Campfire Stories (Egyptian Folklore 1)

The Legend of Isis and Osiris 1______ Once upon a time, a long time ago when the earth was new and everything was just beginning, the earth was covered with water. An egg floated on the water, just one egg. When that egg hatched, Ra was born. Ra did not want to spend his time floating around, doing nothing, so he flew into the sky and became the sun. Ra dried up much of the water and made the land. Ra was lonely, so he made a wife. He named her Nut. Ra made many gods and goddesses to keep him company. He put them all to work. His children were very busy running the world. Still, they took time out to have children, because children were glorious things to have! Soon, there were many gods and goddesses. Ra was the father or the grandfather or the great-grandfather of them all! 2______ All children are glorious, but to Ra, one child was especially important. That child was his grandson, Osiris. Osiris had a brother named Set. Ra thought Set was okay, I suppose, but his favorite by far was Osiris. To show Osiris how much he was loved, Ra made Osiris the first Pharaoh of Egypt. Osiris married Isis, his one true love, and the king (Osiris) and queen (Isis) settled down quite happily with their son (prince) Horus. 3_____ Set was terribly jealous. Why should Osiris be named Pharaoh and not him? In a fit of anger, Set killed his brother Osiris, and chopped him into little pieces. He threw the pieces into the Nile River. Set was sure he would get away this murder. But you know how rumors spread. Isis soon heard what Set had done. Isis managed to gather the pieces of her beloved Osiris. She brought these pieces to her good friend Anubis, the jackal-headed god. Anubis was very clever. He managed to put the pieces of Osiris together again. But he did not have the power to bring him back to life, so that Osiris could retake his place beside his beloved Isis, and rule Egypt as king. 4______ When the great Ra heard about it, he was furious. He gave Osiris a new job, an even better job. He made Osiris the god of the dead, which was the most important job of all. Osiris could rule over the land of the dead, and be dead himself. In fact, he would have to be dead to enter the land of the dead. So things worked out very well, or so Ra believed. When the young prince Horus heard what his uncle Set had done, although he was still only a boy, he tracked down his uncle Set and murdered him Isis was grateful to her friend Anubis, and to her son Horus, and to her grandfather Ra. But nothing anyone could do would bring Osiris back to her. He would dwell forever in the land of the dead, and she would live forever in the land of the living. Isis knew that she would never see her beloved husband again. 5_____ In honor of the god Osiris, the kings (pharaohs) of Egypt carry a crook and a flail, the signs of Osiris. The crook especially became the sign of rulers. The crook looked a great deal like a snake and was made out of wood. They used wood because wood was scarce. That made it even more special. From then on, and even today, once each year Isis travels to the riverbank. Remembering, and dreaming, tears fall from her eyes. That is why the Nile River rises each year, to bring life to everyone and everything along the Nile. When Isis cries, the Nile will rise! And that is a very important thing. Questions: 1. What makes the legend of Osiris and Isis a creation story? 2. According to legend, why does the Nile rise? 3. Why did Pharaohs in ancient Egypt carry the crook and the flail?

The Egyptian Merchant and His Wife Mohammad was a Jeweler from Egypt. He moves from one city to another, selling his jewelry. He decided to move to the big city of Cairo. In Cairo, he met a merchant who gave him a piece of advice; “You appear to be new in this country. You don’t know about the customs of this city. Make sure when you visit the Sultan. You should gift him something precious .If he likes you,  he will allow you to play chess with him ”  Mohammad was okay with all the rules and presented precious diamonds to Sultan. Sultan accepted the gifts and asked Mohammad a few questions. Sultan enjoyed Mohammad’s company and got to know Mohammad as a wealthy man. The Sultan took a liking to Mohammad and invited him to a game of chess. Mohammad realized that he had walked into a trap. The sultan’s conditions of play were very unique. The Sultan had a cat and he had kept a lamp of his head.. The sultan’s condition was that, till the game of chess was on if the lamp didn’t fall from  the cats head, he would take away all of Mohammad’s assets. If the lamp fell then all of the Sultan’s assets would go to Mohammad. The Sultan had trained the cat to sit still and so the game was rigged. Mohammad played really well and the game went for 3 days, but in the end the game did end and the cat still had the lamp on its head. Mohammad returned home a pauper. Dejected, he prepared to leave the city in penury. His wife said she might have a way to get all their wealth back. She went over the Sultan’s in a disguise and managed to get herself invited to the game of chess.  She knew how the game would be played. She asked one of her maids to carry a few rats in a box. As soon as the game of chess began, the maid let the rats lose. The cat dropped the lamp and started running. Sultan protested saying that the Mohammad’s wife had cheated. But, she reminded him that the game was rigged in the first place.  Her courage made the other courtiers also stand up for her. After a lot of negotiation, the sultan gave back all of Mohammad’s wealth and promised never to cheat citizens in a rigged game. Moral of the Story This story is told in the Middle East, to impress upon children the importance of being fair. It is also a story that can teach children to not give up when they are cornered.

King Tut and Ancient Egypt 1_____ Our story begins in the ancient land of Egypt, one of the earliest civilizations in world history. Egypt was located in the deserts of Africa and its cities flourished around the longest river in the world, The Nile, which stretched 4,000 miles long. The Nile was used to give life to the farmlands and drinking water for the people who lived there. Egypt started as small bands of tribes who eventually farmed together and then were ruled by powerful leaders, who helped organize the workers and farm the Nile Delta. When the Nile flooded every year it made the farmland rich in soil where the people planted vegetables and wheat. They also fished and ate birds that lived in and around the beautiful Nile. The people also domesticated sheep, pigs, goats, and other animals. Domesticated means they created fenced-off areas and used them for milk and meat and other materials that helped keep the Egyptians alive. 2_____ The Nile River was also used as transportation to move supplies and people up and down the river. Clay from the river was used to build homes, and the river was also used to transport stones to construct the huge temples, pyramids, and other buildings that made up Egypt’s growing empire. Cities such as Memphis and Thebes became huge metropolises and were home to millions of people. Egypt traded its many goods with nearby empires and was ruled by a pharaoh, which was their name for a king. The pharaoh was also a religious priest and the Egyptians worshipped him as a “god,” who joined the other gods after their death. Tutankhamun was born in 1343 B.C. but no one is sure of the exact day. Most think that his father was the powerful Pharaoh Amenhotep and his mother was one of his wives, Nefertiti. Tutankhamun, or we’ll call him Tut for short, grew up in the city of Amarna. His father had moved the family from Thebes to Amarna, so this is where he spent his childhood. There, he learned the new religion of his father, who had changed Egypt’s religion from believing in many gods to making the sun God, Amun-Ra, the one and only god. All of the new temples were made in honor of Amun-Ra and all were commanded to worship the sun god alone. 3_____ Tut spent most of his time in a palace designed for the pharaoh and his family in Amarna. The palace was made of solid brick and white plaster and decorated with colorful paints. Within the palace walls, servants took care of Tut and his family, bathing him and his siblings, and serving them meat, vegetables, and other luxury foods such as figs, dates, and pomegranates. His hair was cut in the traditional style which meant it was shaved with a braid on the side. Guards surrounded the palace and servants were always waiting and at ready to do whatever Tut and the royal family asked of them.  Tut likely learned to read and write when he was young like other educated members of the upper class and royal family. He used a reed to write on papyrus, which was their version of a paper made of reeds from the Nile River. The writing was done not using an alphabet but hieroglyphs which were pictures instead of letters, and there were around 1,000 thousand of them to learn. Learning all of them would have a lot of memorization! For entertainment, Tut and his family took boat rides on the Nile, went swimming, or chariot rides into the desert. They hunted wild animals and likely played a popular Egyptian board game called Senet. He and others likely learned musical instruments which were later found in his tomb. 4_____ Tut’s father, Amenhotep died when Tutenkhamen was only 10, so he became king of Egypt at a very young age. At this age, he wore the signature crown of a pharaoh, a decorative beard, and held a crook and a flail which represented his power as ruler of Egypt. Even though Tut was the ruler by name, he was too young to take full control, so his father’s Chief Minister, called a vizier, and his top general helped run the empire. We don’t know all of the details, but because Amenhotep had made many radical changes to Egypt’s religion by worshipping only one god, some historians believe that the other rulers of Egypt, such as his Chief Minister, weren’t happy with those changes and wanted to go back to the old way of worshipping many gods.  Some suspect there was a plot to end King Tut’s rule early, so they could change the religion back to the old ways. We’ll never know for sure what happened but it is very suspicious that Tut died in his teenage years. Were the Chief Minister and the General behind his early death? Truly, it’s become one of the great mysteries of world history. After Tut’s death, his body was prepared for burial, which was mummification for the pharoahs of Egypt. If you want to learn more about mummification, it’s interesting but also probably not the best for bedtime! After mummification, he was placed in a coffin and a group of family members and servants followed the procession, like a parade, to The Nile River. The parade of servants carried food, furniture, toys, and all of the other items that would be buried in Tut’s tomb to the river as well. At The Nile, Tut, the family, servants, and all of the items were moved onto a boat and floated down the river to the grand pyramids. 5_____ There, he would lay to rest with the long line of pharaohs like his father who came before him. Interestingly, most of the biggest pyramids had been built 1,000 years before King Tut. This shows just how old the empire was. Egypt was powerful for a very long time. King Tut’s tomb was sealed to keep out robbers. Many of the pyramids even had traps built into them to keep out grave robbers. Yes, when you see traps in adventure movies, they actually existed in the pyramids of Egypt.  So what did the Egyptians believe about life after death for the pharaohs such as King Tut? They believed after death, King Tut would go on a journey through the underworld, the land of the dead. During Tut’s lifetime, he was taught many spells from The Book of the Dead which would help him find his way to a better place in the afterlife. Egyptians believed the afterlife was much like this life but even better if they completed the journey safely and used all of the correct spells. There they would continue to eat, drink, play, and hunt. But, if they wanted nice things in the afterlife the catch was they had to bring them along… Which usually meant the simple people didn’t have as much nice stuff as King Tut and the other pharaohs.  6______ They believed that by placing objects in their tomb such as furniture, bowls, cups, gold, jewelry, bows and arrows, chariots, and other tools, those objects would continue with them in the afterlife. That’s why when they found King Tut’s tomb it was loaded with all kinds of great stuff. His favorite toys, clothes, hunting tools, and other things he would want to take with him and make the afterlife very fun and comfortable. Food was even found in the tomb for him to snack on in the next life. Very interesting, right? As you can imagine, finding this tomb with so many ancient treasures in it would be quite the find for a modern-day archeologist!