Behind Closed Eyes: Dreams and Nightmares in Ancient Egypt by Szpakowska Kasia

Author:Szpakowska, Kasia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
Published: 2004-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

5

DREAMS AND RELIGION

That holy dream – that holy dream,

While all the world were chiding,

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam

A lonely spirit guiding.

Edgar Allen Poe, ‘A Dream’

Dreams as a means of contact between worlds

In numerous cultures around the world, a dream is considered to be a practical means of communication between an individual and residents of the farworld, including the dead, the deities, and ancestors.1 In the ancient Egyptian cosmos, the farworld was thought to be populated by the dead, both justified (⫖ḫ.w) and unjustified (mw.t), and the gods (nṯr.w).2 These entities, although they often remained hidden and inaccessible,nevertheless had a direct impact on the daily lives of the Egyptians. They could help the living with such mundane matters as property disputes or the birth of healthy children, as well as afflicting the living with sickness or disease. From earliest times the Egyptians exhibited a desire to contact those in the farworld through various means. The nature of the archaeological record likely reveals only a fraction of these, and while it is biased towards the elite of society, enough remains to suggest that eventually dreams provided an effective means for direct communication between this world and the divine.

The earliest physical manifestations of the desire for a personal relationship with an inhabitant of the farworld at the non-royal level come in the form of offerings left for the dead. An even more personal contact was obtained by leaving written communications in the form of letters to the dead in the tomb. As previously discussed, these letters reveal that during the time of their writing, it was believed that the living could communicate with the dead, while the dead had access to the deities who inhabited the same sphere. It is in this context that we already find a mention of ‘The Great God’,3 what we might call the generic personal god of the Egyptians. The type of dream contact recorded at this early time (First Intermediate Period) seems to be limited to a visual one only: it is reported that the dreamer can see the dead,4 and in one instance the dead can see the dreamer.5 The dead do not physically affect the dreamer, nor can the dreamer contact a god. Evidence of these more intimate forms of divine contact via dreams do appear in New Kingdom texts such as the Dream Book and non-royal autobiographies.

In the Ramesside Dream Book6 we find indications of a close and direct relationship between the living and the various inhabitants of the farworld. Each dream image and each interpretation refers to events or images which were within the realm of possibility in the Egyptian world-view. The interpretations do not claim to reflect actuality, but rather potentiality. In addition, as O’Flaherty observed regarding Indian culture, dream references provide us with an indication of what the ancient Egyptians thought people dreamed about.7 Although it does not fall within the textual genres typically associated with personal piety, the Dream Book may nevertheless reflect private relationships between a non-royal individual and his god.

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