Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods
By: by Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks ; translated from the French by G.M. Goshgarian.
Contributors: Favard-Meeks, Christine.
Edition: First English Edition
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Ithaca, USA
Language: eng
Translated from: fre
Translation of: La vie quotidienne des dieux egyptiens (Hachette, 1993)
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780801482489
Copyright date: 1996
Subjects: Gods, Egyptian; Egypt -- Religion
Description: This is the first English translation of a highly appealing volume originally published in French in 1993. Informed by a sense of wonderment at divine doings, it treats the ancient Egyptian gods as if they were an ethnic group that captured the fancy of ethnologists or sociologists.

The book begins with a discussion of the gods' community as a society unto itself. The authors describe the structures of the society of the gods and some of the conflics that frequently upset it, with individual gods acting to protect their own positions in an established hierarchy and struggling to gain power over their fellows. The nature of their immortal but not invulnerable bodies, their pleasures, and their needs are considered. What did they eat, the authors ask, and did they feel pain?

The second part of the book cites familiar traditions and little-known texts to explain the relationship of the gods to the pharaoh, who was believed to represent them on earth. By performing appropriate rites, the pharaoh maintained a delicate equlibrium, balancing the sky home of the sun god, the underworld of Osiris and the dead, and the earth itself. While each world was autonomous and had its own mythological context, the separate spheres were also interdependent, requiring the sun's daily course and the pharaoh's ritual actions to ensure the cohesion of the universe.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-233) and index (p. 243).
Table of contents: label: Genealogy
title: vii; label: Introduction
title: 1; label: Part 1
title: The Gods among Themselves [Dimitri Meeks]; label: 1
title: Origins, Destinies, History
pagenum: 13; label: 2
title: Hierarchies, Prerogatives, Groups
pagenum: 33; label: 3
title: Divine Bodies
pagenum: 53; label: 4
title: Space and Places
pagenum: 81; label: 5
title: Intelligence and Knowledge
pagenum: 94; label: Part 2
title: Mediating between the Gods and Humankind [Christine Favard-Meeks]; label: 6
title: The Machine of the Universe and the Universal God
pagenum: 111; label: 7
title: The Gods on Earth
pagenum: 120; label: 8
title: The Gods of the Hereafter, the Gods of the Hereafter
pagenum: 141; label: 9
title: From the Dead to the Newborn God
pagenum: 164; label: 10
title: The Machine of the Universe Tottering on the Brink
pagenum: 187; label: Notes
title: 199; label: Glossary of Major Gods
title: 235; label: Chronology
title: 242; label: Index
title: 243