Heka: Magic in Ancient Egypt($19.99Value)

Description

The word the ancient Egyptians used for what we call "magic" was "Heka", but it meant something the modern word cannot contain. Not superstition opposed to religion, nor folk practice at the margins of the official cult. A cosmic force present at the moment of creation, personified as a god, wielded by trained specialists, and inscribed across three thousand years of papyri, amulets, tombs, and temple walls. This book reconstructs Heka from within the Egyptian sources (Pyramid Texts, healing papyri, execration deposits, operative hieroglyphs, Greco-Roman bilingual spells), replacing the nineteenth-century image with the system the Egyptians actually practised. Scholarly in method, accessible in prose, and designed to equip the reader to enter the Egyptological literature independently.