Reading Notes: Ancient Egyptian Myths and Stories, Part A
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For this reading, there are a couple different things that stood out to me that I want to think about, mostly about the character of Isis, but also about some of the thematic elements in the stories and parallels that they have to other myths.
In terms of connections to other myths, the first thing I noticed was that the story of creation has a similar order to the Jewish and Christian creation story in Genesis. The order is basically the same: bringing order and something out of nothing, dry land and sea, creatures, and then humans. That's a bit of a generalization, especially because the six-day version is very detailed, but the Egyptian story follows the same pattern, and I thought that that overlap was really interesting! I also feel like there is a parallel between Greek and Egyptian mythology with the characters of Ra and Zeus. Both are the head gods, both are sons of gods. In Ra's case, he was legitimately a stronger god than his father and there is no apparent jealousy (a stark contrast to Zeus and Kronos), but, nevertheless, I was struck by the similarities.
I am absolutely fascinated by the character of Isis. In the second story of the reading, "The Secret Name of Ra," she is presented as an incredibly jealous being. She literally creates a snake to almost kill Ra to try and gain equal power to him. I would love to explore her internal monologue during this story to try and think of what her driving motivations were. Jealousy is, of course, a very natural feeling, but this does tend to go to an extreme. But the reason that her character stands out so much to me is that she then is the good wife of Osiris. She is a fair, just, and good ruler of Egypt when he is absent, and many of the other stories in the readings involve her love of her husband and her son. It's just such a strong contrast to the Isis that tried to kill Ra.
Bibliography: Egyptian Myth and Legend by Donald Mackenzie, 1907.
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