Toss Another One on the Pile

[sdi]

Well, shit.

While Agamemnon is away, Aegisthus usurps the throne of Mycenae. When Agamemnon returns, Aegisthus invites him to a feast, whereupon he murders Agamemnon. Years later, Agamemnon's son Orestes returns and kills Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, but the Furies prevent him from taking the throne. Athena holds a trial in which the role of each parent in procreation is central and rules in favor of Orestes, who becomes king of Mycenae.

Compare to:

While Osiris is away, Set makes plans to usurp the throne of Egypt. When Osiris returns, Set invites him to a feast, whereupon he murders Osiris and usurps the throne. Years later, Osiris's son Horus defeats Set and kills Isis, but Set prevents him from taking the throne. The gods hold a trial in which the role of each parent in procreation is central and, on the advice of Thoth, rule in favor of Horus, who becomes king of Egypt.

Comments

[causticus]

Wow, verbatim! It looks like the euhemerization fad goes back a lot further than most of us had originally suspected. So it started as a method of incorporating foreign myths and naturalizing them as one's own?

[sdi]

I think that's part of it: one crucial component of the myth is "where is home" vs. "where is in exile," and so keeping "Egypt" in the myth would be counterproductive.

But another part of it may be that one is not allowed to speak of the mysteries, and so obscuring deities or mythic characters as historical or pseudo-historical people may have been a way of hiding the mysteries in plain sight, so to speak.

Another part of it is that what we Westerners think of "historical" is simply not how other societies or civilizations think. For example, Herodotus, Berossus, Manetho, Diodorus Siculus, etc., freely mix hearsay and myth in with what we would call history; this drives modern historians nuts (and there has been much ink spent on trying to tease apart "fact" from "fiction"), but perhaps that says more about us than it does about Herodotus.

[sdi]

I'm reading Pausanias and thinking further that "stupid history that is obviously wrong" is also a protective measure against hostile religions. The Christians destroyed what they could of a lot of the direct recordings of the mysteries (as being "evil"), but a lot of it flew under the radar when disguised as "history:" in fact, the Christians often preserved it so they could point and laugh at the "foolish pagans."

It's like all those stories from the Brothers Grimm or Andrew Lang about a prince who pretended to be an idiot while sneaking the beautiful maiden out from under the ogre.

[causticus]

Or a way for an intellectually-curious monk (or church scribe) to smuggle in old knowledge without being accused of heresy or apostasy.

But yeah, I see what you're saying. The secularization of history has been a longstanding issue in western thought.