From time immemorial Egypt has been known as the country of two lands: The desertlike Upper Egypt, or the Red Land, and Lower Egypt, or the Black Land, where the soil is fertile. Even today 99 percent of the Egyptian population live in the Black Land. The significance of this duality is more than a geographical and demographic fact; it is a basic element in the very beginnings of the culture of the ancient Egyptians and finds significant expression in their religion and myths.

Unlike Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt as a civilization did not develop several powerful city-states along two rivers. Egypt had one river of significance, the Nile, and smaller villages grew up alongside its banks. Each of these village communities manifested a mythology, but these mythologies did not create tensions among the communities. In ancient Egypt the tendency was toward unity and stasis, not confrontation and tension. A text that exemplifies this attitude, while taking into account older historical and local traditions, is the theology of Memphis, recorded on the Shabaka Stone. The Memphite theology presents the teachings of Menes, who established (c.3000 BC) a new capital at Memphis. In this theology all local and former mythological traditions are brought to their theological goal in the god Ptah. The text is a cosmology that describes the creation of the world and the unity of the land of Egypt as a process in the eternal ordering of the world. Ptah creates everything from notions that were in his heart and are then pronounced by his tongue. All things--the universe, living beings, justice, beauty, and so on--are created in this manner. The gods are also created in this way; coming forth first as concepts of Ptah's mind, they enter into the material forms of the world--stone, metal, wood--that have equally been created out of Ptah.

JD

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Ancient Egyptian culture, myth, and religion is characterized as a duality with rhythmic structures contained within a static unity.