Reading Notes: Ancient Egypt Myths and Stories, Part B

(Thoth)

    I didn't have quite as many thoughts on this section of the week's readings. I think that part of it is that the stories flowed really nicely and I found myself getting caught up in them instead of thinking as much. That in and of itself is probably a really good thing, showing that they were very attention-grabbing!

    When I read the first part of the story of the Two Brothers, I was struck with the fact that it reminds me of the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. It is similar to Joseph when he was in the land of Egypt and the wife of the man he was working for wanted to sleep with him, he didn't want to, and so she lied and he was punished. But one of the things that really stood out to me in this story (and in the one about the Book of Thoth), was the role of women. In both, the women are really only side characters who don't do much at all. Or, if they do something, it usually isn't good. In the Two Brothers, the wife of the older brother tries to sleep with the younger one and then lies so her husband wants to kill him. The fact that he goes back and kills her (and in a pretty brutal way) is glossed over. Obviously, what she did was wrong, but it felt odd how quickly everyone moved on from her. Then the wife of the younger brother, made by the gods, leaves her husband so willingly, betrays his secrets, and then does all in her power to kill him. In the Book of Thoth, the wife is mentioned as having a premonition that things will go wrong (so does the man's mother), but they don't really have much of a personality besides that. It's not too surprising, but it is just another reminder of how male-centric these tales are.

Bibliography: Egyptian Myth and Legend by Donald Mackenzie, 1907.