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Daimon, Fortune and Astrology in Egypt and the Near East

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Daimon, Fortune and Astrology in Egypt and the Near East CHAPTER 3 Twists of Fate: Daimon, Fortune and Astrology in Egypt and the Near East Look, your god has given one of your fates into your hand The Tale of the Doomed Prince, 8.51 In the previous chapter, I began with Greece in my investigation of the cul- tural links between Daimon and Fortune, along with exploring the astrologi- cal places of Good Daimon and Good Fortune. But connections of Daimon and Fortune to other cultures in the Mediterranean world, particularly Egypt, Mesopotamia and other areas in the Near East are equally essential to the study of the daimon in astrology. This chapter will thus establish the religious and philosophical significance, and the relationship, between fortune and daimon in non-Greek cultures. In this context, concepts of fate other than the Greek will be investigated in terms of their effect on astrological theory and practice. Our first task is to examine the cultural divinity Agathos Daimon as it exists in the late Hellenistic and Greco-Roman periods, especially in transition from Greece to Egypt. This will bring us to Alexandria and the presence of Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche in Egypt. This Egyptian entrée leads to the Agathos Daimon’s connection to the Egyptian god Shai (who is associated with destiny), and thereby the role of fate as it relates to astrological theory and practice. 1 The Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche in Egypt (and Beyond) In this section, we examine first the transition of Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche from Greece to Egypt, the connection of Agathos Daimon to the com- posite god Sarapis and the Egyptian deity Shai, and Agathe Tyche to Isis. Then, some Isis aretalogies important both for astrological components and 1 ptr dı̓.w pꜢy=k nṯr wꜤ m nꜢy=k šꜢy.w m ḏr.t=k My transliteration of Gardiner’s hieroglyphic transcription in A.H. Gardiner, Late-Egyptian Stories (Brussels: Édition de la Fondation égyp- tologique Reine Élisabeth, 1932), ‘Doomed Prince’, 8,5. Trans. M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. II: The New Kingdom (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1976), 202. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004306��9_005 78 CHAPTER 3 references to fate will be considered. The section ends with an excursus on Tyche at the Nabataean site of Khirbet et-Tannur. 1.1 Sarapis and Isis: Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche When Alexander conquered Egypt in 331 BCE, and founded the city of Alexandria, he paved the way for the Ptolemaic dynasties in Egypt. With the entry of the Greeks into Egypt, cultural assimilations and accommodations began. One practice gave equivalent Greek names to Egyptian gods: e.g., Ptah became Hephaestos, Hathor Aphrodite, Amun Zeus, Isis Demeter, Horus Apollo, Osiris Dionysus, Set Typhon.2 Another popularised Greco-Egyptian gods such as Sarapis.3 Sarapis is a composite of Osiris and the Apis bull and became popular as a cult figure among Greeks living in Alexandria. Because of his associations with Osiris, Sarapis’s consort became Isis, and the two have much cult iconography in Greco-Roman Egypt. He is a god of the dead (like Osiris), but also a god of fertility, especially of the land; he often holds a cornu- copia.4 His human-form iconography pictures him as a bearded, curly-haired man, wearing a kalathos (grain measure) on his head, accompanied by veg- etal symbols of fertility.5 Macrobius associates him with the sun (Saturnalia, I, 20.13–15), and Sarapis and Isis are called Helios and Selene in an Isis aretalogy.6 Like Asclepius, Sarapis becomes connected with healing, and has sanctuaries for incubation cures.7 2 F. Dunand and C. Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 241–42, citing Herodotus, Histories, II, 42 and 156 (but see also II 3, 50, 59, 144). Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 362, also mentions the Egyptian- Greek correlation of names. 3 For the cult of Sarapis (and Isis) at Alexandria, see Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, I, 246– 76. See also Dunand’s discussion in Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men, 214–21; R. Merkelbach, Isis regina—Zeus Sarapis. Die griechisch-ägyptische Religion nach den Quellen dargestellt (Stuttgart/Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1995), 59–86, 121–30 (Erster Teil.4, 5, 10). Historical sources for Sarapis may be found in Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 361f-362d (origins and characteristics); Tacitus, Histories, 4, 83–84 (Wellesley, 166–67) (origins); Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 2, 39 (Pack, 175) and 5, 92–94 (Pack, 324) (Sarapis in dreams); Strabo, Geography, 17, I, 17 (Meineke, III, 1116–17) (temple and incubation cures); Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 5, 76 (Marcovich, I, 361) (cure by Sarapis). 4 Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men, 218. 5 See LIMC, VII/2 (plates), 504–18, s.v. ‘Sarapis’. 6 G. Sfameni Gasparro, ‘The Hellenistic Face of Isis: Cosmic and Saviour Goddess’, in Nile into Tiber: Egypt in the Roman World, ed. Laurent Bricault, Miguel John Versluys, and Paul G. P. Meyboom, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), 41 and n. 4. 7 Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men, 218..
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