Profane Egyptologists

The Modern Revival of Ancient Egyptian Religion

Paul Harrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351594738
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

It is widely believed that the practice of ancient Egyptian religion ceased with the end of pharaonic culture and the rise of Christianity. However, an organised reconstruction and revival of the authentic practice of Egyptian, or Kemetic religion has been growing, almost undocumented, for nearly three decades. Profane Egyptologists is the first in-depth study of the now-global phenomenon of Kemeticism. Presenting key players in their own words, the book utilises extensive interviews to reveal a continuum of beliefs and practices spanning eight years of community growth.

The existence of competing visions of Egypt, which employ ancient material and academic resources, questions the position of Egyptology as a gatekeeper of Egypt's past. Exploring these boundaries, the book highlights the politised and economic factors driving the discipline's self-conception. Could an historically self-imposed insular nature have harmed Egyptology as a field, and how could inclusive discussion help guard against further isolationism?

Profane Egyptologists is both an Egyptological study of Kemeticism, and a critical study of the discipline of Egyptology itself. It will be of value to scholars and students of archaeology and Egyptology, cultural heritage, religion online, phenomenology, epistemology, pagan studies and ethnography, as well as Kemetics and devotees of Egyptian culture.

Part I

Why Kemeticism?

1 Introduction

It is held that the authentic practice of ancient Egyptian religion ceased with the end of pharaonic culture and the rise of Christianity. However, this book is the result of a four-year ethnographic study of individuals and groups presently engaged in ancient Egyptian religion, self-described as the Kemetic community. ‘Kemetic’ originates from the ancient Egyptian name for Egypt itself, ‘Kemet’, roughly translated as ‘Black Land’.¹ It is a term used in discrete, but non-exclusive contexts; one use of Kemet originates from the contours of Afrocentrism, touched upon herein, but warranting further study (Chapters 2 and 3). Another notable use is by communities engaged in the revival and/or reconstruction of ancient Egyptian religion and spirituality. In many cases, Kemet is used as a term of respect for the ancient culture and language of the Nile Valley’s inhabitants, and ‘Kemetic’ can be employed to self-describe an individual adhering to one or more aspects of that culture. However, uses between politically/ethnically and spiritually motivated groups are often discrete, differing on several significant points. The Kemetic continuum consists of a range of present-day Egypt-centred religious practices: from the eclectic pagan at one end, building a personal religion from a variety of cultures, to reconstructionists at the other, who attempt to reconstruct the religion of pharaonic Egypt as authentically as possible. Reconstructionists utilise primary Egyptian texts and materials, in addition to the work of scholars and academics. Kemetic religion has a growing and active community, thousands of individuals reviving and living pharaonic practices in the modern world. These individuals might provide unique perspectives on the religion of ancient Egypt, as Kemeticism raises pertinent questions on the ‘lived’ aspect of Egyptian religiousity, and as such provides a unique opportunity for ethnography in Egyptology. Subsequently, this volume asks if archaeologists and Egyptologists could potentially benefit from Kemetic insights. Faced with a sparse record, archaeologists struggle to engage with topics such as ‘taboo’, ritual performance and, significantly, gender, sexuality, religious identity and piety. Dealing with a culture that is no longer ‘lived’, archaeologists and Egyptologists attempt to construct a working understanding, based on the evidence, from texts and material remains. Yet the experiential aspects may become lost in analysis and classification. This work asks what biases are brought into play during such processes, particularly when reconstructing an alien culture through the lens of modern Western secular thought.

This volume was undertaken for several reasons: the first is to address a gap in Egyptological knowledge. At the genesis of this work (the period of my PhD, commencing in 2007) there was no study or mention of Kemeticism within the contours of Egyptology, and only one sociological study was present (Krogh and Pillifant 2004, 2004a). This research was also an attempt to provide space and voice to an assemblage who are currently sharing Egyptology’s resources, and might otherwise be conflated with other ‘revisionist/mystical’ approaches or uncritically overlooked by the field. Attempts to give voice to the ‘other’ are fraught with pitfalls, and studies of anthropological ‘insider/outsider’ research were undertaken, as explored below. The title of this work, Profane Egyptologists, is taken from the primary text of The Temple of Set (Aquino 2009: 27), a contemporary Egyptian-themed esoteric identity group. Although located outside Kemeticism, and subsequently the remit of this volume, the term’s employment highlights a perceived division between ‘alternative’ approaches to Egypt and mainstream academic research. The title also underscores questions raised by this and other works regarding the perceived status of Egyptology as a secular, scientific, post-colonial study of the ‘other’ (Carruthers 2014; Colla 2007; Moreno Garcia 2014; Reid 2002; Wengrow 2003).

A construct of history

The territory of Egyptology is complex, and has altered even since the inception of this research in 2007. The redefinition of the political landscape of Egypt has led to a questioning of ‘Egyptology’s’ scope. According to Jeffreys (2003: 4), Egyptology had, ‘an unusually precise meaning, being specifically the study of society in the Nile Valley from 3000 BC (the beginning of unitary rule, or the dynastic period) to 330 BC (the arrival of Alexander), or at latest the first century AD’. Jeffreys’ statement highlights the constructed and contested nature of both Egyptology and ‘ancient Egypt’, both of which can be argued as socially ordered categories (Carruthers 2014a: 9). The destruction and defacing of ancient Egyptian monuments and artefacts in the wake of the 2011–12 political upheaval inspired a process of public outcry, condemnation and debate, leading to increased interaction between self-described Egyptologists and contemporary concerns (Carruthers 2014; Riggs 2014a). Historically, such interaction emerges around moments of cultural crisis, such as the UNESCO rescue project in the Sudan, which ran from the 1960s to the 1980s (Soderbergh 1987). It has been argued (Jeffreys 2003: 6) that incursions on the field from ‘outsiders’ have limited impact on disciplinary norms, and ‘Egyptology’ soon returns to a default (sometimes isolationist) standpoint once a crisis has passed (ibid.; Moreno Garcia 2014; Riggs 2014a). Carruthers (2014a: 3) suggests that the history of Egyptology, if such a thing exists, is written at cross-purposes, ‘everyone writing about it seems to think they know what it is, despite not reaching any sort of consensus’. The birth of ‘Egyptology’, as an ‘-ology’, is closely tied to the development of modern scientific knowledge, ‘the disciplined study of ancient Egypt’ (ibid.: 1), in contrast to former antiquarian and esoteric approaches (Haycock 2003: 169; Hornung 1999). Writers such as Reid (2002) and Colla (2007) explore the notion that such a definition creates, legitimises and emphasises the exclusivity of the field, which subsequently requires a particular sort of training, from a ‘certain sort of European institution centered on artifact discourse’ (Carruthers 2014a: 8). As such, the ‘purity’ of the field can be conceived as intrinsically tied to political narratives in Egypt itself.

Political, religious and ethnological polemics have historically surrounded Egypt, enlivened by the translation of the Corpus Hermeticum in the Renaissance period. The Hermeticum consists of a number of books of philosophy and apparent prophecies, commonly attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, or Hermes the Thrice Great, a philosopher named for the Greek version of the Egyptian god, Thoth (Djehuty) and, significantly – to early Christian authorities – perceived as a contemporary of Moses (Champion 2003). The Hermeticum subsequently occupies a unique space as being employed ‘as evidence that Egyptian religion had both anticipated Christianity and influenced Greek philosophy’ (ibid.: 135). It was additionally employed to legitimise the notion of a continuity of learning, ‘wisdom’ passed from ancient to modern world; the idea of a chronological transition of knowledge is salient to the reconstruction narratives herein. Prior to the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the 1820s, unfamiliarity with the language of the ancient Egyptians had resulted in reliance upon Greek writers, such as Strabo and Herodotus. Following a Greek tradition of adding authority by virtue of antiquity (Lefkowitz 1996), such writers corroborated the notion of Egypt as the font of all wisdom, and the birthplace of learning (Hornung 1999). This perspective helped perpetuate the belief among scholars that the Greeks were the inheritors of the Egyptians – culturally, philosophically and scientifically. Education in Classical civilisation characterised eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western academic discourse, ‘From Petrarch to Sartre, the classics rivalled even the Bible as a widespread, flexible vehicle of Western thought’ (Reid 2002: 140). The Greek notion of an ‘Egyptian Mystery System’ and Egyptian systems of philosophy has been historically perpetuated in literature by writers such as Vail ([1909] 1991), who reference sources such as Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris and Apelius’s The Golden Ass (Lefkowitz 1996: 93–121, and see Chapters 2 and 3). The Hermeticum was later determined to be a work not of ancient Egyptian origin, but likely penned between the first and third centuries CE. Hermeticism, however, endured in forms of Freemasonry, which further mythologised the nature of Egyptian culture (Champion 2003; Hornung 1999). This is not to say that Egypt has not contributed in these areas, and debates surrounding Egypt’s contribution to philosophy (and other fields) continue (Lefkowitz 1996; Obenga 1992; Rossi 2004). Rather, it is to propose that Western preconceptions and expectations have resulted in cycles of both fascination and disappointment with Egypt, which sometimes bear little relation to the ancient record itself (Jeffreys 2003; Rice and MacDonald 2003).

The Napoleonic expedition recruited Egypt into mainstream Western dialogues on an unprecedented scale. The advent of increased international travel, with the foundation of agents such as Thomas Cook, encouraged wider access to this once impenetrable land (Reid 2002). The prominence of Egypt in the Old and New Testaments resulted in archaeological expeditions to verify biblical narratives. Roth (1995: 32) proposes that Egyptology was founded by American and European scholars whose ‘primary interest was in confirming and explicating the Old and New Testaments for the furtherance of Christianity’. Biblical archaeology does appear to have had a powerful influence on the choice of early expeditions, while the evidence suggests that cultural interest was both broader and more deeply embedded (Ucko and Champion 2003). The Egypt Exploration Society (EES), founded by British author Amelia Edwards and Reginald Stuart Poole of the British Museum, was initially conceived as the ‘Egypt Exploration Fund’: in order ‘to explore, survey, and excavate at ancient sites in Egypt and Sudan, and to publish the results of this work’ (EES 2016). Notably, however, early publications included Route of the Exodus (1885), Tanis (1885), Naucratis (1886 and 1888) and Mound of the Jew (1890). Subsequently, a mindfulness of the religious lens of early Western archaeologists, and its influence on their interpretation of Egyptian spirituality and religion, might be advised.

Resulting from the foundational era of Egyptology is a complex relationship with race sciences and ethnicity narratives, which retain powerful cultural capital to this day (Challis 2013; Trafton 2004). Ethnologists, such as Morton (1844, as cited in Champion 2003: 168–70) employed measurement of European, African and, notably, Egyptian skulls in the construction of craniology. These controversial race ‘sciences’ followed an ever-increasing trend towards measurement and classification, and were employed to support a belief in the historical superiority of the Caucasian race. This resulted in friction regarding the classification of the then highly regarded ancient Egyptians, who were subsequently recruited into this narrative as dark skinned Caucasians (Champion 2003). While the status of Egypt in Western dialogues is highly protean (Chapters 2 and 3), craniology played a significant role in the removal of pharaonic Egypt from its African surroundings. Contemporary class systems were also projected onto ancient Egypt; employing a blend of craniology, biblical scholarship and an examination of monumental architecture, Nott and Gliddon (1854, in Champion 2003: 173) published Types of Mankind, proposed as ‘proof’ of their agenda: the ‘permanence of racial difference’ (ibid.). Craniology and race sciences were strongly biased by their political and social contexts, having emerged from institutionalised efforts to justify the slave trade, and promote the developing field of eugenics. Writers such as Derry ([1914] 1956) would later postulate the existence of a ‘Dynastic Race’ which was distinct from the predynastic population of the Nile Valley, also termed the Hamite Hypothesis. While the use of race science would decline in popularity and legitimacy when faced with the horror perpetuated by the Nazis during the Second World War, the idea of a Dynastic Race endured for some time (Emery 1952). The whitewashing of the ancient Egyptians remains a controversial aspect of popular culture to this day, as witnessed in the furore surrounding the casting of the 2016 film Gods of Egypt.² Debates surrounding race, Afrocentrism and the location and legacy of Egypt are significant to this work, and are explored throughout the text.

An unforeseen result of the interaction between biblical and race narratives with ancient Egypt is the development of ‘pyramidology’. This continuing phenomenon is frequently associated with ‘lunatic fringe’ and so-called ‘pyramidiots’ (Petrie 1883), yet finds its origin where religious and racial archaeology intersect. John Taylor (1859) was one of the first ‘modern’ commentators to propose that the Great Pyramid embodied and employed mathematical ideas usually attributed to the Greeks, such as Pi, and explored the idea that the pyramid was a scale representation of the Earth itself. Significantly, however, Taylor was also among the first to propose the notion that the architect of the Great Pyramid was a ‘biblical Israelite’, more specifically, Noah (ibid.). After correspondence with Taylor, Piazzi Smyth (1864) set out to examine the pyramid for himself. His publication, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864) expanded on Taylor’s theories, employing a detailed analysis and measurement to ‘prove’ that the monument was a ‘perfect structure’. Smyth suggested that the peoples of the Old Testament built the pyramid as an artefact of divine inspiration, and that its measurements were the embodiment of a scientific proof of Christianity. He expanded on Taylor’s (1859) hypotheses surrounding the so-called ‘pyramid inch’, based upon the earlier works of Greaves (1706). Taylor suggested that the pyramid inch was a version of the sacred cubits of the Israelites and, as such, contained a system of divine prophecy. While perhaps incongruous on the surface, such narratives were seemingly included to counter the rise of the French metric system, and were significant to the cause of British nationalism for a brief period (Bloxam 1932). Such theories were later to be debunked by writers such as Petrie (1883), who coined the term ‘pyramidiot’, and generally dismissed the subject thereafter, though this did not remove Petrie himself from race narratives (Challis 2013). Theories supporting a constructed association between an Anglo-Saxon race and the Biblical Lost Tribes persist, however. Smyth’s ideas were later appropriated by then principal of what was to become the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, eventual founder of their spiritual descendants, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Watch Tower Society would abandon pyramidology, but the theories were to be assimilated in 1932 into the separate British Israelite movement with the publication of God’s Stone Witness (Bloxam 1932). These narratives persist, and descendant groups of the British Israelites, such as the British Israel World Federation, still hold numerous volumes of pyramidology in their online store, including an intellectual descendant of the above texts, Riffert’s (1960) Great Pyramid Proof of God.³

The above examples should illustrate the sometimes-pernicious political ideologies which surround and intersect with the subject of Egypt (Chapters 2 and 3). This issue is illustrated by Carruthers (2014a: 3), who notes a binary between ‘an internal disciplinary world and an external world of other goings on’. The question of what constitutes the history of Egyptology and, leading from this, Egyptology itself, is of direct interest to this work, which deals in the characterisation of disciplinary trends and boundaries. Carruthers (2014a) notes, of efforts to understand interactions between Egyptology and ideology, that a form of ideological ‘purification’ may be present. His critique includes the example of the Journal of Egyptian History, with reference to Schneider (2012, in Carruthers 2014a), who traces biographies of German Egyptologists under the Nazi regime. Carruthers (2014a: 4) observes that Schneider’s work seeks to disentangle German Egyptology (and Egyptology more widely) from those works which may have been influenced by the political ideologies of the era. This speaks to an implication, intentional or not, ‘In this frame… that Egyptology is at heart a “pure” discipline, an ordered and stable set of practices that objectively inquire into and constitute what is understood of ancient Egypt’ (ibid.). He highlights that such a model also implies that corresponding practices can ‘after appropriate historical reflection’ be thought to be ‘separated from pernicious political “ideology”’ (ibid.). As such, practices deemed as ‘inappropriate’ to ‘scholarly inquiry’ may be placed ‘outside the Egyptological sphere’ and the discipline progress to ‘better, implicitly more correct, work’ (ibid.). Carruthers additionally notes that histories of Egyptology can take on biographical form, which, to greater or lesser extent, celebrate the pioneer while naturalising the discipline. This, he argues, acts as an adjunct to the ‘thrust of the narrative’, characterised by an ‘heroic disciplinary genealogy’ (ibid.: 4–5). Such a practice is likened to a process of purification, whereby individual histories and narratives self-regulate what is deemed appropriate to the field. This is a powerful notion, crucial to studies of the ‘other’, or narratives which may be perceived as originating ‘outside’ this located and purified set of practices. Carruthers (ibid.: 7) highlights a set of knowledge practices ‘that constitute the proper object of a field of inquiry, practices that contain the source of that field’s continued reproduction and relevance’, which, significantly, set the rules ‘..of who can and cannot partake in it… defining the worlds in which the field can be said to be connected’. Carruthers’ observations of these questionable d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• PART I Why Kemeticism?
• PART II Pharaonic Religion
• PART III Esoterica and Egyptology
• Bibliography
• Appendix
• Index