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Old 01-20-2010, 06:47 PM   #10
BROOK
Avalon Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 3,117
Default Re: What do you know of Ptah?

one more insight....on Ptah


A stone tablet was found washed up on a beach and reached the British Museum from Egypt in
1805. Cataloged as Stella #797, it was finally correctly translated by James Henry Breasted (in a
paper “The Philosophy of a Memphite Priest.”) The tablet was a record of early beliefs dating back to
pre-dynastic Egypt over 5100 years ago. It is worth quoting a few passages from it, since it has
philosophical and psychological significance in the modern idiom, as we shall see later. It concerns a
supreme creator god Ptah as a spiritual entity behind the sun god Atum and his ennead.

“Mighty and great is Ptah, who rendered power to the gods and their kas: through his heart, by
which Horus became Ptah; and through his tongue, by which Thoth became Ptah.

To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, the moon god Thoth is symbolic of the creative word that is
identified with the tongue of Ptah.
Thoth also greets the solar power of Atum in its rising, namely
Horus, who is the living son and resurrection of the creative power of Osiris. Horus is here identified
with the heart of Ptah. The gods thus represent functioning members of the totality of Ptah, who
dwells in them as their eternal vital force, namely their ka. (remember Mer Ka Ba? )

“Thus the heart and tongue won mastery over all the members, in as much as he is in every
body and every mouth of all gods, all men, all beasts, all crawling things, and whatever lives, since
he thinks and commands everything as he wills.”…

When the eye sees, the ears hear, and the nose breathes, they report to the heart. It is the
heart that brings forth every issue, and the tongue that repeats the thought of the heart.
Thus were
fashioned all the gods: even Atum and his Ennead.
Every divine word has come into existence through the heart’s thought and tongue’s
command.
..”
“Thus it was—by such speech—that the kas were created and the maid servants of the kas.
“It is these that make all sustenance, all food; all that is liked and all that is loathed.
“Thus it was he who gave life to the peaceful and death to the transgressor.
“Thus it was he who made every work, every craft...”

In commenting on the text, Eduard Meyer (in his History of Antiquity) wrote “… The myths can no
longer be taken simply in their literal sense. They have to be understood as a rendition of deeper
thoughts
, striving to comprehend the world spiritually, as a unit.”
Joseph Campbell notes that whereas cosmic speculations have been rendered in verbal terms in
later ages, the normal medium of archaic thought was in visual terms. He writes “…it is surely
curious to consider that, although no scholar worth his mortarboard would be likely to eat the menu
instead of the dinner, mistaking the printed word for its reference, elementary lapses of this sort are
normal in works of learning treating of the ancient gods. …”

Last edited by BROOK; 01-20-2010 at 07:00 PM.
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