Dream Books : The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt Oxford Reference

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Dream Books.
Long associated with pharaonic Egypt though the tale of Joseph (Gn. 4041), the interpretation of dreams was an indigenous practice long antedating the biblical story. In late dynastic Egypt, prophetic dreams were actively sought by the medium of incubation, in which the dreamer slept within a sacred precinct, but such attempts to evoke meaningful dreams can be traced at least as early as the First Intermediate Period (c.22062041 BCE), when a letter written to a deceased wife asks: Please become a spirit for me [before] my eyes so that I may see you in a dream fighting on my behalf. The Letters to the Dead from the Old through the New Kingdoms request information and assistance that were probably to be visualized through dreams. In contrast, the Execration Texts of the Old and Middle Kingdoms include sections designed to combat every evil dream in every evil sleep, and elaborate rituals were devised to protect the sleeper from nightly terrors sent by personal enemies or demons. As in the Joseph tale, dreams might influence the pharaonic court: both Thutmose IV of the eighteenth dynasty (14191410 BCE) and the Nubian ruler Tanutamun of the twenty-fifth dynasty (664656 BCE) ascribed their ascendancy to the intervention of inspired dreams, while the overthrow of the last native pharaoh (thirtieth dynasty, r. 360343 BCE) was popularly recounted in the Dream of Nektanebo (II). It was in Egypt that the oldest extant manual of dream interpretation was found, the Chester Beatty Dream Book (Papyrus British Museum 10683 recto), probably composed in the twelfth dynasty (c.19911786 BCE). The surviving manuscript of that ancient reference work was copied early in the reign of Ramesses II (c.13041237 BCE) and was the property of senior scribes at the royal workmen's village of Deir el-Medina. The book comprises eleven columns laid out in tabular form, each preceded by the vertically written heading, If a man see himself in a dream. While ancient Egyptian, like some Western languages, invariably uses the masculine gender to denote generic reference to persons, the Dream Book interpretations are explicitly limited to male readers, as internal references to wives and penises make clear; the dreams of females are not considered. The horizontal lines of the columns briefly detail the dream image, indicate whether it is favorable or unfavorable, and conclude with a prognostication for the dreamer. The text is arranged in discrete units, with good dreams listed before bad ones (highlighted by red ink), and a concluding incantation to avert any evil results. Within the good and bad sections, dream imagery is listed in fairly random arrangement. The entire pattern was repeated twice, once for followers of the deity Horus, and again for those associated with the god Seth, in a section now largely lost. This division corresponds to the two personality types recognized in Egyptian Wisdom Literature: the ideal, restrained man of Horus and the intemperate man of Seth. The explanation of dream imagery in the papyrus seems to be motivated by a variety of principles, including wordplay (paronomasia), contemporary symbolism, and contraries. A pun underlies the interpretation of column 2, line 21 in the papyrus: If a man see himself in a dream: Eating the flesh of a donkey. Good. It means his promotion. Similarly, in column 3, line 3, the vision of white bread foretells the occurrence of something [at which his face] will light up. Because language was considered to be divinely inspired and not merely the chance product of linguistic history, such puns were believed to express inherently meaningful links between individual words and concepts. Symbolic interpretations are common and may be coupled with wordplay or ironic reversals. In the example noted above (column 2, line 21), the destruction of the donkey, a symbol of Seth, necessarily entails the advancement of a partisan of his opponent Horus. Images of mourning suggest not loss, but personal freedom and inherited wealth. Thus, in column 3, line 2, a vision of oneself in mourning indicates a favorable increase of property, while the rending of one's clothing is good, for it signifies release from all ills (column 4, line 12). Dreaming of the burial of an old man

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is a harbinger of prosperity (column 6, line 1). A knowledge of execration ritual provides the rationale for the unfavorable vision of broken pottery as a symbol of fighting (column 10, line 9). Other symbols are readily comprehensible: Binding malefic people at night is good, for it means taking away the speech of his enemies (column 4, line 5); and crossing in a ferryboat foretells a favorable extrication from all quarrels (column 4, line 6); consuming the flesh of a crocodile presages living off the property of a bureaucrat (column 2, line 22); and the principle of contraries presumably explains why seeing himself dead foretells a long life before him (column 4, line 13). Sexual symbolism abounds, and seeing one's penis enlarged is good, for it means an increase of his property (column 2, line 11). The image of a woman's vulva, however, ensures the ultimate in misery against him (column 9, line 9). Oedipal copulating with one's mother is favorable, indicating cleaving to him by his relatives (column 3, line 7). The statement that copulation with a man's sister presages the transferal to him of property (column 3, line 8) anticipates an economic reality later practiced in the Roman era, when brother-sister marriage safeguarded family holdings. The recording of dreams continued throughout later Egyptian history, and dream diaries are well attested in Demotic and Greek during the Ptolemaic era, when dream-interpreters openly advertised along the pilgrimage routes of the Serapeum in Memphis. The records of the priest Hor, attached to a nearby shrine of Thoth, detail many prophetic dreams concerning state and temple matters, and several of these prophecies were presented to the court of Ptolemy VI. More private concerns appear in dream records recovered from the Serapeum itself; in these, the recluse Apollonios and his colleagues note imagined conversations, sexual escapades, and fantastic images. From the Roman period (second century CE), several Demotic dream books are preserved that continue the imagery and approximate format of the Chester Beatty example, but with greater thematic organization and the first mention of women's dreams.

Bibliography
Gardiner, Alan. Chester Beatty Gift. 2 vols. Facsimilies of Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, 3. London, 1945. Find This Resource Lewis, Naphtali. The Interpretation of Dreams and Portents. Toronto, 1976. Find This Resource Ray, John D. The Archive of Hor. London, 1976. Find This Resource Ritner, Robert K. O. Gardiner 363: A Spell Against Night Terrors. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 27 (1990), 2541. Find This Resource Ritner, Robert K. Dream Oracles. In The Context of Scripture, edited by William Hallo and Lawson Younger. Leiden, 1997. Find This Resource

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Sauneron, Serge. Les songes et leurs interprtation dans l'gypte ancienne. In Sources Orientales, vol. 2, pp. 17 61. Paris, 1959. Find This Resource Tait, W. John. Papyri from Tebtunis in Egyptian and in Greek. London, 1977. Find This Resource Vernus, Pascal. Traumdeutung (und Traumbuch). In Lexikon der gyptologie, 6:747749. Wiesbaden, 1986. Find This Resource Volten, Aksel. Demotische Traumdeutung. Copenhagen, 1942. Find This Resource Wilcken, Ulrich. Urkunden der Ptolemerzeit. Berlin, 1927. Find This Resource

ROBERT K. RITNER

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