LE MUSÉON

Revue d’études orientales, vol. 85

LOUVAIN 1972

Review of Claude Vandersleyen

Makram, Rizq: Kulturgeist und Kulturleib. Kulturpsychologie des alten Aegypten, with an introduction by Igor A. Caruso.                                                                                        2. edition. Tuebingen. Selfpublished, 1970. XII, 192 pages, 6 figs., 230 x 150mm. (This book is dedicated woth reverence and gratitude to a distinguished German, Dr. Walther Gebhardt, Director, retd. , of the university library of Tuebingen).

For a long time it has been suggested, that neither the Greek nor the Roman occupation caused the discontinuation of the typical Pharaonic forms of the Egyptian culture, but that this resulted rather through the introduction of Christianity. According to this concept the material tradition was dissolved, since the mental attitude, which had produced it and held it together was changed rapidly. The title of the book reviewed here expresses this difference between the material remains of the Egyptian culture, (the body of the culture) and the spirit (spirit of the culture) that gave birth to it. In any case we have to take into account this difference, so that we can closely approach their culture, as the Egyptians have left hardly any written document they can directly illuminate this spirit - be it out of secrecy or something more, as they might have considered it superfluous to express something that was obvious -, and even such texts reveal their meaning only through difficult investigations. It is, therefore, common that the majority of Egyptologists, grammarians and archaeologists engage themselves with the analysis of the material (object specific) part of the Egyptian culture. In the course of these activities some have attempted to explore the Egyptian mentality and to reach the nucleus of this spirit: to mention only a few - just as it comes in mind -, Erman, Kees, Junker, Jéquier, Morenz, Anthes and Hornung. In this series I would like to include the work of Mr. Makram. He also realizes, how often the material remains and the scripts of the old Egyptians do not fit together and lead to confusions, so that it does not suffice to simply put them together in order to unravel their culture. That is why Mr. Makram tries to find a dynamic approach, which can overcome the contradictions and render their essential existence understandable. In order to reach that goal one must avoid at first to judge the behaviour of the old according to the rules of a too stringent cartesianism, considering that the behaviour and mentality of modern human beings would as well appear equally illogical and contradictory.                                                                                 One cannot understand the reactions of an earlier man if one does not observe him as a living individual. Today it is accepted, that human beings living several thousand years ago might have been identical to ourselves and that their mental structure, far from being "pre-logical" or "wild", must have been very similar to that of ours. The graphic and literary symbols, which were chosen by the Egyptians to express their views about the world and of life (in an unclear way for us, but certainly much more expressive for themselves), are products of psychic reactions, that are not specifically Egyptian, but belonged to a great extent to humanity as a whole, for which one can find parallels in completely different places and epochs.
Makram obviously uses psychology to be able to penetrate into the spirit of Egypt during the pharaonic age; and, for studying the men of the past, he makes use of what these sciences teach us about the behaviour of a human being in general, his conscious or unconscious motives, over the enormous collection and pictures and originates from our personal lives, - from the family, and also from smaller or larger groups to which we belong, including the group of mankind as a whole.
The procedure of makram is quite original and – in my opinion- very fruitful, but I consider it relevant to put forward some comments on the presentation of the book. The first edition of the work dates back to the year 1967; the edition of 1970 is an anastatic reprint; it received a complementary introduction from a specialist of psychology, namely Dr. I. Caruso.
So far as I know, no review of the first edition had appeared, except a short uncritical notice in the "Orientalia miscellanea" of the "Bibliotheca Orientalis" 27 (1970), page 126. Similarly also I could not find the work cited in any recent study or related questions. Both  the editions were published in Tübingen under the sole responsibility of the author; no further writing from his hand is known to me. The preface contains - ununderstandable for me - allusions to quarrels and rivalries, and even to a lawsuit on spiritual theft, all of which have probably led to a delay in the first publication. So far as the transmission of newer facts and their incorporation did not proceed at a more slower pace than I can imagine, should we then not visualize in this silence an attitude of rejection toward this book?
Certainly there exist such unscientific and rather well presented works, in which one quickly discards realistic Egyptology based on facts, either due to the fantacy of the author or also because the author lacks the methods and competence for the task. However, after I read the book of Mr. Makram with attentiveness, it appears to me that the book is excellently written, basing on serious information and it is clearly thoughtful and highly interesting.  Now I like to start an analysis of the book, without trying to bring light into the darkness just hinted at.
In order to turn away from the material aspects of the Egyptian culture and to go back to the mentality of the individuals, who had created this culture, the author investigates with the help of psychological methods the symbolic language - in picture and script - by which the old Egyptians had expressed their concept of the world and their philosophy. Perhaps this analysis was not carried out at first in the same sequence as conceived by the author. The agreement of detail-analysis has inspired him to the  intuition for that, what he calls "working   hypothesis"; a basic idea which has enabled him to bring together varied myths and symbols in a comprehensive interpretation.
The source of origin of the Egyptian culture is (according to the author) the sun, who creates everything, and, therefore, not the sun of the physicists, but a God of souls, a spirit, from which every life flows out. In order to express this concept and its multifarious consequences the Egyptians have made use of a mythical and symbolic language, whose pictures are the products of conscious and mostly unconscious view of man, facing a gigantic idea, that dominated their view of the world. The sun breathed into each human being the soul, which should make him immortal, the "Ach" or "Sunlight". This creation of life is represented in the illustration of the creative action known to man, principally in the sexual act, of which the "bullock of his mother" is only one example. The author examines a certain number of symbols which personify the sun, ist creations and their relations; for example the falcon, the earliest mountain peak, the heavenly cow and the holy trees. Relying on the association of thoughts in psychology and ethnology concerning such illustrations he tries to understand why the Egyptians had chosen specifically these symbols in connection to their basic concepts about the sun as God of souls.
The main link of the research of Makram is the individual, the "carrier of the culture", whose relations, followed step by step, actually progressively constructed the Egyptian metaphysics, reactions, whose personification is the whole pharaonic culture. The anxious enquiries about its "from where" and "where to" have led the Egyptians to define the relation to the creator of the culture. The creator is eternal, as he is given birth to by the celestial cow. Nut every day anew, who is fertilized by the same sun every day. The life of an individual after death can orient itself only in accordance with this model. The individual is constructed from three elements, whose reunification is indispensable for his eternal life: his sun-soul or Ach, a male element as God, from whom the soul flows and whose ability to reproduce is designated by the name Ka; his bird-soul or Ba symbolises the materialistic endeavour af mankind and constructs the body; and finally the body itself, without whose materialistic nature the daily generation of the eternal soul would not take place. The mummification is, therefore, not -  as it has been written sometimes- a method for protection, caused by the natural descication and conservation, which the desert performs by itself, but, rather an essential system for continuation of the soul after death according to the Egyptian concept.
The veiled expressions of this kind of thinking over centuries has produced numerous myths and a mass of models for the limitless creative power of the sun, models, of which the portrayal of Min is undoubtedly the most unambigous in the whole of its anthropomorphic modelsystems. Achenaton- whose name is according to Makram means "solar ray of Aton"- ventured to speak out clearly at last, that which had been said only encoded upto that time: the sun, whose rays flow along life- giving hands, at least for kings and queens. This statement, practically freed from artificiality and consequently devoid of all restrictions is an expression of insult to the prevailing custom and to the basic concepts of the Egyptian culture. In order, therefore, to bring light in the pharaonic literature and presentations the author introduces numerous theories from psychology, as for example, that of repression, of "Oedipuscomplex", which had probably existed particularly at the time of origin of royalty, and that of bisexuality, which was quasi everexistent among divine beings, and that of sublimation, as well as the theories of Fechner on psychology pf plants, etc.
In the course of his investigations Makram mentions, among other problems, the interpretation of Uschebti and of the so called "palace front", which he interprets in a totally new way. The Uschebti was, according to the author, originally not at all a representative of the dead, commissioned to perform unwelcome tasks, but a symbolic tree (Swb) in mummified form, like Osiris, who could have been a tree also, and is furnished with a text, that contains allusions to purely mythical and religious activities, responsible for the maintenance of these holy trees in the necropoles. Concerning the second problem the author decides, that there is no proof for assuming that a palace had ever contained the ornament of the facade, that bears ist name. It represents rather the symbol of the sun-soul, who is bestowed with a communicating function between the creator and the created, and , therefore, presented as a passage.
These two new interpretations would certainly be discussed by others, the author puts them forward and defends them in a plausible and rational way. Even if they are refuted en bloc one day from a scientific standpoint - which I do not believe - the discourse of the pages dedicated to them by Mr. Makram will remain highly instructive.
After all only a few results are taken into consideration here; the study is a rich source of original interpretations, which are so convincing, that the reader almost gains an enlightenment; old riddles, about which only poor explanations exist, suddenly become bright and clear. This applies, even to such puzzles, which were not referred tp by the author. However, as the author himself comments in the preface, it is not only the concrete results that count, however interesting they may be, but rather the suggested methods too, which were developed in a field, that is not really the author’s own, in the area of psychology. The idea of applying these methods to the Egyptian culture, as one must do with other cultures sooner or later, the idea of "transferring oneself into the skin of the others", is possible at least partly through psychological knowledge, so that this procedure allows a more subtle, more probable and highly more living comprehension of the Egyptian mentality, and opens up for the study pf this culture such ways and means, that appear very promising to me. Let us add that the author often cites the work of Plotin in order to approach the vital Egyptian world of imaginations more closely.
In order to make the interest for the book perceptible, without however falsifying it, one should quote the technical terms used by the author. It is in fact difficult to review a book, that is so compact and in which the concepts envolve over almost 200 pages without interruption. The book contains neither a list of contents nor a register. This shortcoming could be defended, as otherwise one might not be able to understand and use the meaning of this or that symbol, without keeping in mind the correlation for which Mr. Makram has given the corresponding interpretation.
The text is continous; the sections, marked by Gardiners sequence of Hieroglyphs, constitute thirtyseven paragraphs of various lenghts, which are only simple interval- marks, and in no way interrupt the flow of thought. The author's language is highly precise and clear, a sign of fully mastered depth of imagination; the reader will be gradually and without obscurity led through this difficult matter. The thoughts are summarized in the form of distinct conclusions, whereby every new step is introduced by the foregoing clearly worked out problem.
Makram's studies remind me of the short exposé about the Egyptian symbolism, that Rudolf Anthes wrote in the report of a freemason's lodge (Grüne Blätter no. 23-24, march 1967, p.1-20): Anthes remembers his intimate experience as a Christian and freemason to explain how the religious and philosophical concepts of the Egyptians should be discussed and how their apparent contradictions should be looked at. This is already an appeal to the psychology, but to a person-bound psychology so to say, to a thinking man's spiritual sensibility. Makram has worked on a similar but broader and more technical level, without introducing any personal faith, but successfully intent on finding the stimulating spirit, following the path of a very humane science, beyond a mere literal loyalty toward the Egyptian heritage. He is - as I believe - a pioneer in the method selected: his suggestions will concern doubtlessly not only Egyptologists but also psychologists. Nevertheless they make up a remarkable book that illuminates the Egyptian culture from a totally new angle.
The original book is out of print; a copy of it can be ordered at many university libraries in different countries, specially here in Germany

Egyptological dilettantism
On "The Sun-faith of Egypt"

Mr. Makram Rizk Waasef does not obviously consider it necessary to read Spengler himself, but trusts, that he can afford to look down upon his spiritual ancestors like cretins. This means, that he does not require ancestors, he can produce all by himself, and calls it ruminated production. But, what about his own?
Of course there are still several open questions about the Schawabtis, and not everything has been clarified about Echnaton. A collection of myths is associated with Osiris, which we can grasp only in pieces and the palace front offers some riddle. Mr. Makram has simply followed the recipe, chopped together something of all the apparent findings, poured a dark-coloured sauce on it and has presented the dish as a homogeneous whole. Hope, that not too many readers have damaged their stomach in the meantime.
Mr. Makram has cited two references, which could be claimed as late interpretations supporting his concept. However, why did other Egyptologists miss them? In this connection one can put forward 200 citations that clearly contradict his hypothesis. He holds them back in the interest of his own cramped idea. In fact, no academician practices such a typical dilettantism, who desires to be taken earnestly by others. It is good, that Makram has withdrawn himself from the Egyptologists and thereby also from science, otherwise they would have separate themselves from him, as by nature they build their concept on evidences.                        
                                                                               U.T., Tuebingen.

  U.T.,Tuebingen is said to be an abbreviation of University Tuebingen

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