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Review
Eloy Rodrigo Colombo
3.0 out of 5 stars Is it possible we build a civilization with no human sacrifice at all?
Reviewed in the United States on 8 January 2021
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For ancient Egyptians everything was understood as having a transcendental part; in this way, they understood the meaning of religion. So, when we read, speak, think, and do an effort for understanding and learning something we are using and manifesting the power of the god Djehuty (or Thoth), the god of words, knowledge, and wisdom.
Therefore, the author is quite right about the meaning of human sacrifice for an ancient Egyptian; through a performed rite or not, killing was always understood as a sacrifice due to the unavoidable transcendental effect of that action.
All my discussion here will be based on my understanding that ancient Egyptians had an impressive consciousness of their responsibility in the cosmos, such responsibility being given to humanity along with some divine powers (such as of life and death) by the gods. So that they thought that even our afterlife is in our hands and then they mummified their corpses for granting the life as individuals in the realm of the dead. Personally, I think that our modern civilization is doing more human sacrifice than them, and I think the reason is that we are not recognizing our modern killings and slaughtering as human sacrifice! People today become horrified knowing the Aztec's sacrifices, but what about our wars, WWI, WWII, Holocaust, the genocides after them in URSS, China, that sacrificed more than one hundred million of people? An ancient Egyptian would gaze at us and I think they would run from us horrified from our lack of awareness of the result and meaning of our actions!
Chapter 2
The most important feature of chapter two is the account of servant sacrifice to attend the deceased king. The scholars say that they made it in the first and second dynasties.
This kind of human sacrifice was made for about two hundred years. The author wrote that Egyptologists would conceive any other possible scenario for the burials of servants other than human sacrifice for not admitting “… their beloved civilized Egyptians would do something so barbaric.”
Is it really that we have been shocked with dozens of servants bound to death (it was made only for the king) when we are conscripting millions of our youth to commit human sacrifice and sacrifice themselves in many stupid wars? Don’t forget that today we have chamberlains who have the duty of eating the food of high authorities before them to prevent them from being poisoned, among other services that use human’s life as a shield for someone else.
Among their servants surely there were slaves, but also free men. Over two hundred years it is guaranteed that the servants would know their fate being a king’s retainer. I would compare this destiny to a soldier being conscious of his future choosing to go to some war freely, are they not proud of their courage?
Chapter 3
This chapter discusses human sacrifice in the Old Kingdom, from the third to sixth dynasties.
What is clear is that ancient Egyptian’s human sacrifice was related to criminal and political spheres of life. So, criminals and political challengers, included foreigners, were prone to be slain by the incumbents.
But the author cites that we cannot imagine that “… the rulers of Old Kingdom were more benevolent and benign than their predecessors” and cites another author who tells “It would be wrong to imagine Old Kingdom Egypt as a gentle land of tolerance and non-violence.” So, the author has clear opinions about how to handle criminals and foreign attackers raiding violent plunders over people. From his perspective, we need to be gentle, tolerant, and never use violence toward violent criminals and plunderers. Even great philosophers, like Jose Ortega y Gasset, tell that we can affirm that civilization is “the effort of use violence as a measure of last resort” and not to avoid and prohibit the use of violence at all; this cannot be achieved, but this discussion is neither the matter here nor in the book. Anyway, I think the author has an idea of how to achieve such an amazing civilization.
The author cites the existence of six mummies of the same family who have broken necks attesting to their execution by the authorities. We have a huge problem with this assumption; why was it assumed they were criminals or rebels, if were they criminals or rebels probably they would be condemned to not have their corpses mummified preventing them from having an afterlife? Even the author mentions that they destroyed the bodies of rebels to ruin the chaos manifestation. Therefore, they probably were rather victims of murder.
Right after that, the author cites a couple of strong pieces of evidence of human sacrifice (called today capital punishment) of foreigners when they were not mummified. He and other scholars he quotes are quite scandalized by this find. I don’t know why this shock, yet for ancient Egyptians, every earthly element had its transcendental part. Again, it doesn’t matter if someone uses or not a rite to kill others, it is human sacrifice anyway.
Now I will discuss one of the worst parts of the book that shows clearly that the author is not prepared to deal with ancient Egyptian civilization and literature.
He uses a pyramid text to draw some evidence that the ancient Egyptians made some sort of cannibalism.
The pyramid texts were written on the walls of noble’s tombs, including the kings’. One of the main features of them is that in those texts the deceased is depicted living in the realm of the dead, it is meant the realm of the gods. So, all the dead are depicted as a god themselves, they are named Orisis N (N is the name of the dead), Osiris is a god.
Although it is not only this but depicting a dead as a god reveals how ancient Egyptians saw the cosmos. They saw the gods as species of gods, so in the same way, we are individuals of the human species the god Osiris is a species with many individuals, who are born, grow, dye, and maybe rebirth. The individuals dye but the species remains.
Our problem with ancient Egyptian texts is that they use a lot of symbolic expressions but common ones that give hard times to Egyptologists, for example, they used the expression fish eater as derogatory, not because they didn’t eat fish, but for conveying the idea of a crocodile’s filthy who lives in the swamps, dirty and fetid. Moreover, in those texts many times it is difficult to understand to whom the subject is referred.
Another feature, crucial to understand that text, is that it is a compilation of prayers to make the deceased to become “an equipped spirit” (an akh) alive through the acquiring the gods’ powers to be a god himself, through the magic power of words (the prayers).
I quote the part of the text the author used below. I put some notes inside a parenthesis.
“It is N who judges with Amun whose name is hidden
On the day of slaughtering the eldest
N is owner of offerings, knotter of ropes
N is maker of offerings for himself (he is regarded having the power of the god Amun, the first one of the universe, the one who divides himself into everything)
N is an eater of men, living on gods
An owner of those who bring tribute, a dispatcher of messengers
It is the grasper of top knots who is as a kettle, lassoing them for N
He who is sacred of brow is he who protects them for him, thwarting them for him
It is he who is the reddening who binds them for him
It is Khonsu (god), cutter of the lords, he slices their throats for N
He removes for him that which is in their bellies
He is the messenger that he sent to restrain
It is Shezmu (god) who slaughters them for him
Cooking for him the things inside them in his cauldron of the evening meal
N is he who eats their magic, a swallower of their akhs (the spirit of the deceased in the afterlife)
Their great ones are his morning meal
Their middle-sized ones for his evening meal
Their little ones for his night meal
Their old men and old women are for his incense burning
It is the great ones of the upper sky who get the fire for him
For the cauldrons containing them, with the forelegs of their eldest ones.”
First, the pyramid text is a behemoth, even that specific part is lengthier than the above the author cites.
Second, the god Shezmu is the slaughter of the gods, not the men as the author assumed.
Third, the author doesn’t know the basics of ancient Egyptian cosmology. They philosophized that the first god of the cosmos, Amun or Atum, divided himself into this infinity of beings and things we have in the universe. In this way, the food chain is like that because everything is made of the divine flesh of the god Amun. Accordingly, when we are eating some being (even vegetables) we are swallowing the Amun’s flesh. So that in all their sacred texts they refer to this thought, for example, they offer the goddess Ma’at as food for them, and they offer the eye of the god Heru (Horus) for their sustenance and beauty.
Telling that the deceased, as a divine being, is an eater of men, can signify many things within ancient Egyptian literature, cosmology, philosophy, and theology.
It can mean not more than referring him to the power of the god Geb (the earth) that swallows every being after their death or other god’s power, for example, the god Seth or the goddess of war and plague Sekhmet. Is it not an infectious disease eating us? Again, remembering how they thought, when they rage a war, they were aware of what they were doing - human sacrifice - and even I think that they were conscious that through the killing of wars we are giving the dead as food to the gods of wars, we are feeding them, nourishing their manifestation on earth. In the same way, when we curb riots, we are nourishing the manifestation of the goddess of order Ma’at.
Another thing the author got wrong is the meaning of the word akh. An akh is the kind of spirit that only beings in the realm of the gods can have! And we read in that same phrase that the dead is eating their magic, the power of magic that belongs to the gods, not human beings.
If it were not enough, read that the text is put in present tense, not past, so he IS an eater of men, not he WAS. He is as a divine being, a god in the realm of the gods.
The rest of the text that the author didn’t quote shows us it’s addressing the gods, using the cosmology cited above, and not accounting for any real happening here on Earth.
The author cites their theology to conclude that the hymn is a report of the existence of some actual rite of cannibalism they performed when alive here. There is a problem with it because the slaughter of criminals and rebels was made to destroy the chaos manifestation, so if they consumed the meat of human criminals and rebels, they would be swallowing the chaos manifestation what would be dangerous as it would be perpetuating his existence through them themselves. If they were killing non-criminals they would be sowing and nourishing the chaos on Earth, which is against their philosophy and mandate of keeping and nourishing the goddess Ma’at.
The author criticizes many Egyptologists for looking at their deeds with a biased eye. But the author didn’t make the effort of true immersion in ancient Egyptian mind and civilization properly, and so he himself is looking at their civilization with biased eyes. I can show you how it easily happens with an example below.
In the Gospel of Mathew 26 we read
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’
Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.’”
Throughout millennia Christians are going to the mass and swallowing a piece of bread as a part of the body of Jesus Christ every week! It’s called Holy Communion.
This passage above is called “The last supper.” Why is it not called “The cannibal supper?” Why is “holy communion” not called “holy cannibalism?”
Why do some people become shocked with the pyramid hymn above but not with the Christian sacrifice and cannibalism?
Why are people not horrified with the use of a man writhing in pain on a cross as God’s love for humanity?
Can you see how important it is a proper immersion in the culture, mind, and civilization we are analyzing before any assessment of it? Further, to be able of doing that we need to be conscious of our own culture before.
What this book arouse in my mind is that ancient Egyptians were aware of the true meaning and consequences of killing people: it was human sacrifice, with earthly and transcendental consequences and effects.
When someone throws a waste on the street, he thinks that there is not any consequence from it; an ancient Egyptian would see clearly that he is killing the manifestation of the goddess Ma’at and sowing the chaos forces around him.
I think that today we are using euphemisms to avoid recognizing the human sacrifice our civilization is doing. This is why modern people become horrified looking at other peoples’ deeds but not so when looking at our human sacrifices amounting to hundreds of millions of people, who in many cases were neither rebels nor criminals.
I think that remaining us with this blind on our eyes, our society will continue doing this. An example? The practice of cancellation; someone tells something that distresses the others, and they, common people, call for their stripping from the media, many times separating them from their means of sustenance. It’s not being made by the state, but by commoners. For me, it resembles the cancellation of Jews in Nazi German, isn’t it? And thereof it ended up in the Holocaust a couple of years after.
My last question is, for us all, is it possible we build a civilization with no human sacrifice at all?
