TY - BOOK

T1 - Egyptian Mythological Manuals

T2 - Mythological structures and interpretative techniques in the Tebtunis Mythological manual, the manual of the Delta and related texts

AU - Jørgensen, Jens Kristoffer Blach

PY - 2014/4

Y1 - 2014/4

N2 - From the hands of Greek mythographers a great number of myths have survived along with philosophical discussions of their meaning and relevance for the Greeks. It is little known that something similar existed in ancient Egypt where temple libraries and archives held scholarly literature used by the native priesthood, much of which has only been published in recent years. As part of this corpus of texts, the ancient Egyptian mythological manuals offer a unique perspective on how the Egyptian priesthood structured and interpreted Egyptian myths. The thesis looks at the different interpretative techniques used in the Tebtunis Mythological Manual (Second century CE) and the Mythological Manual of the Delta (Sixth century BCE) and the place of these manuals within the larger corpus of priestly scholarly literature from ancient Egypt. To organize the wealth of local myths the manuals use model mythological narratives or key myths built upon the mythic cycles of the nationally venerated gods of Heliopolis. This creates a redundant structure in which the mythologies of the individual districts become echoes or actualizations of basic nationally recognized mythic patterns.

AB - From the hands of Greek mythographers a great number of myths have survived along with philosophical discussions of their meaning and relevance for the Greeks. It is little known that something similar existed in ancient Egypt where temple libraries and archives held scholarly literature used by the native priesthood, much of which has only been published in recent years. As part of this corpus of texts, the ancient Egyptian mythological manuals offer a unique perspective on how the Egyptian priesthood structured and interpreted Egyptian myths. The thesis looks at the different interpretative techniques used in the Tebtunis Mythological Manual (Second century CE) and the Mythological Manual of the Delta (Sixth century BCE) and the place of these manuals within the larger corpus of priestly scholarly literature from ancient Egypt. To organize the wealth of local myths the manuals use model mythological narratives or key myths built upon the mythic cycles of the nationally venerated gods of Heliopolis. This creates a redundant structure in which the mythologies of the individual districts become echoes or actualizations of basic nationally recognized mythic patterns.

M3 - Ph.D. thesis

BT - Egyptian Mythological Manuals

PB - Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet

ER -