So far, these two approaches to theodicy have been discussed holistically, i.e. without paying much attention to the historical diversity of their thematisation in Egyptian texts. In the follow-ing, we shall observe that major differences in the way these two approaches appear in the written record are linked to specific his-torical experiences. In general, one can say that knowledge-based theodicy proves relatively stable in the course of Egyptian his-tory, whereas the faith-based approach is particularly strong in periods that are rich in textual records, with a tendency for both models to be eventually superseded by a radical divorce between a cosmic/social and a moral/individual theodicy and the belief in a much more direct symmetry between religious behaviour and individual salvation.
5.1 The Old Kingdom (2700–2150 bce)
The textual material of the first phase of Egyptian written his-tory does not show the presence of explicit theodicean discourse.
While the ritual corpus of the Pyramid Texts only addresses the problem of evil from its cosmic side,
Heaven is satisfied and the earth is in joy, having heard that the king has placed right (m,’‘.t ‘Maat’) in the place of wrong (jzf.t )55
private autobiographies convey a view of the divine (and royal) power that privileges the contaminating danger that emanates from it over the moral debate about its impact on mankind:
The king of Upper and Lower Egypt Neferirkare appeared as king of Upper and Lower Egypt the day of taking the prow-rope of the god’s bark. While the sem-priest Rawer was at his Majesty’s feet in his function as sem-priest and as keeper of accoutrements, the scepter that was in his majesty’s hand touched the sem-priest Rawer’s foot. Talk-ing to him, his Majesty said: ‘May you remain intact!’ Thus spoke his majesty. His Majesty said that he desired that Rawer remain wholly intact, without being hit, because he was for his Majesty more precious than any other man. His
55Spell 627 (pyr. § 1775): K. Sethe, Die alt¨agyptischen Pyramidentexte, Leipzig 1910.
Majesty ordered that this episode be written in his tomb in the necropolis. His Majesty caused a written document to be made thereof in the presence of the king himself on a royal stone, that it may be written in his tomb in the necropolis according to what had been said.56
The reason why this noteworthy episode should be put in writ-ing and eternalised in the tomb owner’s autobiography is that by not punishing Rawer for having (inadvertantly!) touched the contaminating royal scepter, the king modifies the expected or-der of things by privileging the moral or emotional sphere – his love for the protagonist – over the evil he objectively perpetrated.
We are here in a ‘pre-theodicean’ intellectual environment, and king Neferirkare’s decision provides the first, if implicit, textual example of the problematisation of evil.
5.2 The First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (2150–1750 bce)
This epoch sees an overall historical emancipation of the elites’
consciousness, due to a redistribution of wealth from the court to provincial centers. We now witness the development of a theo-dicean discourse aimed at associating the holders of economic and intellectual achievement to the hitherto solely royal privilege of a direct dialogue with the divine sphere. While ‘mythological’
theodicy is found in the Coffin Texts, the ritual for accessing to life after death that supersedes the Pyramid Texts, and generally in the texts belonging to the funerary domain, ‘philosophical’
theodicy unfolds in literary discourse.57Here we observe a general trend to the overlapping of the figure of the king and of the personal or supreme god:
Can one oppose Renenet’s (i.e. destiny’s) plan? Can one’s lifetime be lengthened or shortened, if only by one day?
56From the Dyn. V autobiography of Rawer (Urk. I 232): cf. J.P. Allen,
‘Re‘-Wer’s Accident’, in: A.B. Lloyd (ed.), Studies in Pharaonic Religion and Society in Honour of J. Gwyn Griffiths, London 1992, 14-20; Loprieno, La pens´ee et l’´ecriture, 23-30.
57R.B. Parkinson, Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt, London 2002, 130-8. ‘Mythological’ theodicy in the Coffin Texts also knows negat-ively poled entities that might be seen as being original, primordial. Cf. P.J.
Frandsen, ‘On the Origin of the Notion of Evil in Ancient Egypt’, G¨oMisz 179 (2000), 13-34.
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Meskhenet (i.e. lifetime) is predetermined: no one can mod-ify one’s own destiny. See, god’s favour is great: great is his punishment but equally mighty is his power. For I have seen his fame: no disappointment will come from him.58
The question is here how to reconcile the belief in an individual destiny, variously expressed through divine icons such as Renenet or Meskhenet, and the benefits to be derived from being loyal to the god (or the king). The tentative answer of wisdom texts is the trust in a divine retributive justice that applies equally to success on earth and to survival after death:
Do not scheme against people, for god will punish the like.
If a man says: ‘I shall live by it’, he then lacks bread for his mouth. If a man says: ‘I shall become powerful’, he then says: ‘I shall snare for myself what I notice’. If a man says:
‘I will rob another person’, he will end up being given to a stranger. People’s evil schemes do not come about: only god’s command happens. You should live serene, for what they (scil. the gods) give will come by itself.59
Enter into the earth which the king gives and rest in the place of eternity! Join with the eternal cavern, with your children’s homes keeping the love for you and your heirs remaining in your positions. Conform to my example and do not neglect my words: observe the rules that I have established.60
Lamentations and tales, on the other hand, take a more problem-atic stand and air a concern for the arbritrariness of individual suffering. Paradigmatic of this latter approach, besides the texts quoted above, is the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, in which human and divine fate are read in a parallel way against the background of their meaning in everyday life: a competent (jqr ), but socially subordinate man (ˇsmsw ) narrates to a high official (h. ,’tj-‘ ) his shipwreck to a mysterious island, where he encounters a snake-god – possibly a narrative icon of the sun god himself – who had been struck by a comparable fate, having lost all the members of his family except for his little daughter, in whom we
58Instruction of a Man to his Son, § 3: Fischer-Elfert, Die Lehre eines Mannes f¨ur seinen Sohn, 58.
59Instruction of Ptahhotep, 99-119: ˇZ´aba, Les Maximes de Ptah. h. otep, 24-5.
60Loyalist Instruction,§ 7: cf. Posener, L’enseignement loyaliste, 32-3.
can probably recognise a reference to Maat as daughter of the sun god. Eventually, the shipwrecked sailor returns home, whereas the god continues his lonely life on the island of the ka, i.e. a place where the boundaries between life and death are blurred. But the end of the tale conveys a cryptic message, namely a rhetor-ical question by the high official who very much doubts whether the display of excellence can truly counterbalance the arbitrari-ness of individual destiny:
Who will give water at dawn to a goose that is to be slaughtered in the morning?61
5.3 Dynasty XVIII (1550–1300 bce)
In the early New Kingdom, Egyptian elites thematise the history of the victory over the Hyksos, who had developed a high culture in the northern portion of the country from ca. 1650 to 1550 bce, as a prototypical example of the triumph of good over evil. In the time of Queen Hatshepsut (1480–1460 bce), who had nothing to do with the Hyksos herself, the need to strengthen the shaky legitimacy of her reign leads to a presentation of the king as enforcer of Maat and as a key to cosmic, political, and ethical stability. The king displays the vigilance that Middle Kingdom lamentations missed in the creator god:
Listen, you all noblemen and common people as many as there are: I have done these things as my heart’s plan: I was never asleep in forgetfulness, but have made strong what was destroyed; I have raised what was dismanteled from the first time when the Asiatics were in the north, in Avaris, with hordes in their midst overthrowing what had been done. They ruled without Re, contrary to god’s command, down to my Majesty, when I was established on Re’s throne. I was foretold as a born conqueror for a long period of years, and now I am here as the sole Horus shoot-ing flames against my enemies. I have abolished the gods’
abomination (bw.t ) and the land has removed their foot-prints. This has been the guidance of my fathers’ father, who came at the right time as Re: what Amun has com-manded will never be destroyed. My order is stable like
61Shipwrecked Sailor, 184-186: A.M. Blackman, Middle Egyptian Stories (BAeg, 2), Bruxelles 1932, 41-8.
48 A. Loprieno
the mountains: the sun shines and spreads his rays over the titulary of my Majesty, and my falcon rises high over the royal palace for all eternity’.62
The recovered strength of a royal administration that, beginning with Hatshepsut’s successor Thutmosis III (1460–1425), acquires military traits, is presumably also the reason why fictional liter-ature, including instructions, lamentations, and tales, does not reach during this period the heights of the Middle Kingdom. The most important literary genre is now the hymn to the various forms of the sun god (Re-Harakhte, Amun-Re). A new relation-ship between man and the god,63 and to a certain extent a new theodicean discourse now come to the fore: the journey of the sun god is not only a cosmic event, but also a mirror of the god’s concern for the well-being of the individual worshipper:
He gives life to those he loves, an old age to those who put him in their heart, and his mouth breath to those who are in his favor and never stop looking at him: god, father of mankind.64
While this approach to god’s role echoes the theodicean debate of the Middle Kingdom as it was expressed, for example, in the In-struction for Merikare, what has changed is an increased concern for the intimacy between the benefactor and his creatures, who are now recognised in their specific needs and human diversity:
Hail to you, lord of Maat, whose shrine is hidden, lord of the gods, Khepry in his boat, at whose order the gods came into existence, Atum, creator of mankind, who differenti-ates their character and makes them live, who distinguishes people by the colour of their skin, who hears the prayers of the one who is in distress and is well disposed to the one who calls on him, who saves the fearful from the aggressive and judges between rich and poor.65
62Speos Artemidos Inscription, 35-42: A.H. Gardiner, ‘Davies’s copy of the Great Speos Artemidos Inscription’, JEA 32 (1946), 43-56. On bw.t ‘abom-ination’, ‘taboo’, cf. Frandsen, ‘On the Origin of the Notion of Evil’, 12-3.
63J. Assmann, Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom, London 1995, 1-11.
64Stela of Djehutinefer from Turin: cf. Assmann, Egyptian Solar Religion, 117-8; Idem, ¨Agyptische Hymnen und Gebete, Fribourg 1999, n. 72.
The emphasis is not, as in traditional ‘mythological’ theodicy, on the removal of evil, but rather on the active experience of good that derives from ‘looking’ at god, i.e. from relying upon his grace:
‘when he is looked at, something good happens’,66or ‘provider of a lifetime for him who acts on his behalf’,67 are statements that come close to something that is completely unknown in ‘mytho-logical’ theodicean discourse, namely an understanding of evil as absence of this life-fostering presence of the supreme god: ‘Lord of rays, creator of light, to whom gods sing praise, who stretches his hand to him whom he loves but burns his enemies in fire’.68
The religious reform of Akhenaten (1351–1334 bce) radic-alises this trend by eliminating the constellative context of the pantheon in which the solar god traditionally operates, unifying
‘mythological’ and ‘philosophical’ theodicy in the worship of the sun-disk Aten and focussing on the one hand on the axis between the sun god and the royal family as his earthly deputy, on the other hand on the visible image of the life-fostering ‘light’. Thus, evil in Amarna is wholly assimilated to life-negating ‘darkness’:
Your rays embrace the lands to the limits of everything you made. You are Re and you reach their limits, bend-ing them for the son you love: you are far, but your rays are on the earth; you are in their face, but your ways are unseen. When you set in the western horizon, earth is in darkness as if in death. Sleepers are in their rooms, heads are covered, and one eye does not see the other. If all their goods that are under their heads were robbed, they would not notice it. Every lion comes forth from its den, and all the snakes bite; darkness hovers and the earth is silent:
their maker rests in the horizon.69
65Hymn to Amun-Re from Papyrus Boulaq 17 (CGC 58038): cf. Assmann, Egyptian Solar Religion, 124-5; Idem, ¨Agyptische Hymnen und Gebete, n.
87C.
66Unpublished text from the tomb of Sennefer (TT 96, from the time of Amenophis III): Assmann, Egyptian Solar Religion, 126.
67Harper’s Song from the tomb of Djehuti (TT 11): T. S¨ave-S¨oderbergh,
‘Eine Gastmahlsszene im Grabe des Schatzhausvorstehers Djehuti’, MDAIK 16 (1960), 283-5; cf. Assmann, Egyptian Solar Religion, 117; Idem, ¨Agyptische Hymnen und Gebete, n. 83.
68Papyrus Boulaq, 17 (CGC 58038): Assmann, ¨Agyptische Hymnen und Gebete, n. 87B.
69The Great Hymn to Aten from the tomb of Ay: M. Sandman, Texts from
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The underlying theodicean assumption which the Great Hymn to the Aten shares with the hymns of the ‘new solar theology’
of the immediately preceding historical phase is that evil stems from the absence of the benign effects of god’s presence. There-fore, traditional emphasis on the funerary cult appears drastically downsized: death does not represent any longer the equalising event that lets the justified partake in the solar journey, but on the contrary the prime occasion to reiterate the triumph of light:
the hymns to the Aten are part of the decorative program of the Amarna tombs. In a period of relative international stability, the problem of the origin of evil and of god’s role in it leaves room for the recognition of god’s transcendence and providence, but remains articulated in witnesses of the traditional faith that sporadically survived the repressive aspects of the religious re-form:
Come to us again, lord of eternity: you were here when nothing had happened yet, and you will be here when they end. You let me see the darkness you give; now illuminate me, that I may see you.70
5.4 The Ramesside Era (1300–1070 bce)
The abrupt end of Akhenaten’s experience, however, not only sees a revival of traditional ‘mythological’ theodicy, but also re-cognises in the repression of the reform the most recent manifest-ation of the victory of Maat over evil. Tutankhamun is:
perfect ruler, who makes what is useful for the father of all the gods, who fortifies for him what was ruined with monuments for eternity, who removes for him disorder from the Two Lands in order that Maat remain in its place, falsehood (grg) be an abomination (bw.t ) and the earth return to its state on the First Occasion (zp tpj ).71
the Time of Akhenaten (BAeg, 8), Bruxelles 1938, 93,14–94,3. Cf. D. Lorton,
‘God’s Benificient Creation: AECT Spell 1130, the Instructions for Merikare, and the Great Hymn to the Aton’, SA ¨AK 20 (1992), 125-54.
70From a graffito in TT 139 (Tomb of Pairy, from the end of the Amarna age): A.H. Gardiner, ‘The Graffito from the Tomb of Pere’, JEA 14 (1928), 10-1; Assmann, ¨Agyptische Hymnen und Gebete, n. 147. For an interpretation of this and similar hymns as referring to the role of the wab-priest for the cult in a ‘dark’ place, cf. D. Kessler, ‘Dissidentenliteratur oder kultischer Hintergrund?’, SA ¨AK 25 (1998), 161-88; SA ¨AK 27 (1999), 173-221.
But it would be a mistake to think that Ramesside theology only aims at restoring the intellectual status quo ante; rather, while maintaining a plurality of divine constellations, it expands on the theological trends of Dyn. XVIII and enriches them with an increased attention to the individual experience – what has come to be known as ‘personal piety’: a widespread confidence in the healing power of a direct relationship between a god and his or her worshipper. The most significant symptom of Ramesside religion is the unconditional faith in god’s ‘patronage’. The auto-biographical text of Samut Kiki gives a very telling example of this intimate relation between the individual and god:
Then he thought with himself to look for a patron and found Mut to be at the top of the gods: even Shai and Renenutet (scil.: the gods of human destiny) are in her hand. Lifetime and life breath depend on her: every exist-ing thexist-ing is under her command. Then he said: ‘Herewith I give you all my property and everything I have produced, for I know that you will be beneficent to me. This is the only excellent thing to do’. She freed me from the attack, so that evil would not prevail. When I called her by name, she came to me with the northwind before her (. . . ) He who is buried can only rely on you, for to you belongs the necropolis (. . . ) See to it that no tongue have power over me and that no man wound me. Mut, you great one, only you can let me be protected from all this’.72
The reference to ‘destiny’ in the shape of the god Shai (here with her female counterpart Renenutet, whom we already encountered in the Instruction of a Man to his Son) is an innovation in New Kingdom religious discourse, destined to acquire prominence in later periods.73It is the sign of a gradual divorce of the individual fate (ˇs,’j ) from the cosmic dialectic between good and evil and of the emancipation of private religiosity from the boundaries of official theological discourse. Individual pain is understood as the consequence of a lack of confidence in god and in his warning to devote one’s life to his service. Two stelae of Neferabu describe
71From Tutankhamun’s Restoration stela, Urk. IV 2026, 25-29.
72M. Negm, The Tomb of Simut Called Kyky: Theban Tomb 409 at Qur-nah, Warminster 1997, 37-42; Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 109-32; Vernus, Sagesses de l’ ´Egypte pharaonique, 363-6.
73Quaegebeur, Le dieu ´egyptien Sha¨ı, 143-76.
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the ‘awakening’ of the worshipper to the faith in the goddess of the Western peak and in the god Ptah:
Written by the servant of the necropolis Neferabu, justi-fied, an ignorant man without judgment, who could not distinguish good from evil. I committed a sin against the goddess of the Western peak, and she taught me a lesson.
I was in her hand day and night and felt like a pregnant woman on the childbearing stool. I called the wind, but it did not come to me. Then I brought a drink offering to the goddess of the Western peak, the mighty one, and to all
I was in her hand day and night and felt like a pregnant woman on the childbearing stool. I called the wind, but it did not come to me. Then I brought a drink offering to the goddess of the Western peak, the mighty one, and to all