History and Literature. On The Contendings of Horus and Seth and Truth and Falsehood
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Abstract
The Contendings of Horus and Seth (Papyrus Chester Beatty I) and Truth and Falsehood (Papyrus Chester Beatty II) - two of the most significant texts in New Kingdom Egyptian literature - show an outstanding set of common characteristics. Here I will consider two issues related to that remarkable proximity between such texts. On the one hand, the similar basic argument of both texts, that seems to point to two literary “realizations” of the same basic myth. On the other hand, a specific element of the content of both texts, the search for judicial solutions for conflicts between the main protagonists, which can be connected with the importance of the “logics” of kinship and the state in the internal organization of these texts as well as in the social structuring of Ancient Egypt. Such considerations depart from the traditional euhemerist ways of interpreting literary texts as reflecting events from the distant past and highlight the possibility of evaluating the social practices to which these stories refer. And there is something else: through the contrast with certain accounts of modern Egyptian folklore, another long-term historical dimension seems to emerge, which points to continuities in social imaginaries that appear even more persistent than the religious framework to which the two ancient texts refer.
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