' son kept fighting.
Eye of Ra who worked his
vengeance,
Hathor was a cow-horned goddess
Watching over love
and music,
Making beauty last, and giving
Children to a
childless woman.
Hathor, for her role in saving
Egypt's king
from loss of eyesight,
Would gain honor in the future
As the
mother of each ruler
Who would reign in place of Horus.
One day, Horus gave his kingship
To his sons,
Egyptian Pharaohs,
Mortals to mere human vision,
But the
blood of gods within them
Set them far above their subjects.
As
a god among his people,
Pharaoh took his throne in glory;
Son
of Ra and living Horus,
Pharaoh was a god made human.
Chapter Two: HISTORY
SO SPEAKS legend, but our science
Finds
another birth for Egypt.
At a time before the scribes had
Started to
record what happened,
Humans found a fruitful river
Flowing
south to north through desert.
Year by year, the river
flooded,
Bearing silt from distant mountains
To deposit it at
flood-time
On the banks where river-dwellers
Waited to begin
their planting.
Once the inundation ended,
Farmers sowed their
land with emmer —
Wheat, as the Egyptians knew it.
Soon,
it grew so well and widely
That it fed both slave and master;
It
piled up in well-built silos
For lean years when floods were
scanty.
Egypt thrived on bread of emmer
And on beer, fermented
barley;
Egypt thrived on fish and wildfowl,
Vegetables and
fruit in plenty.
By the banks rose towns and cities
That in time
became two kingdoms:
Upper Egypt, where the river
Flowed
straight through the southern desert,
And, above it, Lower
Egypt,
Where the river split asunder,
Flowing through a
fan-shaped delta
To Great Green, the sea beyond
it.
Upper Egypt, land of lotus,
Was protected by a vulture
With
a white crown rising cone-like;
Lower Egypt, of papyrus,
Was
protected by a cobra
With a red crown in a circle.
Scribes
invented hieroglyphics,
Meaning carved in stone to
capture
Words and deeds of Egypt's rulers
So that they might
live forever
In the memories of offspring.
It was first in Upper Egypt
That the rulers
felt ambition
To unite the Nile's long valley
Under one
supreme lawgiver.
Scorpion began the process
Of the
land's consolidation.
Narmer unified the kingdoms
And
put on both crowns together;
Narmer set his throne in Memphis
At
the Delta's fertile apex.
Henceforth, Egypt was one kingdom
From
the Delta's northern shoreline
To the cataracts far
southward
Where the Cushites came with trade-goods
To
buy part of Egypt's treasure.
Houses for the dead were fashioned
To preserve
unchanged the bodies
Of great rulers, priests, and nobles
For a
hope of resurrection.
Rituals of word and gesture
Brought all
souls, the priests assured them,
Passage into life eternal
Where
the dead, revived, could savor
Life beside a pleasant river
If
the grave-goods brought by loved ones
Were sufficient and
undamaged.
Early tombs held slaughtered servants
Who,
priests said, would serve their masters
Faithfully beyond the
sunset.
Later, tombs would hold ushabti,
Servants,
carved from stone or timber,
Who would come to life when
masters
Summoned them with spells to service
In the kingdom of
Osiris.
Death was not the end, but outset,
For the one whom
gods found pleasing
For right actions in one's lifetime
And
right offerings beyond it.
Making mummies out of nobles
With the
guidance of Anubis,
God of death, but life's preserver,
Workers
took from them their organs
(Brains, as useless, were
discarded)
To be sealed in jars forever.
Next, the workers
dried the bodies
In a bed of salt called natron,
Wrapped
the shriveled husks in linen
Holding amulets to give them
Life
again beyond the river,
And then sealed the finished mummies
In
sarcophagi to keep them
Safe, one hoped, from time's
destruction.
In the afterlife, a person
Came before the gods
for judgment.
While revived Osiris looked on,
Hearts set down
upon a balance
Were weighed out against a feather
Representing
truth and justice.
If one's heart outweighed the feather,
If
one's heart was filled with wrongness,
It would make the feather
rise up;
Then a monster ate the bad heart,
And one's life would
end in darkness.
If one's heart bore no transgressions,
It was
lighter than a feather;
Then one pleased the god Osiris,
And
one met a happy ending.
Egypt's king was called the Pharaoh,
'Great
house, palace,' for the building
Where he passed both laws and
judgment
On his subjects who must serve him.
Bearing crook
and flail, the Pharaoh
Told the subjects whom he
governed
That he was the loving shepherd
Who protected them
from strangers,
But the whip that would chastise them
If they
strayed from Pharaoh's pastures.
When the peasants were not
farming,
Pharaoh called them out to serve him
In his army for
his battles,
Or to build the gods new temples.
When the
Pharaoh's lifetime ended,
He became a new Osiris
Reigning over
Egypt's fortunes
While his son, the living Horus,
Ruled in life
beneath Ra's heaven.
Over time, as Egypt prospered,
Pharaohs grew in
their ambition
To preserve their names and actions
For their
kin, yet unbegotten,
And to reign in pomp and glory
In the West
as kings forever.
One proud ruler, Pharaoh Djoser,
Sought
a way to climb to heaven
And to rule the land forever
As a star
that shone upon it.
His assistant, wise Imhotep,
First
of architects to awe us
With the monuments of giants,
Stacked
up houses in a ladder
Of four sides and pointed summit
From
which Djoser's soul could fly up
To the sky to be enthroned
there.
For Imhotep's matchless wisdom
As a doctor, scribe, and
scholar,
He became a god in Egypt,
Which would call on him for
healing.
Later Pharaohs felt an impulse
To outdo the
feat of Djoser.
They built ladders straight, not stair-stepped
—
"Pyramids," the Greeks would call them —
That
still dazzle Egypt's tourists
When four thousand years have
vanished
Since the pyramid's construction.
Not on ladders, but
on sunbeams,
Would the Pharaohs reach the heavens!
Haughty
Khufu, greatest builder,
Raised a mountain in the
desert.
Son and grandson, aping forebear,
Built two lesser
mountains by it.
Those who see the three great mountains
Say
that nothing else can match them.
In the tombs, the Pharaohs' mummies
Lay while
spells in hieroglyphics
Meant to make each organ flourish
With
new life beyond the sunset
Failed to keep vile gangs of
robbers
From despoiling royal grave-goods.
Pharaohs stuck on
poles the robbers
Whom they caught, but others prospered,
Making
gold and jeweled grave-goods
Serve the purpose of the living.
Pride gives birth to its destruction.
Rendered
poor by endless building,
Egypt foundered, Pharaohs falling
Into
weakness and confusion
Till a queen became a Pharaoh
In the
place of true-born princes,
But could not hold back the
darkness.
Minor nobles fought for kingship;
Poverty and famine
threatened
Lives as social order weakened.
In the time of
Egypt's chaos,
Commoners aspired to savor
Through the blessings
of Osiris
Life eternal like the Pharaoh's.
Over time, the chaos turned to
Order as new
Pharaohs gathered
Back a rule that had been scattered.
Thebes,
a southern city, prospered,
Housing Pharaohs who made
Amon
Greatest of the gods of Egypt.
In the south, the
dark god Amon
Was the hidden one of Karnak,
Where the
world's most mighty temple
Rose to shelter Amon's image.
In his kingdom, writing prospered.
Scribes
recorded tales of wonder
That had entertained the people
In the
marketplace as singers
Told of distant lands and customs.
Scribes
recorded also proverbs
To instruct the young and foolish
In the
way of wealth and friendship
That would ease their earthly
lifetime
And win favor from Osiris
When they came to him for
judgment.
No great kingdom lasts forever.
Egypt met a
second chaos
When the Hyksos, vile invaders
From the
lands beyond the Delta,
Conquered it and set up thrones
there.
Ruling their new realm, the Hyksos
Changed the nature of
religion:
Seth, the killer of Osiris,
Now became the god to
worship.
Over time, the vile invaders
Stretched their
rule to Upper Egypt
Until Thebes, the seat of Pharaohs,
Hosted
kings with foreign features.
Hyksos ruled, but won no love
from,
Egypt's people, who would follow
Theban princes, serving
Amon,
In a war for liberation.
Foremost of the Theban
princes,
Ahmose, driving Hyksos elsewhere,
Reigned
henceforth in Thebes as Pharaoh.
Those who won, the new Egyptians,
Called the
Hyksos evildoers
And despised them ever after.
Still, the
Hyksos brought some blessings:
Horse and chariot first
entered
Egypt in the Hyksos' heyday;
Lute and lyre first sang
in Egypt
When the Hyksos brought them southwards.
Dawn arose again in Egypt
As in Thebes a line
of Pharaohs
Born of Ahmose raised the kingdom
To its time of
greatest glory.
In this new Egyptian kingdom,
Pharaohs
prospered, even dying:
Theban Pharaohs sealed their bodies
Into
rock-cut tombs on cliffsides
From which one could watch the
sunrise
Over Egypt's fruitful river
And the temples raised at
Karnak.
Three great Pharaohs known as Thothmes
Turned
a kingdom into empire
As they formed a mighty army
For the
safety of their borders
And for conquests to extend them
South
to Cush to seize its gold mines,
North to Canaan and beyond
it
To a river much like Egypt's.
Pharaohs conquered Cush to
gather
Gold for monuments and temples
That still awe the hearts
of tourists
When three thousand years have vanished.
In the time of kings named Thothmes
Came a
female king, Hatshepsut.
Daughter of the first-named
Thothmes,
She was married to her brother
Of the same name as
his father
To preserve the godly bloodline,
But conceived no
son to claim it.
When her husband Thothmes perished,
Pharaoh's
crown passed to a minor
Born of concubine's conception.
He, the
third to be named Thothmes,
Waited long to govern Egypt,
For
Hatshepsut ruled as regent,
Then as Pharaoh in her own right.
She,
to comfort Egypt's people,
Who mistrusted female rulers,
Claimed
descent from gods in heaven
And put on men's clothes and
whiskers
So that Egypt's eyes could see her
As a man in female
body.
Egypt prospered while she ruled it.
Bringing goods from
distant nations,
She built monuments to awe us;
She, a
diplomat, not warlord,
Kept the peace with lands around her.
Thothmes, though, when he got older,
Slept
above a holy statue —
Sphinx, a king with lion's body
—
Largely covered by the desert.
Sphinx announced by dream to
Thothmes
That, if he would clean the sand off,
He would reign
alone as Pharaoh.
How the boy replaced Hatshepsut,
History no
longer tell us
(Illness may have claimed her body
To her
stepson’s jubilation),
But he struck her name from statues
To
conceal that Egypt ever
Had a woman as its Pharaoh.
(Thothmes'
efforts were imperfect,
Else we would not know her story.)
He,
when king, went forth to conquer,
Making Egypt's greatest empire.
Gods and priests, though, challenged Pharaoh
For
the mastery of Egypt.
Where titanic temples honored
Amon as the
king of heaven,
Amon's darkness joined his nature
To the light
of Ra, the sun-god.
Amon-Ra now reigned in heaven
And
controlled the fate of Egypt.
Priests of Amon's shrine at
Karnak
Won great wealth and might to match it.
Pharaohs fearing
priestly power
Sought a way to overcome it.
As time passed, the name of Aten,
Solar
disk with hands to offer
Life to those who sought a blessing,
Came
to challenge Karnak's power.
Pharaoh of a peaceful
kingdom,
Amonhotep favored Aten,
But, in fear of
priests' reprisals,
He preserved the rites of Amon.
Amonhotep's son as Pharaoh
Took a new name,
Akhenaten,
To tell Egypt his devotion
To one god without
an equal.
Akhenaten, strange of feature,
Said that just the
sun-disk, Aten,
Had a claim to praise and worship.
With the
lovely Nefertiti
At his side in his decisions,
Akhenaten
closed the temples
Of all gods but his dear Aten
And removed
the throne of Pharaoh
To a new site in the desert.
In the days
of Akhenaten,
Egypt's art defied tradition.
Both in carvings
and in paintings,
Pharaoh, wife, and children came out
Far from
perfect in appearance,
But showed loved ones their affection
As
they hugged and kissed each other
While the Aten shone upon them.
Lack of sons from a great lady
Justly
recognized for beauty
Was a blow to Akhenaten.
Nefertiti bore
just daughters.
When her husband died, the country
Came to
serve a prince whose parents
No one now can name for certain.
He
was crowned as Tutankhaten,
But, when priests of old gods
rallied,
He would change to Tutankhamon
As restorer of
tradition.
He died young with little glory,
But, because his
tomb was hidden
Mostly safely from vile robbers,
Our eyes
marvel at his grave-goods,
And we know him best of Pharaohs.
Those who followed Tutankhamon
Tried to strike
the name of Aten
And the pharaohs who had served him
From the
monuments of Egypt.
Noblemen who married daughters
Of the line
that Ahmose founded
Sat upon the throne of Pharaoh
Till a new
line came from Ramses,
Warlord who served Pharaoh
wisely,
To bring Egypt to its zenith.
Egypt's most outstanding Pharaoh,
Second of the
kings named Ramses,
Spread his name from Cush to Canaan.
Living
long, he built profusely,
Though he often chipped out names
of
Pharaohs who had reigned before him,
And replaced those with
his own name.
Living long, he moved his throne room
From the
south into the Delta
So that he could quickly deal with
Enemies
who came from Asia.
Living long, he fought great
battles
With a northern foe, the Hittites,
Whom he
boasted of defeating,
But with whom he made a treaty
Sealed
with two resplendent weddings
To king's daughters of the
"vanquished."
Living long, he married often,
Fathering
a host of children
Who grew old beside her father
And would
hardly long outlive him.
His successors kept the empire
Strong until the
third named Ramses
Faced invasions from all quarters.
Enemies
of Egypt prospered —
Cushites, Libyans, and Sea
Peoples —
And though Ramses fought them boldly
And
secured the empire's borders,
Egypt's foes had cost it dearly
In
its gold and lives of soldiers.
Lesser Pharaohs, though named Ramses,
Let the
kingdom fall to ruin.
Cush and Canaan won their freedom;
Vulture
left the side of cobra
As the kingdom re-divided.
In the Delta
reigned weak Pharaohs
While, in Thebes, the priests of
Karnak
Ruled beneath a Pharaoh's daughter
Who became the wife
of Amon.
When strong rule returned to Egypt,
It was
foreign hands that governed.
Libyan Sheshonq built an
empire;
Then a Cushite king, Shabaqo,
From a land once
held in bondage,
Ruled the seed of former masters.
Things got worse for once-great Egypt.
Kings
came down from distant Asshur
In the Land Between the
Rivers
To drive out the Cushite Pharaohs,
And the wars of
Cush and Asshur
Drained the land of wealth and people.
When
great Asshur got in trouble,
Psamtek, once a puppet
Pharaoh,
Brought in Greeks and Jews to help
him
Raise his kingdom from the ashes.
Necho, son of
Psamtek, fashioned
A renewed Egyptian empire,
But this empire
lived in peril
Of the hostile lands around it.
Babylon, which conquered Asshur,
Briefly
offered Egypt freedom.
When, though, Babylon was conquered
By
the warlike land of Persia
Far beyond the dawn's
horizon,
Egypt faced a new oppressor
Worse than any foe before
it.
Mad Cambyses conquered Egypt
To bring glory to his
empire
And made Egypt just a province
Sending wealth to
Persia's heartland.
Persians sometimes showed respect for
Egypt's
ancient laws and worship,
But at other times were brutal,
Making
Egypt starve to send its
Food to furnish Persian banquets.
For twelve decades, Egypt languished
Under
Persian domination;
Then a prince named Amyrtaios
Forced
from Egypt Persia's soldiers
And restored Egyptian freedom.
This
was fragile, though, and short lived,
For the Persians soon
reconquered
Egypt and restored its bondage.
Amyrtaios' wan
successor,
Nectanebo, last of Pharaohs
Born of Egypt's
blood and culture,
Hid in Upper Egypt till he
Might regain his
throne and empire,
But he died, receiving neither.
No one of Egyptian parents
Would regain the
throne of Horus.
Persia fell, and Greeks took over
Till the
Romans forced all nations
To obey a western empire.
Roman
laws and Grecian language
Changed the old Egyptian customs;
Then
the Christians taught the people
To reject the gods of
Egypt
For a Jewish God made human
To set free all souls from
judgment.
No one studied hieroglyphics,
And their meaning
was forgotten.
Though the monuments were standing,
None
recalled their rites of worship.
Centuries of silence went by
As
each visitor to Egypt
Gaped at monuments of giants
And told
stories of their making —
Stories wrong on what had happened!
By strange chance, invading soldiers
Found a
stone with an inscription
In both Greek and hieroglyphics.
From
the stone, devoted scholars
Learned to read again the legends
And
the history set down here
To recall the proud Egyptians.
Though their empire has departed,
And their
monuments are ruined,
We still see the proud Egyptians
In their
paintings, where they show us
How they lived in grace and
beauty.
We can read their hieroglyphics
Carved in stone to tell
a future
That adores the proud Egyptians
Of their glory and
their downfall.
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this epic poem, you may also
enjoy my other Ancient Egyptian writings: my young-adult novella,
Asenath’s Tale, and my Biblical epic, The Stars Bow.
Down. Both of these works are available at Lulu. Com.
You may also enjoy the Ancient Egyptian historical novel, Asenath, by Anna Patricio. This is available as e book or as paperback at Amazon. Com and other on-line booksellers.
About the Author
If you liked Egypt’s Light, you can
read more of my work at:
"Christian Writings by
Alfred D. Byrd,"
http://www.byrdthistledown.com
I’m also the author of the following books,
available from all major on-line booksellers:
Thistledown
Through the
Gate of Horn: The First Thread of the Dhitha Tapestry
The Ghost of
Pelfrey's Bend
On the Wings of Dream: The Second Thread of the
Dhitha Tapestry
Trinity, Canon, and Constantine: Clear Light on
the Early Church
Kabbalah for Evangelical Christians
and of the following books available from
Lulu.com.
Asenath’s Tale
At the
Brink of War: The Fourth Thread of the Dhitha Tapestry
Between Two
Fires
A Convergence at Shiloh: An Epic of the American Civil
War
In the Fire of Dawn: The Third Thread of the Dhitha
Tapestry
The Light
Perryville: An Epic of the American Civil
War in Kentucky
The Road to Bull Run: An Epic of the American
Civil War
A Song of the One
The Stars Bow Down
To Dream
Atlantis
To the Throne of God: The Fifth Thread of the Dhitha
Tapestry