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Q: So you describe yourself as a Greco-Egyptian syncreticist: that’s quite a mouthful! A: You’re telling me! And actually, it’s not entirely accurate since there are some strains of my religious life that draw on material from the Roman period too, but add that to the description and it becomes impossibly unweildy. I’ve considered other descriptions – Hellenistic, for instance, since I’m pretty much interested in anything from the time of Alexander the Great up to the closing of the temples by Justinian and Theodosios, but the impact of the material from the Seleukids (what was Babylon and Persia), the Greco-Indian kingdoms, the Greco-Celtic Galatians, and even a great deal of stuff from the Greek mainland during that period is pretty minimal. My focus is predominately Egypt under the Ptolemies, so I considered using Ptolemaic as a description for my practice, but there are some problems even there. For instance, that would exclude the worship of Antinous, since his cult developed in the second century c.e. as well as the development of the mysteries of Isis and Serapis which really only came into their own during the Roman Empire. It also places an undue importance on the Ptolemies. I believe that even though the Ptolemies were Greeks they filled a vital function in ancient Egyptian religion, adopting the role of Pharaoh and all of the political and religious duties incumbant upon that (i.e. being the earthly representative of the gods; maintaining Ma’at or right order, balance, truth and justice; and ensuring the proper performance of religious rites throughout the country) and that some of them (though by the gods certainly not all!) were worthy of great respect, even reverence for the many honorable deeds and kindly benefactions they performed during their lifetime. But the worship of the Greco-Egyptian gods continued long after the last Ptolemy met his death at the hands of Caligula. The gods are still here: people continue to feel their call, and the powerful culture that was brought into being under the reign of the Ptolemies still inspires us and has relevance to our lives even in this modern era. While the Ptolemies were central to Greco-Egyptian religion, and many of the rites depended on them, there was also the private, personal aspects of the religion that were carried out in the hearts and homes of the average person. That is the religion we are seeking to reconstruct. And unfortunately, there isn’t a very good name for that. Neither the Greeks nor the Egyptians had a single definitive word which correlates in full to our modern conceptions of ‘religion’. It was just too ingrained in their lives and society. Only with the Jews and Christians, who saw themselves as a people apart, did it become necessary to develop such terminology. It’d be nice to have a simple sound-bite description for what I do, but lacking that I guess I’ll have to stick with the cumbersome Greco-Egyptian syncreticism. Q: So what does that mean, exactly? A: It means that I worship the Greco-Egyptian gods, and I draw inspiration for that worship from the period in history when the Ptolemies governed Egypt, and inaugurated a fusion of Greek and Egyptian culture. The culimnation of which was the great polis of Alexandria, the first truly cosmopolitan city in the ancient world, where people from every corner of the globe – Greeks, Makedonians, Jews, Italians, Celts, Syrians, Babylonians, Indians, North Africans and of course the large native population of Egypt - came and mingled, and major developments in the arts, literature, sciences, mathematics, philosophy, and religion were ushered in. It was a truly amazing period in history, dwarfing even the later European Rennaissance. This was the city that built the Pharos, whose light could be seen for miles out to sea and guided many a weary traveler safely into port; the Mouseion where Euclid set out the principles of geometry and Aristarchos formulated a heliocentric vision of the cosmos; the Library where over 500,000 scrolls had been collected, the translation of the Septuagint took place and definitive editions of the Attic dramatists and Homer were compiled; where poets such as Kallimakhos, Apollonios Rhodios, and Theocritos flourished, without whom we would not have Cattilus, Ovid, and Virgil – to say nothing of Shakespeare or Milton. And perhaps the most important influence Alexandria has had on subsequent history is in the fields of religion and philosophy. In Alexandria stood the great Serapeum whose destruction at the hands of religious fanatics heralded the decline of Classical paganism. Alexandria also saw the development of the cult of Isis, a fusion of the Egyptian Aset with her Greek counterpart Demeter, which went on to rival Christianity for the hearts and minds of the Roman Empire. Alexandria was the birthplace of Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, the home of many of its most respected followers such as Plotinus and Ammonios, and the cradle of philosophical Judaism and Christianity since Philo, Origen, Clement and other notables hailed from there. The cultural impact of Alexandrian society cannot be overestimated. Q: What do you mean by Greco-Egyptian gods? Aren’t they different? A: The Hellenistic era was a time of tremendous transition. Alexander the Great, by unifying a huge portion of the known world at the time, had ushered in a new age, one where the old corporate identities and political structures no longer had the same meaning. Very different societies had been brought into contact with each other, and forced to co-exist under Makedonian hegemony. In the aftermath of all this flux and radical transformation people were left to make sense of things, to find their place in the world as individuals. Many of them had been uprooted from their ancestral homes, either through the ravages of war and conquest, or by seeking a better life for themselves by following the trade routes or resettlement in the new poleis that sprang up all over the empire. They brought with them their old gods and religious practices, and in many ways these ancient traditions remained unchanged. While some scholars have asserted that the old Olympian gods died off during this period, the actual evidence paints a different picture. New lavish temples were built for the Olympians on a scale scarcely attained in ages past; we have far more numerous inscriptions and votive dedications from this period than any before it; people took up the local cults as a sign of solidarity and national pride, and as a way of demonstrating civic devotion in a time when politics was a dangerous profession. Far from a decline, the old polis religion actually experienced a rush of invigorating spirit that would carry it on to the last days of Classical paganism in the fifth to sixth centuries c.e. But there were also major changes during the Hellenistic era, changes which came to dominate our whole conception of this period. For as the old gods of Greece were carried into new lands by their migrant worshippers they came into contact with the native gods. There were a number of different ways that people made sense of this confrontation of divine personalities. In some cases, they simply adopted the new cults and deities outright, retaining all of the traditional trappings of this foreign divinity or continued the purely Hellenic worship of Greek gods, but now in a new land. In other cases they worshipped the old and the new gods alongside each other. You will often find inscriptions to gods from three or four pantheons made by the same individual, or temples dedicated to various gods together. Sometimes they followed the old tradition, found already in Greek writings of the sixth and fifth century, of identifying their own gods with those of their neighbors, based on a similarity of myths, cult titles, and types of worship offered to the divinity in question. Thus Ba’al of Mount Carmel becomes Zeus Karmelios or Min of Koptos receives worship as Pan of the Deserts. Another way that this process was carried out was by the fusion of multiple deities into a single personality via cultus. Thus we find dedications to Aphrodite-Hathor; Isis gains the Demetrean epithet Thesmophoros, and Serapis is represented with the kindly face and beard of Asklepios, the thunder-bolt of Zeus, the solar crown of Helios, and the three-headed dog of Haides. In such instances it isn’t clear whether the individuals felt that these were actually the same gods but with different names, or that they were merely sharing powers, epithets, and associations thus producing a third hypostasis or divine manifestation which derived its essence from the fusion of the two previously distinct entities: perhaps at various times both theories were held, or some middle ground between them. Without a personal account of the beliefs of the average worshipper, we will never know for certain. Q: Aren’t you bothered by the inconsistency of so many views competing with each other and the inability to reconcile all of them? A: I admit, Greco-Egyptian theology and practice can be quite bewildering to outsiders. It is like a shifting mirage in the desert: when looked at one way, this image emerges, but when seen a different way a whole other picture rises up. The ancients were comfortable with this complexity and ambiguity, and I think there’s something to that because that’s how the real world is. We think we have it all figured out and we try to impose our neat mental constructs on something that is fundamentally chaotic and more immense than we could ever hope to fully apprehend. People get frustrated with this and lash out – that’s why you have a rise in fundamentalism in transitional times. They feel like the floor is falling out from under them and try to latch onto anything solid: they attack those figures on the margins because they’re afraid that they will bring more confusion and disorder. But once you let go of fear and attempts at imposing false control, you often find that the danger was just in your head the whole time. Q: This all seems very theoretical. What do you, personally, believe about this? A: Well, I worship both Greek and Egyptian gods in the traditional manner appropriate to their culture of origin; but at other times I honor the syncreticized forms of those divinities, thus making them, properly speaking Greco-Egyptian. There are some gods that I feel to be completely separate, even though they have traditional cognates across cultural lines, while at other times the similarity of essence is so strong that I can’t help but feel them to be the same divinity who merely revealed itself to different people in different ways. Although there is a strand in Greco-Egyptian religion which tends towards monotheism or at least henotheism (as anyone who has read the 11th Book of the Metamorphoses by Apuleius is certainly well aware) I do not accept this, since I have experienced a number of distinct divine presences, who are as much unique personalities as yourself and I. I cannot say what the number of those divine personalities might be – I do not hold with the strictest of hard polytheist interpretations which says that every god who could conceivably exist does, for the similarities among many of them are just too strong and I feel that this radical view is too limiting and diminishes the stature and power of such deities – but I am equally convinced that there are a multitude of divine personalities, whatever their number may be. I’m afraid I can’t be any more precise than that, since as a Greco-Egyptian syncreticist I’m dealing with a great many gods, who can be approached in a great many ways, and what you say about one might not hold for the others. Q: As a Greco-Egyptian syncreticist, what exactly do you do? A: Well, at this time my practice is in a stage of development. There is a lot of information out there on the religious practices of Greco-Egyptian society, but unfortunately it’s scattered all over the place, there are very few comprehensive treatments of the subject and most of those in languages such as French and German which I don’t speak, and I’m having to track that information down and piece it together myself. Daily I seem to learn something new, or find some document that forces me to completely reevaluate my notions of things. My goal, however, is to compile all of this information, synthesize it into a workable system, and make that available for others. It’s a work in progress that will probably take me a lifetime to complete. But I believe that this is important work and the Greco-Egyptian system is beautiful and spiritually powerful. In the meantime, however, I’m making due with what I have. I’ve gathered enough information to give me a tentative calendar of festivals (some of which I actually have a decent amount of information to reconstruct, and others I’m kind of making up on the fly) and in addition to that I’ve put together my own personal calendar of daily devotions to the gods who are most important to me, both Greek and Egyptian. Until I have a stronger idea of what types of ritual practices were actually observed during this period, I am honoring the various deities in culturally-specific manners. Thus, for the various Kemetic Netjeru I employ the Pharaonic offeratory rite (with some slight modifications) while for the Greek Theoi I use the standard service that most Hellenic polytheists employ. There are times when I deviate from this, especially when I’m doing an informal, spontaneous ritual that may include both Greek and Egyptian gods, or when I feel moved to do something totally different. But, generally speaking, that’s what I do at this time. Q: Are there major differences involved? A: Yeah, there are some. But surprisingly, the basics – purifications, offering, libations, hymns, etc – are pretty much the same. It’s just that with the Egyptian stuff, it’s much more formal. Things have to be done in a specific order, have to be repeated a set number of times, and certain phrases have to be recited exactly. Hellenic ritual is much more free-flowing. I mean, for almost 2,000 years the Egyptians had the same basic ritual which was observed in every temple, regardless of the god, and with only minimal variations. The Greeks, on the other hand, were constantly changing things, and even composed new hymns for each festival. The Egyptians liked order, stability, things remaining just as they were in the First Time, whose primal nature is supposed to be recreated with each ritual. The Greeks liked novelty, and the purpose of the festivals was to provide entertainment for the gods. Well, it’s not very entertaining to see the same thing over and over again. So you’ve got that difference, and then there’s the whole nature of sacrifice itself. For the Greeks, what is given to the gods becomes theirs. You can’t touch it. You can’t use it for something else. It’s hagne, holy in the sense of set apart. Now, in the case of the sacrifical animal, that may only be a very small portion and the rest is shared among the community. But the portion of the gods belongs entirely to them, and Burkert described the essence of the rite as “sublime wastefulness”. With the Egyptian practice, what you offer to the gods, you yourself consume after they have taken the spiritual essence from it. Nothing is wasted. Wastefulness is actually seen as an affront to the gods, which makes sense when you consider that they lived near a desert and things were pretty scarce, and wastefulness could result in starvation. The Egyptian stuff is also way more concerned with purity. In the Greek ritual, you wash your hands and you’re pure. You also have to avoid stuff like death, blood, sexual fluids, insanity and other things that confer spiritual pollution – but for the Egyptians, it was much stricter. You have to purify your whole body, both inside and out. You can’t wear certain clothing, especially if it’s made of wool, and there’s a whole list of things you can’t have eaten or done for a period before approaching the holy place. Another distinction, which I must say I don’t really keep, is that the statues of the Egyptian gods are supposed to be locked away in cabinets, and only brought out during the ritual, where they are fed, bathed, clothed, etc. Absolutely, no one else is supposed to lay eyes on them. Well, I don’t really have the money to afford lavish naoi or ritual cabinets for them, so I have all of my statues out for display on their shrines. Even if I did have the money, I’m not entirely sure that I would lock them up. They’re beautiful. I like looking at them. I like feeling as if they are a constant presence in my home and my life. I’m more inclined to do spontaneous ritual for them when I can walk by, see them standing there and go, “Hey, you’re awesome! Here’s some incense and alcohol!” So, I guess in that respect I’m not a very good Kemetic reconstructionist – but then again, I seriously doubt most Kemetics would approve of my worshipping the Netjeru alongside the Theoi. |
