‘And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you‘d be?’ ... ‘You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in his dream. ’ ‘If that there King was to wake, ’ added Tweedledum, ‘you’d go out – bang! – just like a candle!’
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
The focus of this book has been limited to the evidence up to the end of the New Kingdom, but the civilization that we know of as Ancient Egypt continued for another thousand years. Subjected to changes caused by internal and external pressures, the quality and quantity of dream reports changed as well, suggesting that the status, role, and perception of dreams were transformed. After the New Kingdom there was an increase in reported dreams in a healing or divinatory context in Demotic texts, references to incubation in literary tales (such as Setne Khaemwas), as well as dreams ascribed to pharaohs and princes in pseudepigraphic stelae.
As early as the Third Intermediate Period this change is apparent in the oracular amuletic decrees, and a brief discussion of these will serve as an example of some of the new roles of dreams. The content of these decrees was a promise from the gods to keep the owner safe from problems and difficulties which could affect the living. These included a variety of diseases and health problems, dangers which could be met everyday and while travelling, foreign and domestic practitioners of magic, the wrath of gods, hostile demons and malignant spirits, and dreams. Designed for the use of both male and female children, the papyri were prepared in advance with a space left blank ready for insertion of the name of the deity or deities who would ultimately be responsible for the decree. The parents or guardian of the child would take the papyrus to the shrine of the preferred deity, where that deity’s name would be inserted along with the word ‘said’ (ḏd). The deity would make promises concerning the bearer which were then recorded on papyrus. This decree would then be tightly rolled up, placed in a container, and worn around the neck as an amulet.
These amulets were probably not read aloud again, for Egyptian amulets were effective simply by virtue of having been recorded, and once activated they would retain their power.1
The following is a sample from a typical amulet:
T.1 (Turin Museum 1983) r. 1–262
Mut, the great one, lady of Isheru, the great goddess, the eldest who was the first to come-into-existence, said –
Khonsu in Thebes Neferhotep, the great god, the eldest who was the first to come-into-existence, said –
Amun, (lord of) the Thrones-of-the-Two-Lands, the Defender of the Oppressed, the great [god], the eldest who was the first to come-into- existence, said:‘
We shall keep safe Tasherenyoh, whose mother is Mutempermise, who is
as also called <the> daughter of Paahauty, our servant and our offspring (?).
We shall keep her healthy in her flesh and in her bone(s).
We shall protect her and we shall look after her.
We shall be between her and any sickness.
We shall grant her life, health, a long lifetime, and a great and good old age.
We shall keep healthy her whole body and every limb of hers from her head to the soles of her feet.
We will make all dreams which she has seen, good ones.
We will make all dreams which she will see, good ones.
We will make all dreams which any man, any woman, any people of any kind in the entire land saw for her, good ones.
We will make all dreams which any man, any woman, any people of any
kind in the entire land will see for her, good ones.
We will say good things about them.‘
This passage reveals a number of properties of dreams as they were perceived in this period. The text specifically refers both to dreams that have already been seen in the past, and to ones that will be seen in the future. The deities thus appear to have had the ability to change the nature of dreams already seen and as yet unseen. The decree also acts not only on dreams seen by the bearer herself, but on dreams that other individuals could see, or be caused to see, of (or on behalf of) the bearer.3 Other decrees imply that the gods could steer the intent of dreams:4
We shall make his dreams good
or the ones another male
or another female will see for him, good.
We shall affirm for him their good intent (tkcc ).
We shall negate for him their bad intent.
The deity has the power to sway any negative influence dreams might have on the bearer of the amulet. This direct influence of a deity on the quality of an individual‘s dreams does not appear in the records discov- ered so far from before the New Kingdom, and reflects the expanding role that deities played in the daily life of Egyptians in the Third Intermediate Period. While the popularity of the oracular amuletic decrees was relatively short-lived,5 they may be a product of the permanent change which had occurred in the perception of dreams after the Ramesside Age.
In the end we can catch only a brief glimpse of the effect that dreams might have had on Egyptians living during the first two millennia of Egyptian history. The attempt to delve into the psyche of any culture is fraught with danger, and the limited quantity of Egyptian data has made it especially so. While material evidence for the impact of dreams includes apotropaic artefacts such as headrests and bedposts, most of the direct documentation of dreams is textual, written and filtered by the scribal elite who follow their own agendas, and the proprieties of their environment.
The Predynastic and Old Kingdom have unfortunately left us without any firm evidence regarding dreams. Thus the earliest attested references date from the First Intermediate Period letters to the dead, which reveal dreams as a liminal zone or state in which the barriers between the world of the divine and the world of the living became transparent. The word used for ‘dream‘ in these texts was rsw.t, which is derived from the root rs meaning ‘to awaken‘. This lexeme continued to be used throughout Egyptian history and still survives in the Coptic language. In the New Kingdom a second and less common word is attested: qd. While both rsw.t and qd are written with the determinative of the open eye, the root of qd is derived from a word for ‘sleep,‘ rather than ‘awakening‘.
In the Middle Kingdom, authors of belles-lettres employed dreams as metaphors to accentuate that which is insubstantial, ephemeral, or uncon- trollable. The dreamer was characterized as a passive viewer of a scenario which unfolded before him. Dreams were not necessarily positive experi- ences, and were included in execration texts and medical texts as undesirable, even hostile forces to be guarded against and repelled. In the New Kingdom, the literary use of dreams continued, but with an added political agenda as pharaohs introduced divine dreams into their royal biographies. This coincided with the expanded use of oracles on the royal level where they were designed to legitimate the pharaoh’s divine destiny, as well as at lower levels of society where the belief in predestination played an increasingly important role in the daily life of the individual. After the Amarna Period, the afterlife became an important feature in the decorative program of non-royal tombs, and the songs written on their walls use the dream as a temporal trope to emphasize the brevity and insignificance of time on earth, enjoining listeners and readers to look forward to everlasting life in the beyond. From the library of an enterprising Ramesside scribe in Deir el-Medina came the first Egyptian book of the interpretation of dreams, and a letter suggesting the use of oracles to predict the quality of a dream on a personal level. These works reflect the cosmopolitan nature of Ramesside society that generated a nurturing environment for the creation of new literary documents such as love songs, and allowed previ- ously restricted expressions of personal piety to become part of non-royal discourse. At this time unsolicited dreams appeared as an apparently sanc- tioned venue for communication between the divine world and the world of the non-royal elite. Correspondingly, the dark sides of dreams were recognized as well, with apotropaic spells, rituals, and talismans designed to repulse nightmare-causing demons and other terrors in the night.
On a personal level, the Egyptian‘s dream-life was not completely positive, and nightmares were considered as a serious threat. At the same time, dreams of a beneficent goddess could inspire reverent awe and hymns of praise. The paucity of surviving material offers little more than a glimpse into the perception of dreams. Nevertheless, it is enough to show that from the Old through the New Kingdoms the range of reactions to dreams and the roles they played were no less varied in the ancient world than they are today.
Notes
1 Frankfurter 1994, 197.
2 The following translation is based on that of Edwards 1960, 51–2. The texts which contain references to dreams are noted in the List of Abbreviations.
3 The idea of sending dreams can be found in other Demotic and Graeco- Egyptian texts such as P. Louvre N 3229 and the Alexander Romance (Quack, personal communication).
4 C.1 (70–7). See also decrees C.1, T.3 and T.1 (Edwards 1960).
5 Ray 1981, 182 attributes this in part to the specificity of divine guarantees enumerated in the decrees, for ‘this is of course a violation of one of the essential rules of magic – avoidance of the specific’.