Heka, Egyptian magic (II)

12/07/2021

The question of Egyptian magic is so broad that we have decided to create a second chapter touching on other aspects and techniques of it. Continuing with the first part, a magical tool, as has been seen, were the figures, which served both to create and destroy, and the words of power or hekay were the main element of these spells, with the approval of the gods to its use, although it could also be used to subdue them. Earth and wax were considered primordial, divine elements that allowed reality to be modeled, with which it could be easily created and destroyed. For this reason, they were elements widely used in execration rites: The wax melts the enemy, the earth (mud, clay), inconsistent and brittle, destroys it into pieces. The destruction of a clay figure representing an enemy is clear evidence of imitative magic. The problem is that in cases of destruction magic we barely have archaeological records.

There were also other popular magical rituals, where people wrote directly on pieces of ceramic that were then broken on the ground, or others in a sympathetic style, such as writing bad wishes towards someone with poisoned ink. The defixions and spells of the Greco-Roman world were also popularized, introducing, of course, magicae words, foreign names (Greeks, Hebrews, Sumerians), but also preserving their own theology. See this loving mooring, which must be inscribed in lead and tied 365 times to some figurines of the lovers, invoking Abraxas, << Abraxas, subject>>, and abandoning the mooring on the grave of someone who has died prematurely, saying :

<<I place this binding near you, gods of the earth Uesemigadon and Core Persephone Eresquigal and Adonis the Barbarite, Hermes underground, Tout phokenta- m zepseu aerchathou mi sonktai kalbanachambre and the powerful Anubis psirinth, the one who has the keys of those who They are in Hades, gods and demons of the earth, those who have died too soon, men and women, boys and girls, for years after years, months after months, days after days, hours after hours. hours. I conjure all the demons in this place to help this demon>>

There were also other popular magical rituals, where people wrote directly on pieces of ceramic that were then broken on the ground, or others in a sympathetic style, such as writing bad wishes towards someone with poisoned ink. The defixions and spells of the Greco-Roman world were also popularized, introducing, of course, magicae words, foreign names (Greeks, Hebrews, Sumerians), but also preserving their own theology. See this loving mooring, which must be inscribed in lead and tied 365 times to some figurines of the lovers, invoking Abraxas, << Abraxas, subject>>, and abandoning the mooring on the grave of someone who has died prematurely, saying :

On many occasions, in the Egyptian manner, the spell was ended by speaking as if it were a divinity. This protected the mage from the entities he summoned, and at the same time gave him the power to make his spell effective.

<<If you help me in my company, I will let you rest soon, because I am Barbar Adonais (...) I am Thot.>>

Another magical tool was rods and staffs. The rods, made of ivory from hippopotamus teeth and retaining their shape - which is why they are sometimes called "magic knives" - were decorated on one side with figures of protective divinities and other entities, in most cases , armed with swords and knives, in a defensive attitude. In some of them it clearly states: day protection or night protection, and in others it indicates the specific person it seeks to protect, usually a child. The specific use of these ivory rods is unknown, and from their texts and images it is clear that their protection was intended to be used in favor of children and women, both in birth and death, as well as the resurrection, taking into account that They have been found as trousseau in graves. As for the staffs, they were an image of power, as is clear from the short scepters carried by the pharaohs, called heka scepters, which represent pharaonic power, along with the nejej flagellum. We also have the Uady scepter, carried by the goddesses and evoking life, youth and resurrection, and which was an amulet widespread from the XXVI Dynasty. Some staffs had a talismanic function, representing at the top an enemy or animal that is "subdued" at the moment when the magician or pharaoh rests his hand on the figure. The Was scepter was also associated with divinities, who often gave it to the pharaohs, whose end in the shape of an animal head (Set?), suggests control over chaos.

Medicine in Egypt partly had its magical side, since it was understood that some ailments and pains were caused by evil entities that had entered people's bodies, and therefore, they had to be warded off and expelled. In these cases, medical practice was accompanied by prayers that helped make them come true, as has been said about the images of the pyramids. They felt helped by different gods who had been victorious in mythical episodes of healing, such as Isis, the great magician, who managed to resurrect her husband Osiris, or her son Horus, who specialized in stings, since he suffered a scorpion sting as a child: When his mother found him, her lament reached heaven and Ra stopped his boat and sent the god Thoth to help her, who told him, according to the Metternich Stele (Dynasty XXX)

<<I have come today in the divine boat of the disk (Amun) to the place where I was yesterday. When darkness rules, light will win for the health of Horus, for love of his mother Isis. And the same will happen to everyone who possesses what is written here>>

Hinting that divine spells can be used by and for men.

The child Horus was frequently depicted on amulets, seizing dangerous animals, subduing them. Regarding her mother, famous for having gotten Ra to reveal his name to her and consequently, having obtained similar power, in the same stele it is narrated that, previously, Isis had healed the son of a woman attacked by one of the seven scorpions that accompanied her, and who wanted to take revenge for a woman not giving them asylum by poisoning her son and burning her house. But Isis, more compassionate, understood that the child was not to blame for his mother's actions, and healed him by laying her hands on him and reciting the names of the seven scorpions:

<< Come, Tefen, appear on the ground and get out of here, don't come close!

Come, Befen poison, appear on the ground. I am Isis, the goddess, the mistress of words of power, who performs magical actions, the words of whose voice are incantations.

Obey me, oh all the stinging reptiles, and fall headlong to the ground!

O poison of Mestef and Metestef, do not ascend!

Oh, poison of Petet and Thetet, do not come near!

Oh, Matet, fall headlong!

(...) Get away, get away, get away, oh poison!

(...) The child lives, the poison dies!

As the sun lives, so the poison dies. >>

Thoth will help Horus on another occasion, when Set tore out his eye. Not only will it give rise to the amulet of the Eye of Horus, but it will turn Thoth into the god of oculists. Hekhet, Toueris, and Hathor were goddesses especially invoked by pregnant women, as was the dwarf god Bes, who also brought luck and chased away demons with his grimaces. Meret Seger and Serket protected against snake and scorpion bites. The second, in addition, was the protector of the sarcophagi and the deceased.

The goddess Sekhmet, on the other hand, had multiple functions within her magical invocations, given that she had a benign facet, which grants prosperity, health, love, joy, happiness, energy, youth, healthy mouth, fulfiller of favors, quality, perfection and good burial; and an "evil", destructive facet, which once, intoxicated by the fury of battle and the taste of blood, almost wiped out humanity. This aspect of the goddess was used in curses, in which the goddess and a demonic horde are invoked to destroy the enemy.

Doctors, however, were not called hekay, but swnw (the man of those who suffer), so heka was an added instrument and not necessarily the main resource. The swnw knew many causes and ailments, and had great anatomical knowledge. They were probably trained in the same Houses of Life as the priests. Some of its prescriptions, however, may surprise the modern individual, such as spreading animal fat for the scalp or migraine, or love potions whose purpose is the joy or tranquility of the person.

But in addition to the conventional doctor who used divine power, there were also exorcists. In Egypt there was a belief, as has already been seen, that spirits could enter the bodies of people, living or dead, which could cause illnesses, but also cause incoherent actions, convulsions and strange and violent reactions. Specifically, these spirits could be souls of the deceased or evil entities (we will avoid the name demon because in ancient Egypt it is difficult to establish a category as it is understood today). Incantations are the key to these magical procedures, appealing to the entity to leave the body of the possessed. The expulsion involves sending the spirit to the earth or the deserts, or enclosing it in a figurine or statuette of a god.

<<Whatever he suffers in his body, the torment will be sent from him to this statuette of Isis, until he is completely healed>>

It was believed that the spirit had to be transferred to a neutral or dead material (such as sand or stone), or to specific materials, such as those of divine figurines, which absorbed and neutralized them. In the case of spells against snakes, it is curious to note that the words of power also destine them to the earth. Some scholars believe that it may be due, in addition to the divine facet of the earth, to its absorption: it absorbs water and electricity from lightning, and in fact, the verbs used in exorcistic texts lead to that idea of extinction, absorption. If the entity attempted to attack the exorcist, then he would defend himself with claims about his own immunity, having his own spirit occupying his body, protected. When leaving, it is said that the spirit left a trail of odor, an effluvium (rDw), a sign that it had left the body in which it was hiding.

In addition to enchantment rituals and material acts, there were many other types of Heka, magical systems that existed, on the other hand, in many other places in the ancient Mediterranean world, such as incubatio, the act of sleeping in a temple to receive the answers sought. in dreams, through what is believed to be the divine presence. There was also the interpretation of dreams, taken as premonitions. There was also an astrological and fortune study, which leads to a calendar of good and bad days, so common in many other ancient peoples. Specifically, we know from the Egyptian that he divided the day into three parts, and it could be a day in which any act first thing in the morning was fruitless, at noon a magnificent result was obtained, and at night it was again an unfortunate moment.

In relation to the latter, divination also proliferated in Egypt. It was especially important that it was dedicated to the figure of the pharaoh, from the moment of his birth, which was developed above all through hemerology (the calendar), astrology and different types of interpretation of dreams and signs. For more general issues, there were certain gods of oracular preference, such as Amun, with their own sanctuary. But with respect to more popular or simple means, we find again that, until they receive Greek influence, they do not develop so openly (or at least we do not have testimony of it), probably because divination is an "official" matter. ", since until then all divination seems to be in charge of the hery-heb, the reading priests. From this moment on we have diverse divination practices, among which those consisting of visualizing images stand out, such as lecanomancy, but linked to words of power that have already been altered, as could be seen in the first part of this study, and include foreign names and magical voices. The invocation to the gods to help in divination practice is supported by the good pronunciation of these, or of the divine esoteric names that are included, as in the case of the "divinity of the hundred letters":

<< Come here with me, (name of the god), and make yourself visible to me at this exact moment, and do not dazzle my eyes. Come to me, (name of the god), be obedient to me, because this is what I want and order achchor achchoc achachach ptoumi chachcho charachoch: chaptoume: choracharachóch: aptoumi: mechochaptou: charachptou: chacho characho: ptenachócheu>>

Necromancy, despite what one might think from current positions, was particularly widespread in Egypt, since there was no doubt about the afterlife of the deceased and the possibility of communicating with them. Some prognosis techniques were also popularized, something that was previously only performed by priests, the pḥ-nṯr or meeting with the gods through visions, although, as has been seen, they were also invoked for any magical or divinatory act.

To finish, indicate that there was a term in relation to heka, akhu (ꜣḫw), whose meanings seem to be interchangeable in acts of individual magic and curses. Ritner (1996) considered that the best translation for akhu, given its specific use, is that of spell or incantation. However, the cosmic condition of akhu is not far from that of heka, being also a creative power. Again in Metternich's wake we find an example of this problem of obvious lexical separation, but not of semantics:

<<I have recited with your heka; I have spoken to your akhu. I have conjured with your words, those that your heart created>>

Taking into account that these words are addressed by Thoth to Horus, whom he has just healed, it seems obvious that akhu has healing functions, preventing poisons and stings, as well as being a protective power and maintainer of universal order. However, Heka also has its divine appearance, often accompanied by other gods such as Ra or Maat, divine justice, something that does not happen with Akhu, so Ritner's definition as a concrete act or force, with a derived purpose of the magical act, it gains more strength.However, in other contexts we find akh or akhu as one of the parts of the human soul, that is, of the deceased, and there are different spells against them, since there was the belief that a deceased person who does not achieve eternal life or is not Satisfied, he could return to the world of the living and torment them (the deceased who already lived with the gods could also do so). Akhu has also been called a demon. Could the spells aided by these entities be akhu? But in that case, how would it be possible to use the same word when spells are being cast against them? The term akhu, then, continues with a difficult definition.

Pietro Viktor Carracedo Ahumada - pietrocarracedo@gmail.com

Bibliography :

-Borghouts, J.F. Ancient Egyptian magical texts. Religious texts tr. series. Brill, Leiden 1978

-Frankfurter, D. (ed.), Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic. Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2019

-Silverman, D.P. Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press, 2003

-Wallis Budge, E.A., La magia egipcia. J. José de Olañeta (ed.) Barcelona, 2005.

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