Visiting Scholar Spotlight: Franziska Naether

Ancient Egyptian Literature is a treasure trove – for readers and scholars likewise: adventurous stories of the pharaoh fighting against his enemies, warlike women dueling with their opponents (and eventually falling in love with them), or cunning priests performing rituals and magic. Other texts feature ancient wisdom or discourses on present events and future prospects.

While at ISAW, I am analyzing more than 200 works of Egyptian literature from the Middle Kingdom to the Roman period (ca. 2000 BC – 200 AD) concerning their contents about cult practices. What do the texts tell us about religion, rituals, and magic? Do they add something new to what we already know from ritual manuscripts? And, more generally, may these cult practices serve other purposes, for example, does it keep the story more exciting for readers?

I have started my investigation with a book chapter about secrets and secret knowledge. From time to time, special cult knowledge is revealed or explicitly kept secret. In the “Second Setna Novel," the wunderkind Siosiris enters with his father Setna into the world of the dead and observes life in the Underworld. In another story, the protagonist Petese could force a ghost to reveal that he has only a few more days to live. Besides other sources, literary works tell us that many cult practices took place in certain hidden rooms or secret chambers. The religious personnel had to be trained, that is initiated, to be able to read certain papyrus scrolls from the library and participate in rituals. One priestly title that occurs frequently among authors of wisdom texts is hery-seshta, the “head of secrets,” most likely a fictional attribution.

The importance of secret knowledge becomes evident in times of political crisis. Then, the secrets are stripped bare, omens, oracles and predictions have been made public for everyone to hear. Some discursive texts such as the “Admonitions of the Egyptian sage Ipuwer” and the “Prophecy of Neferty” talk about such apocalyptic times but offer at least a better future.

Other research topics I wish to pursue in the literary texts are, among others, the presentation of the divine, sacred jurisdiction, and the role of fate. On May 16-17th, 2016 I am organizing a workshop for scholars interested in this field. The call for papers can be accessed here.

Read Franziska Naether’s full biography here.