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Philosophy and Rhetoric, Volume 44, Number 1, 2011, pp. 52-71 (Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/par.2011.0004
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abst ract
To the ancient mind, magic was a powerful force to be subjected to or to control.
Egypt, more than any other early culture, stressed the importance of intellectual
agency as the antidote to the imperfection perceived between foundational thinking and anti-foundational speaking. Just as rhetoric seeks to express the conceptual ideal pursued by philosophical inquiry, these earlier thinkers stressed magical
language as the key to unlocking the power of the cosmos. This article will explore
the Ancient Egyptian concept of rhetorical magic as a practical wisdom that allows
an individual to function fully within the boundaries established by a perceived
cosmic order. The Ancient Egyptians applied rhetorical magic to ease the dissonance felt between intellectual engagement and the semiotically saturated cosmology in which they dwelt. These same ancient rhetorical practices hold promise in
assisting our own attempts to navigate a world inundated with information.
Going back as far as the Old Kingdom (24502300 BCE), ancient Egyptian
speculative thinkers had already developed a complex understanding of the
relationship between personal agency, power, and the role of magic. What
is more, these early philosophers saw that this world (individual and social)
and the other (cosmological) operated according to the same principles.
The rules by which one secured power were the same whether one was a
peasant or a god. Through perception, the heart/mind would design an idea,
the mouth would speak it and, as if by magic, the task would be accomplished. Thoughtful, reasoned speech was the mechanism for reestablishing the order that was manifested in the reasoned creation of the universe.
Power and magic were not mysterious or esoteric to the Egyptians. Instead,
power and magic were a part of an individuals very existence.
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which hearers and readers understand the function of that text. Mysticism
as philosophy, from this perspective, reects a foundationalist perspective.
Scott Consigny writes that foundational rhetoric maintains that there is
an order or truth in the world that we may approach or apprehend if we use
the appropriate faculty or are inspired and that we may communicate this
truth if we speak in the proper manner (2001, 6364). Belief in a foundationalist context leads speakers to construct a text according to a mystical
understanding in order to reect that understanding using language. This
epistemological stance requires ontological experience and, consequently,
knowledge not just of the proper manner but an ability to speak in that
proper manner. From the audiences perspective, the apprehension of this
truth likewise requires knowledge of the appropriate faculties. Speakers
and audiences thus must have knowledge of a shared experience in order for
the truth of rhetorical texts to be experienced, understood, and expressed.
The ancient Egyptians articulated this shared, epistemic experience
through their highly complex and symbolic onto-cosmological narratives.
An onto-cosmological narrative expresses the fundamental beliefs of its
cultural background and reveals the ontological concerns of a group situated in a specic time and place. In short, the onto-cosmological narrative
seeks to express what is possible and what is ideal and how what the group
desires can be accomplished by it within the cultural paradigm (Berlin 1993,
14849). These narratives create the essential rhetorical situation by explaining both philosophically and semantically those contexts in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse (Bitzer 1968, 1) in order to be fully
involved with the creation and maintenance of a world.
Essentially, these onto-cosmological narratives are foundationalist in
that mystical truth is presented as an independent goal or starting point or
origin that is ontologically, logically and temporally prior to human inquiry
and knowledge; that is independent of the contingencies of human life,
culture and language; and that serves as a criterion for claims to knowledge
and meaningful speech (Consigny 2001, 61). Because of the strong emphasis on all the metaphysical elements, creation stories stress an individuals
participation in the coming into being of knowing. Encoded in the narrative is the nature of truth as both goal and means. Once again, however,
there must not be a hard distinction made between the cosmology of the
gods and the ontology of human beings. What separates the cosmological
truth from the ontological goal of truth is a mere matter of location.
Over Egypts long history, many creation stories evolved to explain
the onto-cosmological situation of those living on the banks of the Nile.
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Each creation story addressed the particular exigency of its area and people.
What this myriad of stories share is that they are primarily etiological. An
extraordinary exception is the Memphite Theology, a religious treatise
that emphasizes the role of reason and language in constituting reality. In
this story, Ptah emerges as the divine reason that creates and maintains
the universe. Ptah is characterized as he who has given [life] to all the
gods and their kas through his heart and his tongue (Lichtheim 1975, 54).
The Ennead (the council of gods), according to this text, functions as the
limbs informed by the intellect (heart) and performative speech (tongue).
Likewise, while Ptahs intelligent speech is formative, the gods, cattle,
and humans (interestingly lumped together) function through their speech
and actions as agents of denition. The Memphite text declares thus all
the faculties were made and all qualities determined, they that make all
foods and provisions, through this word. Thus Ptah was satised after
he had made all things and all divine words (Lichtheim 1975, 55). Humanity nds itself in a world of linguistic construction. Consequently, to participate fully in this reality, an action is required to determine ones proper
function in context. In other words, one exists only as fully as ones command of the word.
To have command of the word, an individual must know the formative
and performative power of speech reected in the magical vocabulary that
emerges from the onto-cosmological narrative. An illustration of the creative power of words is further revealed in the vocabulary of Egyptian magic.
For the ancient Egyptians, the primary creative force in the universe was
heka, usually translated as magic. According to the Con Texts (spell 261),
heka is the rst created force, and consequently, the divine force that empowered the creation event (Wilkinson 2003, 110). Heka, then, is not merely
hocus-pocus but the vitality behind the process of invention and production that establishes the order of existence.
The power of heka was found in its close association with language. In
fact, the whole of Egyptian mysticism and magic is encoded in the metaphysics of its linguistics. Therefore, before explicating the word heka, it is
necessary, rst, to clarify the complexities of the Egyptian writing system.
Despite the philological advances in hieroglyph research, many lay people
still believe that the ancient Egyptian writing system was purely pictographic. In reality, this system of writing was far more complex in that the
signs used fall into three categories. First, signs could be used to represent
consonant sounds. Here, the signs could further represent monoconsonant,
biconsonant, or triconsonant sounds. Second, there was a group of ideograms
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Theology transformed chaos into order, the king was expected to preserve
or reestablish justice within the kingdom, while the everyday Egyptian was
to do what was loved (ethical) over what was hated (unethical) as had been
established since the beginning of time.
For both gods and humans, maat was the very basis of ones speech
and actions: Do maat speak maat (Morenz 1992, 117). Another text
declares [hu] is in thy mouth, [sia] is in thy heart, and thy tongue is the
shrine of Justice [maat] (qtd. in Wilson 1977, 84). Order is the only true
outcome of intelligence. What is perceived and spoken must reect what
is true. Just as word is a manifestation of mind, justice or truth is a product
of them both. Their power is found in the articulate expression of concepts.
When heart and tongue are in agreement, all faculties are made and all
qualities determined. Thus justice is done to him who does what is loved,
and punishment to him who does what is hated. Thus life is given to the
peaceful, death is given to the criminal (Lichtheim 1975, 5455). The power
of conscious expression is not just revealed in the metaphysical order but
in the ethical order as well. The recognition of maat in the expressed order
of the universe becomes the sia of the human/social order. The language
of human beings must also express this order in a terrestrial sense. This is
precisely why Ptah is in every mouth of all gods and all men. There is no
cognitive dierence between the maat of men and gods; the dierence is
one of location only.
Rosalie David nicely summarizes this cognitive, cosmological process:
The two divine principles of perception [sia] and creative speech [hu] are
the rational forces by which creation is achieved, when the creator god rst
perceives the world as a concept and then brings it into being through
this rst utterance. To achieve this, the creator uses the principle of magic
[heka], a force that, according to Egyptian belief, could transform a spoken
command into reality (2002, 86). Egyptian metaphysics was rooted in the
idea of developing an awareness of concepts and then correctly expressing those concepts so as to create a right dealing and just order. At the
most essential level, this cognitive process relied on the correct word and
phraseology to reect the idea that had the power to determine order.
While maat was the fundamental principle of order in the Egyptian
cosmos, the Egyptian metaphysician recognized that order was not something created and xed but rather something to be created and that consequently a break in the sameness of order was necessary for true action.
Like their Hebrew neighbors, the Egyptians believed that the paradise of
maat was threatened by an adversary determined to upset the reasoned,
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linguistic order that had been established at the beginning of time. Lurking in the netherworld of the Egyptian cosmos was the demon serpent
Apophis. According to the mythology, Apophis was the embodiment of
the powers of dissolution, darkness and non-being (Wilkinson 2003, 221).
Essentially, Apophis was the nemesis of the sun god Re. In the Book of
Gates, Re sails across the sky and through the underworld, governing
the world as well as bringing it light and life. Apophis, as the enemy of
order, threatens to overturn the divine barque at sunrise and sunset with
the intention of preventing the journey that not only symbolizes maat but
is the cosmic act of enforcing maat. Aiding Re on this journey is Heka.
In this myth, Heka is linked to Re as his protector. As Robert Ritner
notes, Heka protects the passage of the sun through the netherworld he
defends the very created order itself (1993, 19). R.T. Rundle Clark underlines the importance of this pairing of Re and Heka, pointing out that the
solar barque is the centre of the regulation of the universe, so it is suitable
that it should be manned by the personications of intellectual qualities
(1959, 24950). Re represents the agent of maat. As its agent, he must meet
the challenges of disorder with the instruments of order. Without the intelligent awareness and proper utilization of Heka, he is helpless in the face
of disorder. The agent of order (be it Re, the king, or the average Egyptian)
must seamlessly match his or her intentions and actions to the metaphysical demands of cosmic order. The onto-cosmological narrative makes it
clear that only intelligent action is true action.
This connection between rhetoric, heka, and Apophis is drawn even
more clearly by Ludwig D. Morenz. In his essay Apophis: On the Origin
and Nature of an Egyptian Anti-God, Morenz moves beyond mythology
and netherworlds to explore the etymological meaning of the name Apophis. Morenz identies two elements in this demon gods name. The rst element 3 means great and the second element, pp, translates as roar, babbler,
babble. Morenz believes that pp is an onomatopoeic word imitating the
inarticulate or even nonverbal sound of this mythological water snake
(2004, 203). This construction is similar to the Greek root for barbarianbarbar, which is onomatopoeic for the inarticulate speech of foreigners.
Putting these elements together, Apophis comes to mean great babbler, an onto-cosmological concept for gibberish and confused speech.
Morenz writes that Apophis is understood to be evil because language
endows meaning and relation, and Apophis is the negation of precisely these
ideas (2004, 204). Yet Apophis was more than a mere symbol of a distant,
cosmic crisis. Assman sees Apophis as denoting a danger that threatens
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life on all its semantic levels and can attack at any time and in any form
(1995, 54). Because the Egyptian cosmos was based on the intelligent articulation of perception, Apophis threatens it by confusing language and, therefore, wisdom. He is the very antithesis of reasoned speech and order.
In their onto-cosmological writings, the Egyptians clearly illustrate
the role of rhetoric as dened by Burke:
Let us observe, all about us, forever goading us, though it be in
fragments, the motive that attains its ultimate identication in
the thought, not of the universal holocaust, but of the universal
orderas with the rhetorical and dialectic symmetry of the Aristotelian metaphysics, whereby all classes of being are hierarchally
arranged in a chain or ladder or pyramid of mounting worth, each
kind striving towards the perfection of its kind, and so towards the
kind next above it, while the striving of the entire series head in
God as the beloved cynosure and sinecure, the end of all desire.
(1969b, 333, emphasis his)
We all seek order rather than chaos, and then we desire to express that
order in some way. Yet it is in chaos, or in the face of disorder, that the
power of formative and performative speech is found. The desire to express
order is secondary to the need to recognize possibility in the epistemological crisis. Therefore, reasoning- and language-using agents nd themselves
going from a situation in which no point of reference is possible and hence
no orientation can be established (Eliade 1957, 21) to one in which they
must consider truth not as something xed and nal but as something to
be created moment by moment in the circumstances that they nd themselves in and that they must cope with (Scott 1994, 318). It is within this
context of uncertainty that rhetorical magic becomes necessary.
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mouth is bad (Wente 2003, 94). Thus although Horus is qualied for
the throne because he holds the power of maat, his critics object to his
kingship based on his age and his bad breath. These objections are absurd,
but the politics of personal destruction is sucient enough to cloud the
issue. Through its satirical tone, The Contendings of Horus and Seth
illustrates that the ethical demand of maat can be obscured by subjective
interpretations and presentations meant to misdirect an audience from the
issue of justice.
Despite clever arguments and wishful thinking, the reality of maat
cannot be altered. Isis illustrates the essential nature of truth when she
tricks Seth into evaluating the situation with maat rather than his ambition. Disguised as a beautiful young woman, Isis seeks an audience with
Seth. Finding him alone, she testies that I was the wife of a cattleman
to whom I bore a son. My husband died, and the lad started tending his
fathers cattle. But, then a stranger came and settled down in my stable.
He said thus speaking to my son, I shall beat you, conscate your fathers
cattle, and evict you (Wente 2003, 96). Seth, distracted from his own
agenda, responds to this intrigue with Are the cattle to be given to the
stranger even while the mans son is still about? (Wente 2003, 96). Isis then
reveals herself and admonishes Seth, saying Be ashamed of yourself ! It is
your own mouth that has said it. It is your own cleverness that has judged
you (Wente 2003, 96). Isis shows that Seths mouth has expressed ethical
knowing and, consequently, justied him.
This rebuke is taken directly from the Memphite Theology. The text
instructs that sight, hearing, breathing report to the heart, and it makes
every understanding come forth and that the mouth repeats what is in
the heart (Lichtheim 1975, 54).The heart takes what is seen and arranges
that information in accordance with the foundational qualities of justice.
Thoughts and words reect justice only when they express maat. In fact,
it is in the best interest of an agent to participate in the doing of maat.
To ignore ethical justice is to step outside the established ontological
framework. As The Memphite Theology states, only one who does maat
actually lives.
The Contendings of Horus and Seth illustrates that maat is the natural consequence of reasoned thought. It actually takes eort and planning
to distract ones self and others from the reality of ethical justice. Magic,
as epistemic rhetoric, functions to distract an agent from subjective, antifoundational agendas in order and thereby refocuses the cognitive energies
of him or her in such a way as to encourage the syncretization of his or
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her behavior with cosmic truth. When distracted from his own subjective
position, even Seth responds with maat. The point of the story is clear. We
cannot alter maat with the clever arrangement of words. Although humans
possess, through reasoned speech, the power to create possibilities and
explore them, these alternate views are not maat. Therefore, it is not maat
that must be preserved or protected or maintained but rather ones relationship to maat.
The dualistic nature of discourse as illustrated in the onto-cosmological
narratives manifested itself in the day to day lives of the ancient Egyptians.
In everything from pharaonic victory steles to court cases to letters to the
dead, this cultures rhetoric struggled to apprehend and express truth, cosmologically to the gods and ontologically to each other, through a complex linguistic system. These complexities, however, were claried through
a speakers adherence to maat. Maat, rhetorically speaking, becomes an
organizing principle a speaker follows in order to structure both the investigation of phenomena and the expression of the particular knowledge
he or she arrives at. In the scheme of Egyptian magic, language not only
expresses maat, but stresses that the most powerful speech is that which
comes nearer to approximating the reality of maat. One knows maat by
doing and speaking maat. Conversely, it is maat that an audience or reader
will respond to in communication. Maat, then, is the preferred method of
rhetorical arrangement.
For the ancient Egyptians, no single event characterized the need for
maat as mode like the passing from life to death. The Egyptian funerary
cult believed that the deceased required care in the afterlife just as the living did in life. Therefore, before death, an individual set out to establish
an endowment for his/her mortuary cult that was designed to perpetuate
the owners name among the living and his divine status among the dead
(Ritner 1997, 140). Daily food and water oerings as well as prayers and the
speaking of the deads name performed by a ka-priest or family member
were required if one were to live forever. The real fear for the soon-to-bedeparted was not the inevitability of death but the eternal death that would
result should these rituals cease to be carried out. In The Man Who Was
Weary of Life, the writer laments:
Even those who built with stones of granite,
Who constructed the magnicent pyramids,
Perfecting them with excellent skill,
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much the same way Aristotle conceived the relationship between rhetoric
and philosophy. Just as rhetoric serves as the counterpart to the dialectic in the demonstration of truth, so too magic functioned as a means
to apprehend and express the mystical. In the course of this process, the
universal mind and the human mind became one. Acting as a balance in the
middle of this process was maat, the fulcrum of the onto-cosmological narrative. To discover what was possible, one needed to be able to epistemically
fuse individually motivated action with what was morally right. Magic was
no less than the apprehension and expression of the mystical realm through
individual, ethical action.
It is clear that the ancient Egyptians took discourse about truth very
seriously. Reason, language, and ethics were at the very heart of their
metaphysics. In fact, The Memphite Theology goes so far as to portray
reason as the ethical expression of the divine will. The seriousness with
which they attended to onto-cosmological matters extended to the way
they approached their epistemology as well. How eective one was was
determined by his or her ability to not only speak the truth but also apprehend the truth (or lack thereof ) in the speech of another. Their magic was
a practical, epistemic rhetoric meant to realign personal ambition with
maat. In other words, as revealed in the essential narratives of their culture,
magic was epistemic rhetoric in that it stressed the active pursuit of justice
through thinking and speaking.
In my study of ancient Egypt, this emphasis on metacognition, semiotics, and ethics has intrigued me more than pyramids, mummies, or
golden sarcophagi. Yet little attention has been paid to how the Egyptians
expressed their metaphysics with rhetoric. Ancient Egypt was a culture that
saw eective rhetoric as active rhetoric. Its rhetoric was a mode of discourse
that stressed an interactive understanding of maat on the part of speakers
and their responsibility to express maat through the construction of texts.
In a highly stratied culture with a nearly incomprehensible bureaucracy,
a subordinate, as Lipson rightly argues, could rebuke a superior with the
ethical demands of maat using maat as function, form, and proof. Clearly,
in a culture that had the same word for truth and justice, epistemic action
was not only required but was also a moral imperative.
The greatest lesson these ancient metaphysicians have to teach is seemingly the most esoteric. Yet, like most aspects of Egyptology, the surface
esotericism obscures a humanistic pragmatism that speaks across time
to reveal the promise of our own existential exceptionalism. Whereas
the Egyptians mystied discourse, our culture has demystied the use of
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works cited
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Bitzer, Lloyd. 1968. The Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1): 114.
Booth, Wayne. 2002. Ending the War Between Science and Religion: Can Rhetorology
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