BMCR 2004.10.15, Karol Mysliwiec, Eros on the Nile.

Karol Mysliwiec, Eros on the Nile. Translated from the Polish by
Geoffrey L. Packer.  Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 2004.  Pp. 180.
ISBN 0-8014-4000-9.  $28.95.

Reviewed by Mehmet-Ali Atac,, Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology,
Bryn Mawr College (matac@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Word count:  2440 words
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Karol Mysliwiec's Eros on the Nile is a book on the nature of sexual
imagery in ancient Egyptian art and thought. The work may be considered
to have a dual agenda in that it attempts to approach the erotic
component in ancient Egyptian culture on the one hand from the point of
view of theology and myth and on the other from that of the mundane.
Overall, the two are difficult to reconcile, and the author himself
concludes that one cannot obtain from the available data, sacerdotal or
popular, extensive information regarding how sexuality was viewed in a
day-to-day context by the Egyptians (137). Be that as it may, one of
Mysliwiec's principal aims in writing the book, as asserted at its very
beginning, is to emancipate a study of Egyptian notions of sexuality
from the conventional confines of the field of Egyptology: "In
contradistinction to the prudish scholars who, until recently, were
engaged in the study of ancient Egyptian civilization, the ancient
Egyptians themselves did not consider sexual topics shameful, and did
not find any ambiguity in these matters." At the outset, the author
also expresses his surprise over the "vast gulf between the amount of
information available from Egyptian sources regarding the erotic in the
region along the Nile and the almost total lack of publications on this
topic."

The book is organized in six chapters, the first dealing with the
"Major Theological Systems" of ancient Egypt, those of Heliopolis,
Hermopolis, Thebes, and Memphis, the second with "Osiris in Myth and
Cult," the third with "Apis and Other Sacred Bulls," the fourth
primarily with the myth of the divine royal birth, "Religious Aspects
of Royal Power," and the final two focusing more directly on the
mundane and/or 'vulgar' manifestation of sexual life in society,
"Religion and Magic in Daily Life" and "Sexual Life: Standards and
Constraints." The chapters are preceded by a brief preface in which
Mysliwiec lightly touches on a controversial theory of his, published
in detail elsewhere,[[1]] concerning one of the most enigmatic myths of
ancient Egypt, that of Horus and Seth, which includes a so-called
'homosexual episode' between the two gods. The author notes that the
Egyptian hieroglyphic sign that depicts a man's head viewed from the
front has the phonetic value her, which is also used in exceptional
cases in the writing of the name of Horus. Mysliwiec observes that
wherever in Egyptian tombs and temples hieroglyphic carvings retained
their polychromy, the sign in question was painted yellow, the color
that characterizes the body of a woman in ancient Egyptian coloristic
conventions. The author hence intimates a possible 'effeminate'
understanding of Horus, especially in juxtaposition to Seth, the god of
unruly and exuberant male sexuality, who, according to the author's
theory, may have been represented by another hieroglyphic sign, that of
a man depicted in profile and painted red, tep, often placed next to
the sign depicting the frontal head in yellow, red being the color
associated with the male body. Mysliwiec comes back to this matter in
Chapter 1 while dealing with the "Major Theological Systems."

In Chapter 1, which has the most extensive content, Mysliwiec presents
a general overview of these theological systems, highlighting certain
distinctively sexual matters contained in them. Some attention is given
to the primordial auto-erotic act performed by the Heliopolitan
creator-god Atum in the creation of the universe, and the association
of the hand with which the god masturbates with certain female deities
such as Hathor, Mut, and Isis. Mysliwiec asserts that in ancient
Egyptian culture "written descriptions of the sexual organs, as well as
their representation in art, were considered to be a completely natural
matter -- devoid of emotive aspects, and ethically neutral" (9). A case
in point is the ithyphallic god Min, who, according to Egyptian
two-dimensional representational conventions, is shown with only one
hand, the right one holding the flail, whereas the left hand that is
not shown embraces the phallus. The configuration is fully visible only
in sculpture in the round. The author also mentions the association of
Min with the Theban head deity Amun-Re who also has an ithyphallic
incarnation known as Kamutef which means the "bull of his mother." The
author comments on this designation as an instance of divine incest,
pointing out that "what we have here is a specific type of autogenesis
that appears to be completely illogical: The god couples with his own
mother to create himself" (18). Mysliwiec further glosses this incident
as an elimination of "the concept of paternity as a possible causative
force preceding the autogenesis of the creator-god" (ibid.). Even
though not mentioned in the book, there may be an analogy here with the
Greek myth of Oedipus, which can be seen from the same cosmogonic
perspective. The author also makes a connection between the
Heliopolitan autogenesis and androgyny, arguing that the creator-god
Atum must have been a bisexual being. He also briefly addresses the
alleged ideological androgyny of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV
(Akhenaten), without, however, relating the matter to these kings'
possible aspirations to relate themselves to the creator-god and his
autogenesis. The chapter also revisits the myth of Horus and Seth, with
the added argument that in ancient Egyptian texts the "relations
between two men are viewed primarily as a demonstration of one man's
superiority over the other, not as an act of love" (34). Mysliwiec
further tries to justify his understanding of a "passive and even
sniveling" (xii) Horus with a Hellenistic terracotta figurine of an
effeminate Horus-child (Harpokrates) which he understands "as a
specific interpretatio Graeca of an ancient Egyptian myth."

Chapter 2 focuses on the myth of Osiris, which the author rehearses on
the basis of the account of Plutarch. In this chapter, Mysliwiec also
surveys a group of archaeological finds dating to the Ptolemaic Period
related to the cult of Osiris found in the Lower Egyptian site of
Athribis, or Tell Atrib. Here and throughout the book, sources from
Graeco-Roman Egypt are not fully set against their older traditional
Egyptian background in a nuanced manner. Transitions between the two
realms are often abrupt and not clearly justified, as can also be
observed in Chapter 1, in which there is a quantum leap from a
discussion of traditional ithyphallic Egyptian deities to a mention of
Hellenistic representations of the god Bes (12). As for Chapter 3,
which is only several pages long, its main focus is the cult of the
bull in ancient Egypt, with special emphasis on the Apis Bull of
Memphis, the incarnation of the god Ptah, as well as of Osiris.
Mysliwiec here draws attention to the association of this special bull
with the Egyptian king inasmuch as the bull evokes notions of fertility
and abundance. The author also mentions how in the Pyramid Texts the
phallus of the deceased king is identified with the phallus of Apis, as
well as how when the Apis Bull died it was necessary to find its
successor, which displayed certain select physical characteristics that
were signs of divine embodiment. Also addressed at the end of this
chapter are funerary rituals for the Apis bulls as well as the fact
that in the Hellenistic period a conflation of the Apis Bull and Osiris
yielded the 'syncretistic' deity Serapis.

As already indicated, Chapter 4 focuses on the phenomenon of the royal
'divine birth,' a myth that had its full manifestation in the
intellectual output of the New Kingdom, even though its origins can be
traced back to the Old. The most complete iconographic version of this
legend survives in the Luxor reliefs of Amenhotep III, with an
important precursor in the 'birth reliefs' of Hatshepsut, which the
author refers to as "the joint achievement of theologians and artists"
(88). According to this myth, the ruler was not the child of his
predecessor and his royal wife but rather "represented the fruit of the
union of the pharaoh's wife with a god." The main idea behind the
legend is again the same elimination of the problematic concept of
paternity encountered earlier in the autogenesis of the creator god,
this time presented in a different guise. In fact, Mysliwiec's return
to this problematization of paternity in this chapter is aptly followed
by a discussion of the positions of Egyptian women in the royal
'harem': "Within the hierarchy of women associated with the king during
his lifetime, the first place was occupied by the queen mother,
followed by the king's wife," a configuration that can be seen in the
Ottoman Empire as well. Finally, the chapter also deals with a
particular group of elite women who held the title 'god's wife,' a
status initially accorded to royal wives and princesses, but from the
middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty on usually to priestesses who were not
associated with the royal family. The author draws attention to the
role of these women as singers, musicians and dancers in certain
rituals. In a book that lays so much emphasis on the visual record, one
would have liked to read more about the involvement of such women in
religious festivals, especially in relation to depictions in New
Kingdom Theban non-royal tombs where women of a similar or identical
disposition appear in a distinctively erotic manifestation. Such an
analysis would also have solidified the author's data from the
traditional phases of ancient Egyptian civilization and offset the
questionable weight placed on the Graeco-Roman evidence in the
treatment of the topics selected.

Chapter 5 aims at an analysis of "Religion and Magic in Daily Life,"
starting with the idea of feminine beauty, but shortly thereafter
shifting focus first to "eroticism in lyric poetry" and later to a
papyrus depicting overtly pornographic scenes known as the Turin
Papyrus, dating to the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasty. As far as
eroticism and love lyric are concerned, even though the author at the
outset indicates that "the lyrics of ancient Egypt provide a wealth of
knowledge regarding Egyptian eroticism in the time of the pharaohs," it
is more likely that these poems use erotic imagery in a completely
representational manner which in great probability refers to
metaphysical notions, as is also the case with the biblical Song of
Songs and Sanskrit erotic verse. In fact, as the author himself writes
in the Preface: "the refined poetry of love never makes mention of
marriage. The female partner in the erotic experience is referred to as
the 'sister,' by which it is certainly appropriate to understand
'beloved one'" (xi). Overall, the subject of erotic lyric is treated
too briefly in the book to open any substantial ground for discussion.
As for the so-called Turin Papyrus, it "contains drawings that are
designated in Egyptological literature as satiric-erotic" (120). The
series of images, most of which are illustrated in the book as line
drawings, consist of twelve scenes that depict sexual relations between
a man and a woman. This division into twelve scenes, coupled with the
incorporation of an ithyphallic 'Osiride' pose, normally reserved for
scenes of resurrection in hieratic depictions, into one of the scenes
on this papyrus is an indication that a satirical or playful analogy is
here established with one of the New Kingdom royal books of the
Afterlife, the Amduat, which represents the journey of the sun god in
the Netherworld during the twelve hours of the night, each hour shown
as a separate scene.

The sixth and final chapter, "Sexual Life: Standards and Constraints,"
starts with the author's assertion that documents such as the Turin
Papyrus cannot "lead to any far-reaching conclusions regarding Egyptian
sexual practices or the ethos of Egyptians' sexual lives" (137),
especially since the sapiential literature of ancient Egypt often
advocates temperance and control in sexual matters. Before closing, the
chapter briefly addresses certain social manifestations of sexuality
ranging from the use of magic and medicine in fertility and childbirth
to marriage, divorce and circumcision.

Notwithstanding Mysliwiec's intention to remedy the gaps in an
understanding of sexuality in Egyptological studies, what emerges so
clearly from the book is that the theological and mythological
deployment of sexual matters and images in ancient Egypt operates in a
completely symbolic and metaphysical dimension, whereas whatever is
sexual in the 'obscene' or 'vulgar' sense in the archaeological record
does not go beyond magical practices, parodies or satires that belong
in the popular domain. It would be exciting to see how, or if, the two
realms coincide, but the book does not offer much in that regard, and
throughout, the theological is treated in sections distinctly separate
from the popular. The treatment of some of the mythological themes in
the book is also often too general in character, which causes one to
lose track of the focus on 'eros' and fall under the impression that
one is reading a basic handbook on Egyptian myth. Even though a number
of very interesting points, some addressed above, are on the book's
agenda, the text throughout is completely without footnotes save for
the most essential primary sources, making it difficult for the
interested scholarly audience to follow the author's evidence or to see
the range of scholarly literature available in relevant topics,
notwithstanding the bibliography at the end. Further, even though the
book is illustrated with both line drawings and photographs, some in
color, no figure or plate numbers are cited in the text, again
detracting from the flow of the author's prose and arguments as the
reader attempts to make the relevant connections. Finally, it is
perhaps clear from the title that there is here an effort to make the
book attractive to a general audience, but a complementary title after
a colon would have helped greatly in both clarifying the intellectual
agenda of the work and signaling the idea that the book is not
exclusively on sensational Egyptian erotica.

In short, the book treats many matters of great interest and
importance, not only to Egyptology and Classics but to a broader
potential of comparative studies, in a rather abbreviated manner with
not much of an overarching structure conducive to coherence and depth
of argument and analysis. What is even more puzzling is perhaps an
almost deliberate simplification, if not trivialization, either on the
part of the author or the publisher, of intellectually very stimulating
topics for the sake of what seems to be accessibility to a general
audience of readers. I may well be wrong in this attempt to extrapolate
the intentions of the author and the publisher, which are not expressed
in the Preface or the Introduction, but the ambiguity over what the
book targets in terms of its audience and intellectual agenda is the
central drawback in the treatment of this otherwise fascinating body of
material.

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Notes:


1.   "A propos des signes hie/roglyphique 'hr' et 'tp,' Zeitschrift
fu+r A+gyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 98 (1972): 85-99.