RELG 201 Lecture Notes - Signify, Wadjet, Nekhbet
Document Summary
The gods and goddesses of egypt: the myth of creation (theogony) Well known in western world through the bible: however biblical authors don"t speak very much about egyptian religion. Egyptian theology through its mythology; main problem didn"t understand hieroglyphs (egyptians used demotic writing in everyday life and hieroglyphs in religious writing), so he made some mistakes on translating them. Even the egyptians couldn"t decipher the hieroglyphs at this time (perhaps v. few priests could but in general no one understood this) The french, when they were fighting the british, found the rosetta stone and made a copy of it. Jean-francois champollion used the greek on the rosetta stone to translate the hieroglyphs on the stone: this allowed them to begin studying religious texts (e. g. those on obelisks) Everywhere near the nile is v. fertile; the nile is the source of life for the egyptians.