The Curse Of King Tut
The Curse of King Tut
Some stories of alleged supernatural occurrences cannot really be classified as either urban legends or hoaxes, but as accounts that have been told so often that the truth of the original report has become obscured over the years. Perhaps a classic story of this type would be the curse of King Tut.
When Howard Carter opened Tutankhamen 's tomb in November 1922, he found a number of magical objects buried with the boy king. One item reported found was a clay tablet with a curse carved on it: "Death will slay with his wings whoever disturbs the peace of the pharaoh". It is doubtful that the table ever existed, but magic played a big part in sending the boy king to the next world. In the first room, the antechamber, …show more content…
two life-size statues of Tutankhamen with black skin and gold kilt (skirt) represented the royal Ka—they served as the home or dwelling place of the royal soul during mummification. Magical objects were found on the floor of Tutankhamen 's burial chamber. Next to the shrines that enclosed the coffin were 10 magical oars intended to row the pharaoh 's solar boat to the next world. A double wooden chest painted black held two Faience cups—one filled with Natron and the other with resin, essential ingredients for mummification. Between the cups was a stone amulet used in the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony. Surrounding the shrines in the burial chamber were magical emblems of Anubis, the god of embalming—six-foot-tall gilded wooden poles draped with a carved wooden animal skin were set into alabaster pots painted with the royal cartouche. Four wooden staffs, covered with golden leaf shapes (whose religious import is unknown) were propped against another wall. Alan Gardiner, who translated inscriptions for Carter, suggested that the staffs resembled the Hieroglyph "to awake," and that they may have been place there to awaken Tutankhamen in the next world. Four small, trough-shaped clay vessels, found next to the staffs, no doubt had a magical function as well. A wooden died column amulet, representing the backbone of Osiris and providing stability for the pharaoh, was discovered when the burial chamber was cleared.
The opening section of the Mahabharata is called the Ādi Parva. As it begins, a king, Pariksit, has wounded a deer. Trying to follow it in the forest, he encounters a Brahman who had taken a vow of silence. The king asks about the deer. When the sage says nothing, the angry king hangs a dead snake around the holy man 's neck and leaves. On the holy man 's arrival home, the sight of the snake so angers the sage 's son that he curses the king to die by the bite of the ruling serpent, Taksaka. That curse is fulfilled, and the king 's son plots revenge against Taksaka by sacrificing a quantity of snakes. He does so but is stopped just before sacrificing Taksaka himself. Then the sage Vyāsa—the epic 's legendary author—arrives, and the new king, Janamejaya, requests that Vyāsa tell the story of the Kaurava—also called Kurus—and the Pandava, for Vyāsa was the real father of the kings Pandu and Dhritarashtra, and he had seen their conflict with his own eyes.
Muhammad himself was said to permit particular spells called ruqya to treat certain diseases. Muhammad himself used particular phrases or verses from the Quran that later became popular as magical charms to create particular effects if the verses were appropriately chanted. The entire Quran is considered an amulet and tiny versions are worn as such around the neck or elsewhere on the body as divine protection. The amulets or talismans would have to be made of a particular type of material—usually bone, animal skin, or wood, depending on its purpose—and the magical inscriptions would have to be written by a holy man or woman using a special kind of ink. In addition to the names of God or quranic phrases, some amulets and talismans bear the so-called seal of Solomon, a six-pointed star, or other drawings or tables consisting of numbers with esoteric meanings. Many amulets and talismans combine quranic inscriptions with pre-Islamic traditional lore and are commonly worn as jewelry by men, women, and children to protect them from the evil eye and ensure, safety while traveling; to secure a healthy birth and the survival of the newborn child; to contract a successful marriage; or to ensure a bountiful harvest or rainfall. Soldiers going off to war would wear them in the hope of gaining divine protection.
Polytheistic Arabs before Islam believed in a lively world populated by jinns who lived in natural objects such as sand dunes, rocks, pools, trees, and caves, along with other creatures said to be made of fire such as the ghilan (from which the English word ghoul may be derived) and the afarit.
Human beings were thought to be made of clay. Angels were believed to be made of light. Fire creatures were invisible except when they took specific forms and performed particular types of magic, such as obeying the commands of the person who summoned them. For instance, an jinn would appear and faithfully serve the person who invoked the jinn by rubbing a magic lamp. This was an important form of magic in the great literary compilation The Thousand and One Nights. Intermediaries between mortals and the jinn were the diviners called kahana. If an jinn entered a person and transformed him, the person was called majnun, "crazy, mad, out of his wits." The kahana spoke in a rhymed prose, called in Arabic saj, and swore oaths. A branch of letter magic that later became important as a form of divination with calibrated lists of numbers to carry out magical calculations was the zairaja. This was related to the horoscope and astrology, called ahkam al-nujum. In his introduction to the study of history, al-Muqaddima, the 15th-century philosopher Ibn Khaldun mentions several books on the subject of zairaja, most notably by a 14th-century astrologer, Abul-Abbas al-Sabti, who dedicated an entire book to the
topic.
The history of modern experimental science is also the history of magic and occult science, with practitioners using many of the same apparatuses, similar or identical raw materials, chemicals, acids, alkalis, and reagents. Some chemical scientists and metallurgists drew the same conclusions as alchemists. Some astronomers agreed with the celestial sightings of astrologers. Intention differentiated scientists and technologists from magicians and mystics, but not always. Writers of medical texts customarily wrote to inform, instruct, and expand the reach of their knowledge to the widest popular audience, who then could credit the writer and God for the valuable information. Writers of alchemical and astrological texts wrote to retain as secret those concepts that only initiates could fully appreciate. Initiates sought to imitate the creative powers of God, as in attempts to create in laboratories an elixir of life that conferred immortality and to read in the star cape of a horoscope a person 's future already planned by God, unknown to mortals, and now revealed. Truths revealed to mystics and magicians were personal and individualistic, gained through often painful and disciplined preparation, such as long fasting, physical deprivations, spells, and trances. Crowning the initiate 's introduction to mysteries by his or her own efforts was God 's grace, allowing the prepared mortal alchemist, astrologer, diviner, or mystic to enter the sacred gates leading ever closer and higher to the divine source of knowledge.
It is important to note that women were well represented in both mystical traditions. As Caroline Walker Bynum has persuasively argued, women were particularly attracted and susceptible to somatic mystical experience, mystical ecstasy, stigmata, extreme fasting and consumption of only the Eucharist, and divine visions. These bodily experiences allowed women mystically to identify fully with Christ 's bodily suffering, endowing them with a moral and spiritual authority that in ways paralleled male clerical domination of the sacramental mysteries. The spiritual quest of some male and female mystics led them to eschew church ritual and the sacraments as unnecessary for the soul 's journey to God. Many would be condemned for their heresy and some even executed. Yet other mystics, such as Saint Francis, his spiritual companion Saint Clare of Assisi, and Saint Catherine of Siena, defended orthodox belief, were staunchly loyal to the ecclesiastical authorities, and vigorously supported the church 's struggle against heresy. Visions, voices, ecstasy, trances, speaking in unknown languages (the so-called speaking in tongues), fits, writhing, crying, and paranormal states of being were commonplaces among stages of mystic investigation. Mystic reporters as well as the earlier contemplatives such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint Augustine, Saint Peter Damian, Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Gertrude, and Saint Francis of Assisi, each had a personal experience perceived as objective reality leading to a certitude of understanding of esoteric lore.
Magic, as distinct from mysticism, was the practice of attempting to control natural forces by other than natural means, with or without the help of God. Magic essentially assumed that divine, malign, or benign spirits dwelled within all things, If harnessed, their power was then under the magician 's dominion. Magic and occult sciences sought three powers: Magic extended human ability and expanded man 's intellectual and physical reach, magic tried to prevent evil and protect good, and magic predicted the future. Magic and supernatural sciences included astrology and alchemy as well as prestidigitation, intentional creation of illusions by slight of hand. Much medieval magic required spells, incantations, and complex ritual. Black magic, thought to be demonically inspired, was believed to cause harm, death, and destruction. White magic however, believed to be divinely inspired, supported excellence, health, fertility, safety, success, and triumph. Occult virtues were inexplicable, inherently powerful elements affecting human existence. They were thought to reside in herbs, stones, animal flesh, and astronomical phenomena such as comets and eclipses. The Renaissance occultist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) in his Philosophy of Natural Magic (De occulta philosophia libretres) maintained that human intellect and reason alone could not discern causes of potent qualities, but philosophers could discover them by experience and intuition.
References
George, A. R. The Babylonian Gilgamish Epic. Critical Edition and
Cuneiform Text. 2 vols. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2003.
Hines, Derek, trans. Gilgamesh. New York: Anchor Books, 2004.
Sandars, N. K., ed. and trans. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Baltimore, Md.:
Penguin Books, 1964.
The Civilization Of Ancient Egypt, By Paul Johnson
Some stories of alleged supernatural occurrences cannot really be classified as either urban legends or hoaxes, but as accounts that have been told so often that the truth of the original report has become obscured over the years. Perhaps a classic story of this type would be the curse of King Tut.
When Howard Carter opened Tutankhamen 's tomb in November 1922, he found a number of magical objects buried with the boy king. One item reported found was a clay tablet with a curse carved on it: "Death will slay with his wings whoever disturbs the peace of the pharaoh". It is doubtful that the table ever existed, but magic played a big part in sending the boy king to the next world. In the first room, the antechamber, …show more content…
two life-size statues of Tutankhamen with black skin and gold kilt (skirt) represented the royal Ka—they served as the home or dwelling place of the royal soul during mummification. Magical objects were found on the floor of Tutankhamen 's burial chamber. Next to the shrines that enclosed the coffin were 10 magical oars intended to row the pharaoh 's solar boat to the next world. A double wooden chest painted black held two Faience cups—one filled with Natron and the other with resin, essential ingredients for mummification. Between the cups was a stone amulet used in the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony. Surrounding the shrines in the burial chamber were magical emblems of Anubis, the god of embalming—six-foot-tall gilded wooden poles draped with a carved wooden animal skin were set into alabaster pots painted with the royal cartouche. Four wooden staffs, covered with golden leaf shapes (whose religious import is unknown) were propped against another wall. Alan Gardiner, who translated inscriptions for Carter, suggested that the staffs resembled the Hieroglyph "to awake," and that they may have been place there to awaken Tutankhamen in the next world. Four small, trough-shaped clay vessels, found next to the staffs, no doubt had a magical function as well. A wooden died column amulet, representing the backbone of Osiris and providing stability for the pharaoh, was discovered when the burial chamber was cleared.
The opening section of the Mahabharata is called the Ādi Parva. As it begins, a king, Pariksit, has wounded a deer. Trying to follow it in the forest, he encounters a Brahman who had taken a vow of silence. The king asks about the deer. When the sage says nothing, the angry king hangs a dead snake around the holy man 's neck and leaves. On the holy man 's arrival home, the sight of the snake so angers the sage 's son that he curses the king to die by the bite of the ruling serpent, Taksaka. That curse is fulfilled, and the king 's son plots revenge against Taksaka by sacrificing a quantity of snakes. He does so but is stopped just before sacrificing Taksaka himself. Then the sage Vyāsa—the epic 's legendary author—arrives, and the new king, Janamejaya, requests that Vyāsa tell the story of the Kaurava—also called Kurus—and the Pandava, for Vyāsa was the real father of the kings Pandu and Dhritarashtra, and he had seen their conflict with his own eyes.
Muhammad himself was said to permit particular spells called ruqya to treat certain diseases. Muhammad himself used particular phrases or verses from the Quran that later became popular as magical charms to create particular effects if the verses were appropriately chanted. The entire Quran is considered an amulet and tiny versions are worn as such around the neck or elsewhere on the body as divine protection. The amulets or talismans would have to be made of a particular type of material—usually bone, animal skin, or wood, depending on its purpose—and the magical inscriptions would have to be written by a holy man or woman using a special kind of ink. In addition to the names of God or quranic phrases, some amulets and talismans bear the so-called seal of Solomon, a six-pointed star, or other drawings or tables consisting of numbers with esoteric meanings. Many amulets and talismans combine quranic inscriptions with pre-Islamic traditional lore and are commonly worn as jewelry by men, women, and children to protect them from the evil eye and ensure, safety while traveling; to secure a healthy birth and the survival of the newborn child; to contract a successful marriage; or to ensure a bountiful harvest or rainfall. Soldiers going off to war would wear them in the hope of gaining divine protection.
Polytheistic Arabs before Islam believed in a lively world populated by jinns who lived in natural objects such as sand dunes, rocks, pools, trees, and caves, along with other creatures said to be made of fire such as the ghilan (from which the English word ghoul may be derived) and the afarit.
Human beings were thought to be made of clay. Angels were believed to be made of light. Fire creatures were invisible except when they took specific forms and performed particular types of magic, such as obeying the commands of the person who summoned them. For instance, an jinn would appear and faithfully serve the person who invoked the jinn by rubbing a magic lamp. This was an important form of magic in the great literary compilation The Thousand and One Nights. Intermediaries between mortals and the jinn were the diviners called kahana. If an jinn entered a person and transformed him, the person was called majnun, "crazy, mad, out of his wits." The kahana spoke in a rhymed prose, called in Arabic saj, and swore oaths. A branch of letter magic that later became important as a form of divination with calibrated lists of numbers to carry out magical calculations was the zairaja. This was related to the horoscope and astrology, called ahkam al-nujum. In his introduction to the study of history, al-Muqaddima, the 15th-century philosopher Ibn Khaldun mentions several books on the subject of zairaja, most notably by a 14th-century astrologer, Abul-Abbas al-Sabti, who dedicated an entire book to the
topic.
The history of modern experimental science is also the history of magic and occult science, with practitioners using many of the same apparatuses, similar or identical raw materials, chemicals, acids, alkalis, and reagents. Some chemical scientists and metallurgists drew the same conclusions as alchemists. Some astronomers agreed with the celestial sightings of astrologers. Intention differentiated scientists and technologists from magicians and mystics, but not always. Writers of medical texts customarily wrote to inform, instruct, and expand the reach of their knowledge to the widest popular audience, who then could credit the writer and God for the valuable information. Writers of alchemical and astrological texts wrote to retain as secret those concepts that only initiates could fully appreciate. Initiates sought to imitate the creative powers of God, as in attempts to create in laboratories an elixir of life that conferred immortality and to read in the star cape of a horoscope a person 's future already planned by God, unknown to mortals, and now revealed. Truths revealed to mystics and magicians were personal and individualistic, gained through often painful and disciplined preparation, such as long fasting, physical deprivations, spells, and trances. Crowning the initiate 's introduction to mysteries by his or her own efforts was God 's grace, allowing the prepared mortal alchemist, astrologer, diviner, or mystic to enter the sacred gates leading ever closer and higher to the divine source of knowledge.
It is important to note that women were well represented in both mystical traditions. As Caroline Walker Bynum has persuasively argued, women were particularly attracted and susceptible to somatic mystical experience, mystical ecstasy, stigmata, extreme fasting and consumption of only the Eucharist, and divine visions. These bodily experiences allowed women mystically to identify fully with Christ 's bodily suffering, endowing them with a moral and spiritual authority that in ways paralleled male clerical domination of the sacramental mysteries. The spiritual quest of some male and female mystics led them to eschew church ritual and the sacraments as unnecessary for the soul 's journey to God. Many would be condemned for their heresy and some even executed. Yet other mystics, such as Saint Francis, his spiritual companion Saint Clare of Assisi, and Saint Catherine of Siena, defended orthodox belief, were staunchly loyal to the ecclesiastical authorities, and vigorously supported the church 's struggle against heresy. Visions, voices, ecstasy, trances, speaking in unknown languages (the so-called speaking in tongues), fits, writhing, crying, and paranormal states of being were commonplaces among stages of mystic investigation. Mystic reporters as well as the earlier contemplatives such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint Augustine, Saint Peter Damian, Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Gertrude, and Saint Francis of Assisi, each had a personal experience perceived as objective reality leading to a certitude of understanding of esoteric lore.
Magic, as distinct from mysticism, was the practice of attempting to control natural forces by other than natural means, with or without the help of God. Magic essentially assumed that divine, malign, or benign spirits dwelled within all things, If harnessed, their power was then under the magician 's dominion. Magic and occult sciences sought three powers: Magic extended human ability and expanded man 's intellectual and physical reach, magic tried to prevent evil and protect good, and magic predicted the future. Magic and supernatural sciences included astrology and alchemy as well as prestidigitation, intentional creation of illusions by slight of hand. Much medieval magic required spells, incantations, and complex ritual. Black magic, thought to be demonically inspired, was believed to cause harm, death, and destruction. White magic however, believed to be divinely inspired, supported excellence, health, fertility, safety, success, and triumph. Occult virtues were inexplicable, inherently powerful elements affecting human existence. They were thought to reside in herbs, stones, animal flesh, and astronomical phenomena such as comets and eclipses. The Renaissance occultist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) in his Philosophy of Natural Magic (De occulta philosophia libretres) maintained that human intellect and reason alone could not discern causes of potent qualities, but philosophers could discover them by experience and intuition.
References
George, A. R. The Babylonian Gilgamish Epic. Critical Edition and
Cuneiform Text. 2 vols. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2003.
Hines, Derek, trans. Gilgamesh. New York: Anchor Books, 2004.
Sandars, N. K., ed. and trans. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Baltimore, Md.:
Penguin Books, 1964.
The Civilization Of Ancient Egypt, By Paul Johnson