Part of my absence has been due to uncertainty. I'm teaching now and so I'm trying not to say anything too obvious about what and who and where and such. Really, I should probably quit being quite so paranoid.
Anyway, I was supposed to teach over the summer term but enrollment for that class was insufficient. I'm working on a fall course on Egyptian religion and magic. Ironically, that's an area where I don't have a hell of a lot of direct experience. To be honest, though, Egyptian religion and magic is more or less reconstructed indirectly.
If you're doing quizzical head-tilts now, let me attempt to explain:
Egyptian religion, like a hell of a lot of religions, didn't really have divine, revelatory texts. By which I mean, there isn't something like a Bible or Koran from ancient Egypt (or a hell of a lot of other places either). There is no tradition of a deity or his supernatural spokes-ghost dictating to a human who wrote everything down and then a bunch of people tried to interpret it and wow has that been a mess for a long time.
So, there is no handy-dandy Book of Genesis equivalent from ancient Egypt to explain how the world was created (in multiple, sometimes contradictory versions).
Nor did anyone sit down and collect the various myths and stories etc like Hesiod did for Greco-Roman mythology.
Instead we have lots and lots of art work, things like the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead that give us bits and pieces of information that we then try to make sense of. I suspect this is going to be difficult for some people to grasp, but hopefully I will get them there in the end.
Oreo is still enjoying being able to wander around a little on walks, but he is not so fond of the heat and humidity and allergies. The weather here has been waaaay more reasonable than in Chicago, though, plus we have central air conditioning. Yay!
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