Fantasy Projects: Exploring the True Depths of Ancient Egypt

Jan Assmann may be the most prominent living Egyptologist.  His work shakes the foundations not only of what we think we know about ancient Egypt, but about the history of philosophy and all too easily made distinctions between philosophy and religion. When I first discovered his work during my BA in religious studies, I found it so fascinating that it almost derailed my studies of Indian religion in the colonial and modern era.  During my student teaching, I taught units on ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, I found the textbook lifeless and inaccurate.  I found myself wishing that I could have written the textbook myself, using Assmann's work not only to bring Egypt to magical and startling life, but to explore the truly beautiful, profound philosophy of Egyptian polytheism.

Jan Assman

Assmann's oeuvre provides vast resources: his Mind of Egypt presents the entire span of Egyptian civilization, contextualizing the many shifts in culture, belief systems, arts and ideas that occurred across the long span of many kingdoms, concluding with the dramatic shifts that occurred under Persian and then Greek colonization.  Textbooks I have looked at don't exactly present marvelous depictions of these cultural transitions of the sort that would provide students with opportunities to understand them.  However, the rich contextual shifts of Egyptian life could easily be written for sixth graders. 

His book The Search for God in Ancient Egypt could be used to write curricula that not only would help students actually make sense of Egyptian religion, but overcome stereotypes of polytheism as strange, primitive, or unsophisticated.  While students might marvel at the technical genius of Egyptian architecture, there is little curricula out there that succeeds in helping them understand the genius of Egyptian culture and religion.

We should work hard to change this situation, because it is not simply the understanding of ancient Egypt, but the understanding of - and the judgment of - all ancient civilizations: for all were polytheistic, as were (and are) Native Americans and the tribes and cultures across the earth that did not participate in civilizations or state religions.  We should prioritize helping students make sense of religion, so that they do not grow up judging cultures to be bizarre of inferior.

Perhaps even more than writing curricula, I have a deep desire to write stories - vividly illustrated stories that achieve what I set out for my curricula to accomplish, which is bringing the richness of academic literature to magical life for children, adolescents, and adults.  The story I would like to write more than any other would be a retelling of the story of Osiris, as informed and inspired by Assmann's Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, which offers a profound opportunity to contemplate the complicated relationships humans have to death and notions of soul and afterlife.