UPDATE - Egyptian oral knowledge interview

This interview was, for me, a perfect way to end this unit on oral knowledge and move into our next unit of written knowledge.

This is very good news, because I have far too much excellent (in my opinion) information now to confine it to one post.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein, whom I interviewed, has an impressive list of accomplishments, including a PhD in Egyptology. His viewpoint on some of my questions about the Old Kingdom was very informative and clarified many things for me, as well as giving me a good jump start on our written knowledge unit (Happily enough, Dr. Muhlestein has even written an article about the transformation of knowledge in biblical times from orality to written word, so expect to see more of his ideas later on).

First of all, I asked him a question that I brought up before in class - how can we ever really be sure that we know what the oral traditions were when the civilization itself is so old?

Dr. Muhlestein explained that the Pyramid Texts, which I've referred to in other posts, are the best evidence for an oral tradition in and before the Old Kingdom. Since these texts were religious in nature, they reference the Egyptian mythology and legends - and although they do not expound upon these stories, they contain the earliest written references to them. This, Dr Muhlestein told me, is a proof of the oral tradition that existed at the time. Later, after the time of the Old Kingdom, these myths were written down, and if one was to examine those later writings with the Pyramid Texts, they would find that the oral traditions alluded to in the Pyramids remained fairly consistent until the time that they were written down - the references to the legends now make more sense, once we have the later records to compare them to.

It was good to know that I was right to assume a relation between the oral knowledge of the Egyptians and the Pyramid Texts. Next, I asked about the philosophy and religion of the Old Kingdom; specifically, did the Egyptians really believe in fate as much as some sources I'd read claimed they did, and was their religion more of a public ritual or a private worship?

The answers to those questions? No, and yes, and they're related.

The concept of fate, or FATE, is not too apparent from what has been found in Egypt at that time. However, they did clearly believe in divine intervention on their part - as proof of this, religious stelae have been found covered in carvings of ears, (appropriately termed ear stelae) under which worshipers would leave written prayers in the hope that their pleas would be audible to the gods.

I found some pictures of them to show you.

(Source)

To me, this shows the power of language, written or oral, for the Egyptian people. As I mentioned in my first post on the Old Kingdom, the Pyramid texts contained many 'utterances' intended to assist the deceased's passing to the next world and assure a favorable judgement from the gods.

Now, back to fate. Since they believed in the intervention of the gods on their behalf, the Ancient Egyptians could not have had as strong a belief in unalterable Fate as I had read in other sources.

I tend to trust the Egyptologist's opinion over that of the un-credentialed website manager.

Finally, a word on our discussion about Maat. I asked Dr. Muhlestein about what I mentioned last time, if the concept of Maat led to a kind of stagnation of the social order where no change was enforce. He said that since Maat was defined by the Pharaohs, each king had a different concept of what this 'cosmic order' should look like - therefore, there were many small or gradual changes in how Maat was enforced, portrayed, or thought of by the king and his people over time. However, the idea of the Order of Maat likely contributed to the stability of the Egyptian civilization; not just in the Old Kingdom, but in the later periods as well. It was an advanced concept for the time, and the people were able to maintain a sense of social unity with it.

I have a lot more, like I said, but it will relate more to our next unit. Until then, happy blogging!