ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PHILOSOPHY

JUAN JOSÉ CASTILLOS

Uruguayan Institute of Egyptology

ABSTRACT - For a long time scholars have been thinking that there was no such a
discipline as philosophy in ancient Egypt. Philosophical thinking according to them, started
with the ancient Greeks. The Egyptians, Babylonians and other civilizations produced
abundant mythology to explain the universe and man's place in it. The analysis of its true
nature, of human thought, reason, ethics and many other aspects of the world and our
interactions with it were apparently beyond the scope and the capabilities of those who
could have attempted to deal with these issues before the Greeks.

More recently, other opinions have emerged in the academic world, such as that the
ancient Egyptians had indeed been busy with such matters and in fact, the Greeks had
later on appropriated their findings and more moderate ones which admit the existence of
a wide variety of philosophical thinking in the Nile Valley in pharaonic times.

In the contemporary academic world there is a wide range of opinions, some denying the
ancient Egyptians such an accomplishment, others warmly supporting it and yet others
completely avoiding the issue, all this with the background noise of people from outside
professional egyptology who for reasons that have little to do with scientific enquiry argue
one or other side of the debate confusing the public as to the true nature of the evidence
that leads scholars to adopt one or other attitude.

In this paper I try to establish to what an extent we can talk of such a development in
ancient Egypt, evaluating the implications of the relevant ancient texts that have come
down to us.

Bertrand Russell, writing in the middle of the last century, thought that the
Egyptians and Babylonians had come up with discoveries that the Greeks later
used to their advantage, but neither had what we could call philosophy, perhaps
due to social conditions or to a lack of native genius. Their religious beliefs could
also have been not very propitious to such undertakings. What gave the Greeks a
decisive advantage was their love of truth and beauty.
 The unruly and instinctive in man originated primitive religion and fertility rites, it
was the orderly and rational in us that led to the birth of philosophy, art and
science1.

Another prominent scholar in classical studies wrote that ancient Egypt in spite of
its millennia of civilized history was affected by a ‘dreadful rigidity, almost a
fossilization’ while ancient Greece belonged to a very different and special
category and what we truly call civilization, the deliberate pursuit of an Ideal, does
not begin until the time of the Greeks2.

Other authors of Histories of Philosophy carefully avoid this vexing question and
simply start with Pythagoras, Thales and Aristotle3.

We can see here examples of the basic classicist contempt towards pre-Greek
civilizations that even today restricts in universities of many countries the founding
of chairs of egyptology or assyriology under the mistaken notion that they, as
formative and very imperfect stages, have little significant to add to our
understanding of the history of our western world4.

Approximately at the same time as the dismissive remarks by other scholars

writing in the middle of the 20th century, John Wilson wondered whether ancient
Egypt had made any contribution to the philosophy, ethics or worldview of later
times. The answer according to him was no, they were unable to develop a
philosophy that could be transmitted to other cultures5.

Perhaps some of the reasons for this situation are that in the case of many
scholars outside egyptology we run at a clear disadvantage since ancient Greek
philosophy has been well known for many centuries while the texts to convey the
ancient Egyptian version have only been available for less than two hundred years.

As to earlier egyptological negative perceptions, our traditional educational

systems in which Greece was the beginning of modern science and philosophy
may have biased their opinion, a logical conclusion if we arbitrarily choose one
model to decide whether another body of thought measures up to that standard or
not.

More recently, from outside egyptology, the opposite claim was made, that is, that
ancient Egypt was the cradle of science and philosophy, which had a decisive

1
B. Russell, Wisdom of the West, London, 1966, 11, 14; A History of Western Philosophy, New
York, 1967, Part I, The Pre-Socratics, Chapter I, The Rise of Greek Civilization, 3.
2
W. Jaeger, Paideia, The Ideals of Greek Culture, New York, 1945, XIV-XVII.
3
A. Kenny, Ancient Philosophy, A New History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2004.
4
K. Johansen, A History of Ancient Philosophy, From the Beginning to Augustine, London, 2005,
21-22.
5
J. Wilson, Egypt in H. Frankfort et al, Before Philosophy, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient
Man, Harmondsworth, 1959.
influence on the Greeks later on, an extreme and unjustified perspective that was
severely criticized by a number of egyptologists and other scholars6.

In the case of Martin Bernal I must confess that I found it a very demanding task
having to wade through thousands of pages of half-truths and nonsense, but the
most surprising fact is that some (few, I hope) of my colleagues seem to take his
publications seriously.

Some misguided statements by Martin Bernal:

6
M. Bernal, Black Athena, Vol. 1, New Brunswick, 1991; M. Lefkowitz and G. Rogers, (eds.), Black
Athena Revisited, Chapel Hill, 1996; M. Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa, New York, 1996.
 To which I would reply, this derivation may very well stand, but on its head.

What had the ancient Greek philosophers and other ancient writers to say about
Egypt on this subject? They never claimed that philosophy and science began with
them, on the contrary, Socrates, for example, in Phaedrus is made to say as
follows: ‘The story is that in the region of Naucratis in Egypt there dwelt one of the
old gods of the country, the god to whom the bird called Ibis is sacred, his own
name being Theuth. He it was that invented number and calculation, geometry and
astronomy, not to speak of draughts and dice, and above all writing’7.

Although the mythical Egyptian king Busiris had a very bad reputation among the
Greeks8, there were some who praised him for his wisdom.

Isocrates tells us that 'So Busiris thus began, as wise men should, by occupying
the fairest country and also by finding sustenance sufficient for his subjects .......
And the priests, because they enjoyed such conditions of life, discovered for the
body the aid which the medical art affords, not that which uses dangerous drugs,
but drugs that are harmless as daily food, yet in their effects are so beneficial that
all men agree that the Egyptians enjoy the best health and longevity, and then for
the soul they introduced philosophy’s training, a pursuit which has the power, not
only to establish laws but also to investigate the nature of the universe. The older
men Busiris appointed to have charge of the most important matters, but the
younger he persuaded to forgo all pleasures and to devote themselves to the study
of the stars, to arithmetic, and to geometry; the value of these sciences some
praise for their utility in certain ways, while others attempt to demonstrate that they
are conducive in the highest measure to the attainment of virtue'9.

7
Phaedrus, 274c-275a.
8
D. Méndez-Rodríguez, La imagen de Busiris y Memnón en las fuentes clásicas, Trabajos de
Egiptología 5/2, 2009.
9
Isocrates, Busiris 13-20.
 According to ancient Greek philosophers the Egyptians also excelled in ‘piety’
(eusebeia) and in ‘practical wisdom’ (phronesis)10.

Herodotus tells us that ‘the Egyptians were the first to teach that the human soul
is immortal, and at the death of the body enters into some other living thing then
coming to birth; and after passing through all creatures of land, sea, and air (which
cycle it completes in three thousand years) it enters once more into a human body
at birth. Some of the Greeks, early and late, have used this doctrine as if it were
their own; I know their names, but do not here record them’11.

He was of course quite wrong and was misinformed or decided to give the
Egyptians a belief they did not have, which has caused this misunderstanding to
come down to modern times using him as a source, but what I want to emphasize
is that he also credits the ancient Egyptians with being the first to teach what can
be considered philosophical matters.

Proclus thought that 'since it behooves us to examine the beginnings both of the
arts and of the sciences with reference to the present cycle [of the universe], we
say that according to most accounts geometry was first discovered among the
Egyptians, taking the origin from the measurement of areas ........... Whatsoever
offers a more profitable field of research and contributes to the whole of
10
C. Evangeliou, Hellenic Philosophy, Origin and Character, Aldershot, 2006, 22.
11
Herodotus, Histories, Book II, 123.
philosophy, we shall make the starting-point of further inquiry, therein imitating the
Pythagoreans, among whom there was prevalent this motto, ‘A figure and a
platform, not a figure and sixpence’, by which they implied that the geometry
deserving study is that which, at each theorem, sets up a platform for further
ascent and lifts the soul on high, instead of allowing it to descend among the
sensible objects of mortal men and in this lower aim neglect conversion to things
above'12.

Diodorus Siculus wrote that ‘for many of the customs that obtained Hellenic
Philosophy in ancient times among the Egyptians have not only been accepted by
the present inhabitants but have aroused no little admiration among the Greeks'13.

The influence of Egyptian philosophy on ancient Greece has been summed up as

follows: ‘Evidently, by the channel of Pythagorean tradition especially, some seeds
and roots of Egyptian wisdom reached classical Hellas, where they grew into the
magnificent tree of Platonism’14.

As we can see from the following, and in spite of the huge gaps in such
knowledge due to the very incomplete nature of the texts that have come down to
us, the ancient Egyptians concerned themselves with philosophical subjects like
how the universe came to be, will it exist forever or not, what there is in the
universe and even outside it, what is knowledge and truth, how we should live our
lives, what is virtue or the lack thereof, the nature of time and the meaning of the
past and the future, the idea of the fulfilment of the past in the present and
modelling of the present on the past, the role of divine intervention in history, and
the role of the great individual, human and divine mortality and immortality, among
many other issues that we would group together today under the fields of
praxiology (study of human conduct), epistemology (study of the nature, origin, and
limits of human knowledge), axiology (study of goodness or value in the widest
sense of these terms) and ontology (nature of existence and reality and the basic
categories of being).

The attempt by some scholars to deny the ancient Egyptians a capacity for any
kind of logic15 might be due to various misconceptions and I feel it does not survive
an unbiased analysis.

12
Proclus, Commentary on Euclid, 64, 16-70.
13
Diodorus Siculus, Book I, 69, 1-6.
14
C. Evangeliou, Hellenic Philosophy, 29.
15
J. Baines, Interpretations of religion, logic, discourse, rationality, Göttinger Miszellen 76, 1984,
29.
 I disagree with those who think that what we understand by the term logic was
unknown to the ancient Egyptians. Logic can also be described as an attempt to
devise rules for correct thinking and it would be surprising that it could be absent in
any form from non-western civilizations since that would have impaired their
cultural development and prevented many of their accomplishments.

It may appear that statements by the ancient Egyptians such as that several gods
were considered at the same time to be ‘the greatest’ were scarcely logical, but this
may arise from the mistake of considering ancient Egyptian religion as such, that
is, as a heterogeneous but universal body of belief. This difficulty is resolved if we
consider the ancient Egyptians as having many original religions, artificially brought
together as what appears to be a single body of belief for mainly political reasons.

This was perhaps perceived by French scholars of the mid-20th century when they
published their studies of the ancient Egyptian religion in the plural rather than in
the more frequent singular16.

Evidence for a logical attitude in their thinking by the ancient Egyptians has been
found in their language as well17.

For the ancient Egyptians the universe consisted of the land below and the sky
above, separated by the atmosphere. Humans lived and experienced the universe
constrained by these limits, they below, on the land, and above the sun and the
stars, what was beyond could be speculated about but was unknown, even to the
gods themselves (“unknown by the gods or akhs”)18. There was also a world
below, the Duat, inhabited by gods and dead humans. The sun traveled through
the sky by day and through the Duat by night, to be reborn every day to renew its
cycle.
16
G. Jéquier, Considérations sur les religions égyptiennes, Neuchâtel, 1946; Ch. Desroches-
Noblecourt, Les Religions égyptiennes, Paris, 1948; J. Sainte-Fare Garnot, Religions égyptiennes
antiques, Bibliographie analytique, Paris, 1952.
17
H. Fischer, Further evidence for the Logic of Ancient Egyptian: Diminishing Progression, Journal
of the American Research Center in Egypt 10, 1973.
18
J. Allen, Genesis in Egypt, The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts, New Haven,
1988, 1-7.
 The universe was created by gods who arose from the primeval waters, from the
darkness and chaos, but not as a creation of things and living beings, instead the
whole universe is made of beings, the atmosphere, the sky, even the Duat are
gods or divine manifestations.

In spite of the dynamic forces at work in the ancient Egyptian universe, there is a
changeless nature to it, events repeat themselves in a cycle of continuous
sameness, reality is the result of opposites in balance, existence is the result of the
opposition between non-existence and potentiality which somehow was resolved in
the realization of existence.

But although the ancient Egyptians thought in terms of “millions of years” they
conceived the possibility of an end of the universe and even of the gods
themselves. As the forces of chaos swallow up the creation, non-existence can
return, but they also believed that a re-creation of the universe after such a
catastrophic event was possible19.

Thus past and future time (djet and neheh) although usually translated as
‘eternity’ should in fact be considered as indefinitely long periods of time, such as
the ‘millions of years’ or ‘millions of millions of years’ since in the ancient Egyptian
mindset the universe had a beginning and might also have an end20.

Acording to Te Velde, the reality surrounding humanity was conceived of as a

process of conflicting powers of order and confusion. The Cosmos, including
society and individuals, was considered, hoped and finally known to be a
perpetuum mobile through life and death. That movement had to be kept going and
disasters or disturbances had to be averted21.

Man in the universe was responsible to the gods for his deeds and a wise course
of action was to be virtuous. The wisdom texts and perhaps more important,
chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, outlined the good deeds and also the evil
ones to be avoided. But man enjoyed free will and could choose how to act22.

In an ancient text the goddess Seshat says:

“I have come to you, (God of) Edfu with the dappled plumage,
That I may set down in writing before you,

19
S. ElSebaie, The destiny of the world: A study on the end of the universe in the light of ancient
Egyptian texts, Toronto, 2000, 44.
20
F. Servajean, À propos du temps (neheh) dans quelques textes du Moyen Empire, ENIM 1, 2008,
15-28; E. Uphill, The Ancient Egyptian View of World History, in J. Tait (ed.), 'Never had the like
ocurred': Egypt's view of its past, London, 2003, 23-25.
21
H. Te Velde, Theology, Priests, and Worship in Ancient Egypt, in J. Sasson (ed.), Civilizations of
the Ancient Near East, Vol. III, New York, 1995, 1748.
22
A. de Campos Silva, The status of free will in ancient Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms
according to the Instruction of Ptahhotep, Lisbon, 2010.
The doer of good and the doer of evil, namely:
He who leads in wrongfully, he who enters when unclean,
He who speaks falsehood in your house,
He who discerns right from wrong,
He who is pure, he whose heart is righteous, walking in righteousness,
He who does harm to your servants in your city,
He who loves (= cares for) your attendants exceedingly,
He who accepts bribes, he who favors the mighty to the detriment of the weak,
He who covets the property of your temple.
He who judges with the heart, taking neither bribes nor the share of any man.
I write down good (= blessings) for him who does good in your city,
I reject the character of the evildoer [. . .]
He who does good in your [sight] will endure for ever,
But the evildoer shall perish everlastingly”23.

In spite of these texts that underline the principles which a virtuous man should
cherish and practice to reap the benefits of such course of action, there were also
at all times skeptics who doubted that virtue always had its reward and that evil
was always punished.

Although such texts were not desirable in the context of a land where the divine
natural order and justice (Maat) were supposed to reign supported by the wisdom
and the power of the king, some pessimistic texts and songs questioned
established beliefs and teachings and sometimes preached what we might call an
epicurean approach to life in contrast with the type of stoicism of the official
literature taught in the temple schools.

No ancient Egyptian text on epistemology has come down to us but if we study

their scientific papyri we may infer some notions on how they went about in the
pursuit of knowledge and the limitations they found while engaged in such work.

As an expression of ancient Egyptian intellectual achievements, medicine was a

field in which they were universally praised in ancient times by their wide
encompassing and highly specialized knowledge.

While pointing out that there is not yet evidence in this field of an ancient Egyptian
purely scientific interest, modern scholarship admits that there is clear evidence of
rationality and system in their endeavours24.

23
R. Meyer, Magical ascesis and moral purity in ancient Egypt, in J. Assmann and G. Stroumsa,
eds., Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions, Leiden, 1999, 53-54; G. Fecht, Die
Wiedergewinnung der altägyptischen Verskunst, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen
Instituts Kairo 19, 1963, 84-88.
24
J. Harris, Chapter on Medicine in J. Harris (ed.), The Legacy of Egypt, Oxford, 1971, 115, see
also more recently, A. Imhausen, Ägyptische Algorithmen: eine Untersuchung zu den
mittelägyptischen mathematischen Aufgabentexten, Wiesbaden, 2003.
 In the field of mathematics in which the ancient Egyptians have been repeatedly
berated for their cumbersome and eminently practical approach, we should not
forget that they were using a decimal number system, the most natural one being
the number of fingers in our hands, already in the beginning of civilization (Narmer
Ceremonial Macehead), their estimation of Pi of 3.16 was more accurate than the
value used by the Babylonians and other contemporary mathematicians, both
these Egyptian contributions surprising if they were as it is claimed, so far behind
the Babylonians and their intricate algebraic techniques.

The Babylonians on the other hand, used a sexagesimal number system, one of
many possible options, which we still use today in geometry but ours for most
purposes continues to be the ancient Egyptian decimal one.

Problem 79 of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus deals with a progression of the

sum of powers of 7 similar to one mentioned by Leonardo of Pisa in the 13th
century and which most people today know by the rhyme ‘As I was going to St.
Ives’. A relatively recent discovery of a demotic text dealing with extracting the
square root of 10 is identical to the system devised by Heron of Alexandria in the
first century AD.

In spite of the many huge gaps in our knowledge of ancient Egyptian intellectual
pursuits, these tantalizing little bits of information should prevent us from adopting
too dismissive attitudes as to their capabilities and rational approach to what we
call today science.

Perhaps not less important is the ancient Egyptian wisdom in the perception that
accurate observations and true knowledge are not always the privilege of the
eminent philosopher.

‘Don’t be proud of your knowledge, consult the ignorant and the wise, the limits of
art are not reached, no artist’s skills are perfect, good speech is more hidden than
greenstone, yet may be found among maids at the grindstones’25.

We should also bear in mind the ethical approach they had to the application of
the knowledge they acquired.

In ancient Egypt doctors carefully analyzed the symptoms their patient had and
then decided how to proceed. If the chance of recovery seemed good, the doctor
said: ‘An ailment which I will treat’ or alternatively, ‘An ailment with which I will
contend’.

But as to ethics and intellectual honesty there was also the frequent statement:
‘An ailment not to be treated’26.

25
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. 1, The Old and Middle Kingdoms, London, 1975,
63.
26
J. Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, London, 1996, 28.
 This attitude is enhanced by the fact that ancient Egyptian doctors had the
reputation in the third and second millennia BC of being the best in the ancient
world, but in spite of that they did not claim to be able to deal with any illness.

This I could not find in the writings of Hippocrates or Galen and today it would be
hard to find modern colleagues of the ancient Egyptian doctors who would make
similar statements. More often a series of symptoms or signs of an unknown
disease are described as a ‘syndrome’ with some other fancy name attached and
various procedures are attempted with doubtful results.

The intention is surely to cure the patient, but the ancient Egyptian attitude seems
to be free from the arrogance of those that refused in the past and refuse today to
publicly admit the limits of their knowledge or capabilities.

In view of somewhat recent and very recent studies of some ancient Egyptian
medical papyri27, we might have to change our traditional perception of their
science as being purely empirical and not worthy of such a name.

Much as I would like to accept the tradition that made some ancient Greek
philosophers learn from Egyptian colleagues in situ, I remain a skeptic: 'The
scholars who doubt the possibility that some Hellenic philosophers (Thales,
Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Eudoxus, and so on) could have visited Egypt and
learned something there, as the ancient Hellenic tradition insists that they did, do
not stand on firm ground. Nor do those fare any better who, for whatever reasons,
seem to want to downplay the possible influence that the civilized Egyptians might
have had on the intelligent Hellenes, who paid them a visit and asked many
questions, as Herodotus did later on and reported extensively on his experience.
Language could not have been a serious barrier because, by that time, the
separate class of interpreters was numerous and ubiquitous'28.

Herodotus’ experience and the tall tales he received from interpreters who most
likely were not top scholars in their own traditions, makes it very doubtful that this
was the vehicle through which both cultures communicated. Much more believable
is to the writer the knowledge shared by well educated Greek speaking Egyptians
who were sent to Greece from time to time to represent the interests of Late Period
pharaohs or who communicated with Greeks in their settlements in Egypt at the
time.

The ancient Greeks undoubtedly made significant contributions to later Western

civilization and achieved all that on their own, regardless of the early stimulus they
may have got from their neighbours to the south and to the east. That they did not
27
"It is the first known important medical treatise and also the first known record that can be called
a scientific document.", J. Hughes, The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus: An analysis of the first case
reports of spinal cord injuries, Paraplegia, Vol. 26, 1988, 71-82; G. Sánchez and E. Meltzer, The
Edwin Smith Papyrus, Bristol, 2012.
28
C. Evangeliou, Hellenic Philosophy, 15.
claim exclusiveness speaks well of their intellectual honesty and also of the reality
of magnificent earlier cultural manifestations which would have been impossible
without some degree of philosophical thinking.

I would like to finish by quoting an opinion by one of the great historians of ancient
Egyptian art, Jean Capart, which could also be applied to other aspects of ancient
Egyptian civilization, such as the one I am dealing with in this paper.

‘How many times have I not heard people say, when confronted with a real
masterpiece [of ancient Egyptian art], 'Extraordinary, it doesn't look Egyptian at all!'
...... The inevitable result has been that the art of classical Greece has been
adopted as an absolute standard of perfection, by which all earlier artistic
movements must be judged and ranged in a scale of evolutionary progress. Thus
none of these earlier movements could properly be placed on a higher rung of the
evolutionary ladder, side by side with the perfect productions of the fifth century
BC. If we agree to use the term 'miracle' in the sphere of art, the error involved in
this theory is the belief that the miracle of perfection can only occur once in the
world's history’29.

We should perhaps be well advised to avoid a similar prejudice in this other field
since it is hard to believe that people with a long history of civilized life did not
engage in speculations as to the topics that define our modern concept of
philosophy.

If texts dealing with this subject were absent from the evidence available to us
about ancient Egypt, then we would be justified in denying the existence of
philosophical thinking. However, I think that the many examples quoted in this
paper should convince us otherwise.

29
J. Capart, Egyptian art, in S. Glanville (ed.), The Legacy of Egypt, London, 1943, 82-83.