William Durand-Poole

Sometimes these gods, of course, you worship them as kind of preemptive strikes, really, don't you?

You know, you worship a god of arthritis to say, please don't give me arthritis.

You know, you worship the scorpion goddess, not because she's helping you daily, but please, please keep the scorpions away from me.

So Egyptian polytheism operates on all of these different levels, where we could say state religion and domestic religion, but also during the New Kingdom, and we're in the middle of the New Kingdom at this point, the Egyptians had expanded their empire and they were happily bringing home foreign gods from Syria, from Canaan.

We have Nubian gods coming up from the south.

And, you know, one thing I think it's really important to recognize is that in the ancient mind, there was no contradiction in doing that, you know?

The gods were gods who were gods.

And everybody acknowledged that different people have different gods.

But they never say, oh, you know, the Hittite gods, they don't exist, or the gods in Canaan don't exist.

They all believe in these things.

Listeners might remember that in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a competition.

Which god is the stronger?

Not which god is real, which is the stronger.

So even in the Hebrew Bible, the prophets are not saying there aren't any other gods, necessarily.

There are other people's gods.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And it's evoked in things like the Book of the Dead, the Spells for the Dead.

Because if your hinge sticks at that point, it means the soul can't get through the door.

It means disaster for everyone.