Chesstories

The Legend of Dalukah

EGYPTIAN MAGIC
by E. A. WALLIS BUDGE
LATE KEEPER OF THE EGYPTIAN AND ASSYRIAN ANTIQUITIES IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Kegan, Paul, Trench and Trybner & Co., London [1901]
Scanned at sacred-texts.com, April 2002, Redacted by J.B. Hare.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/ema/ema03.htm

1:1 The series referred to is Books on Egypt and Chaldaea, published by Kegan Paul. Budge wrote several volumes in the series, including the first, mentioned here, Egyptian Religion.

EGYPTIAN MAGIC.
CHAPTER I.
ANTIQUITY OF MAGICAL PRACTICES IN EGYPT.

E. A. Wallis Budge's references to Dalukah...

The following story from Mas'udi 1 will illustrate the views which the Arabs

p. 22

held concerning the inscriptions and figures of gods in the temples of Egypt.

It seems that when the army of Pharaoh had been drowned in the Red Sea, the women and slaves feared lest they should be attacked by the kings of Syria and the West; in this difficulty they elected a woman called Dalukah as their queen, because she was wise and prudent and skilled in magic. Dalukah's first act was to surround all Egypt with a wall, which she guarded by men who were stationed along it at short intervals, her object being as much to protect her son, who was addicted to the chase, from the attacks of wild beasts as Egypt from invasion by nomad tribes; besides this she placed round the enclosure figures of crocodiles and other formidable animals.

During the course of her reign of thirty years she filled Egypt with her temples and with figures of animals; she also made figures of men in the form of the dwellers in the countries round about Egypt, and in Syria, and in the West, and of the beasts which they rode. In the temples she collected all the secrets of nature and all the attracting or repelling powers which were contained in minerals, plants, and animals. She performed her sorceries at the moment in the revolution of the celestial bodies when they would be amenable to a higher power.

And it came to pass that if an army set out from any part of Arabia or Syria to attack Egypt, the queen made the figures of its soldiers and of the animals p. 23 which they were riding to disappear beneath the ground, and the same fate immediately overtook the living creatures which they represented, wherever they might be on their journey, and the destruction of the figures on sculptures entailed the destruction of the hostile host."

Additional Correspondences:

http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/Ethiopia_Heads.htm
* Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership Heads of State of Ethiopia/ Ityop'ya (Female Suffrage 1955)
4530-3240 Legendary Queen Eyleuka (Dalukah) Before the flooding of the world...

* The Churches and Monastaries of Egypt and some Neighbouring Countries by Abu Salih the Armenian, Basil Thomas, and Alfred Joshua Butler - Includes reference to fortress walls built by Cleopatra VII in anticipation of Roman (Julius Caesar's) invasion.

Commentary:

Mas'udi's (1) Dalukah appears to be a composite character, which puts her in league with many other Persian "chess legends". Some fact and considerable embellishment is likely involved. This tendency to gild the royal lily does not necessarily make such things as the Shahnamah unserviceable to chess history, although dating chess and other board games according to mythical or legendary sources is generally regarded as frustrating and improvident.

Egyptian monarchs of several dynasties - including some of the oldest - were known for erecting towers on their border fronts. Dalukah could be a vague amalgamation of Egyptian queens, including Nitocris, Hepshetsut and Cleopatra VII, as easily as she could be representative of barricade activities practiced by many pharaohs. In symbolic parlance, towers, thrones and sacred enclosures were often thought of and depicted in feminine terms.

Other aspects of this reference are less suspect, however. For instance, the notion of black and white magic takes shape around the Egyptian tradition of Heka (2) and all the numerous spells and prayers invoked by the established priesthoods and lay practicioners of various cults. These followed specific formulae such as those we find written in the Leyden papyrus. Also, there is documentary evidence of the "correct" way of making effective "living" icons in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and we see commonality of an overall approach lingering in the magical mindset of Persian Majii.

Certainly residual aspects of magico-religious practice remain embedded in many cultures and modern religions. In ancient times, however, Egypt was traditionally assumed to be the main source of most of these early doctrines. Many ancient Egyptian practices show deep integration of ritual spell casting and breaking made in association with icons and celestial calculations. Echoes of Dalukah's magical processes repeat in Persian texts describing the symbolic construction of "nard" and chess. Moreover, recent research conducted on behalf of the Oriental Institute of Chicago demonstrates that Persian Majii associated with Zoroastrianism and Mithraic rites evolved their practice according to direct Egyptian tutelage and tutelaries. (3) This results in deeper grounds for already lingering suspicions regarding the enigmatic evolution of Persian "nard", which, in Persian literature, does not fit the exact description of either backgammon or senet and may, in fact, have been a precursor of a "tables" game similar to chess, chaturanja or hnefatafl. Indeed, additional evidence appearing in the Dalukah legend strongly suggests types of pieces and placements consonant with "grande alcedrix".

A son addicted to "the chase", also bears with it aspects of a promotional venue cloaked in metaphorical language, whereas, the disappearance of enemies from the face of the earth implies capture as well the various ways Egyptian "captives" were addressed, not only in actual military encounters, but also in the spiritualized sense of attraction and repulsion common to magical formulae. As a rule, the classic Egyptian games of senet and mehen - the latter being our first historical evidence of what might be termed an "image game" - suggest both divination and celestial components of a high order.

That Dalukah applies her magic according to a kind of "voodoo" ritual speaks volumes about Afro-Egyptian concordances and adds credence to the idea that certain developmental phases of African Orisha and Ifa divination influenced salient features of East African and Egyptian culture and the culture of Egyptian board games alike. Also, in light of senet, Mas'udi's reference to the Biblical Exodus is rather astonishing considering that no archeological evidence of this event has yet been found, whereas, the game of senet does include a water hazard that was considered extremely ill-starred. Giving further consideration to Moses' magical acumen and the place (Egypt) that helped furnish it, could it be that Exodus enlists a metaphorical description of the Jewish diaspora and employs the conveyance of senet imagery in the form of a curse flung at pharaoh in retrospective writings?

Dalukah's mythic association with Queen Eleuka and Ethiopia also garnishes Mas'udi's statements with the spice of rare intrigues. In his reference to Dalukah there is an obvious layering of themes, which most likely has to do with Egypt's African face. Southern interchange involving Punt (Somalia) and the Candace queens remains a debatable historical fact. However, there may also be considerable conflation with regard to the religious importance of a southern orientation, Sri Lanka and the Pattini cult being provident in this regard. In Egyptian terms Black=North and White=South. These specific directions may hold certain clues to a queen's coronation ritual - a ritual voyage to symbolic Punt perhaps analogous with actual topography, place names and celestial regions in the southern nighttime sky. Otherwise, Ptah's singularly sacred "White Walls" faced south and held deep symbolic importance for all Egyptians.

Certainly there are more questions than answers ringing Mas'udi's description of Egyptian legend. And yet, there appears to be a considerable amount of apocryphal references to forms of practice and structural integrations one might expect to find embedded in a less than apocryphal style of board game. If anything, the description appears to be a better match for grande alcedrix than any other type of game, although, when dealing with Egypt, one learns to become comfortable with unique surprises. In effect, we may be looking at a significant piece of an Egyptian puzzle scholars such as Don Jose Brunet y Bellet brought to our historical attention many decades ago. Only time will tell...

(Added July 16. 2008) Time and relatively new reseach efforts work their magic through an additional source. Note this excerpt from p.360 of "The Sacred Tradition in Ancient Egypt" by Rosemary Clark. 2000, Lewellyn Publications, St. Paul Minnesota, 55164-0383, USA.

" The use of magical figures was also believed to influence the course of events. Nectanebo, the last native Egyptian Pharaoh of Egypt, was regarded as a magician-king and clairvoyant. A Greek text written by a person known to scholars as Pseudo-Callisthenes tells of the kng constructing wax models of his soldiers, sailors, ships and chariots, and thereby vanquishing his enemies in miniature form. For some years afterward, Nectenebo ruled peacefully, but the second Persian conquest followed, thus consigning Egypt to foreign rule ever afterward."

This reference to Egyptian tradition sheds suspicion as well as additional light on a number of associated factors, including the theory of a Persian origin of chess elaborated by the late Dr. Ricardo Calvo of Spain. Chaturanja, the close cousin of chess, is most deeply implicated in this Pseudo Callesthenes reference.

Another four corner game, hnefatafl, tends to echo some variation upon common themes of construction via the use of an iconic king and corner emplacements of game counters sometimes described as Amazons or warrior women. Elsewhere, the two player game of grande acedrix, applies an image format consistent with Al Masudi's description of Dalukah's beastiary as well as a formal grouping of heraldic symbols common to Egyptian signage that were already well disbursed through various cultures hundreds (if not thousands) of years prior to their appearance in popular board game media. Many, if not all, of these images had celestial counterparts woven into their lexicons, thereby suggesting a complex collection of integral processes necessary to invest magical ritual and sacred naturalsim into their representative standing. As we find variants within constructional phases implicit among image-oriented board games of various cultural typologies, an animistic factor appears that most certainly plays to zoomorphic tendencies of remote antiquity. This evaluation also helps determine that an advanced canonical and librarial approach to their "logos" developed though the highest orders of poilitical and religiously sponsored crafts and crasftmanship.

Aside from his affirmation of Nectenabo, Pseudo Callesthenes, Alexander the Great's most impressive biographical romancer, invokes an era of board game evolution speckled with various Greek and Hebrew references to Alexander the Great's enigmatic, "iskundree" and/or the Greek game of "poelis", either of which may have derived from an expanded type of Egyptian "seega". However, these tabula style games were allegedly played with plain stones or counters ("dogs") that bear earmarks of Chinese "go", or "wei qi". Although further speculation upon the origins of modern checkers takes us down a divergent road, in any event, the image context of chaturanja, grande acedrix, chess and even Chinee liubo appears to have been presupposed by Egyptian magical and divination practices that could easily have been swept up and carried into other cultures by invading Assyrian and Persian forces, or even delivered voluntarily by Egyptian sodiers, diplomats and traders through various means. Ultimately, extrapolation from ritual contexts performed by Egyptians themselves and/or the various cultures that often sought their sacred orientation through influential Egyptian schools apparently places a significant portion of the iconic content associated with chess and chaturanja in the hands of Egyptian Maji. As a result, we must be ever cautious of excluding Egypt from any origins of chess theory.

a bientot,

Don McLean

---

Footnotes:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masudi
Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Masudi (born c. 896, Baghdad, Iraq died September 956, Cairo (Egypt), was an Arab historian, known as the "Herodotus of the Arabs." He was the first Arab to combine history and scientific geography.

2. RITNER, Robert Kriech, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, Chicago, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1993 = Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, 54. (22 x 28 cm; XVIII, 322 p., fig., ill., tables); rev. JARCE 31 (1994), 223-225 (Laszlo Kakosy); RdE 46 (1995), 247-248 (Jean Vercoutter). ISBN 0-918986-75-3

In the introduction the author points out that justification for the category "magic" is suggested by the existence of a native term (HkA), which was ultimately equated with Western "magic" in the Coptic Christian Period. However, an examination of the older Egyptian concept and its associated vocabulary, mythology and theology reveals fundamental distinctions between the range and meaning within the two cultures. Therefore, the Egyptian and Western concepts are evaluated independently and in their own terms. In order to obtain a working definition of the Western terms "magic" and "magical," a new method was selected in which any activity that seeks to obtain its goal outside the natural laws of cause and effect serves as the diagnostic criterion. This makes identification of these elements within spells, rituals, literature and archaeological artifacts relatively simple.

No previous treatment of Egyptian magic has concentrated upon the actual practices of the magician. A brief selection of these are surveyed: circumambulation, spitting, licking, swallowing, the use of images, superposition, trampling, binding, the use of red, breaking, the use of sand, burning, numerological symbolism, piercing, decapitation, reversal, burial, the use of the dead, and oracular consultations. This study reveals their widespread appearance and pivotal significance for all Egyptian "religious" practices from the earliest periods through the Coptic era, as well with influence on the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri. Performed by priests as the technique of religion, Egyptian magic cannot be opposed to it. This continuum of magical mechanics vitiates as well the often-repeated suggestion of religious decline and magical increase in the later periods. Egyptian concepts of magic are pivotal for indigenous religious life, underlying not merely cultic practice but all sacral speculation. In the Christian era this theology is abandoned, and "magic" was reinterpreted in the debased, modern Western meaning.

In ch. 1 the author reviews the earlier definitions of magic used in Egyptology and anthropology in general, and points out that the Egyptians themselves gave the name (Coptic Hik) to a practice which they, and not others, identified with the Western concept of magic (Greek mageia). The lexical ancestor HkA(w) cannot be separated from its divine personification, the god Heka, who is at the basis of the creation and who had his own public cult. Heka is actually the hypostasis of Re-Atum's own power which begets the natural order. Heka is the ka-spirit (vital essence) of Re. The notion of power is central to the role of Heka. Although magic was legitimate, not all magical practice was uncritically applauded.

Ch. 2 studies the Egyptian vocabulary of magic. The most important term is Axw "effective things" "magical spells." The Egyptians distinguished the tripartite nature of magic, it being viewed as an inherent quality or property to be "possessed," and activity or rite to be "performed," and as words or spells to be "spoken." The basic elements are the word, the rite and of the material object. See the tables on magic by speech (transliteration, Coptic equivalent, translation) and by property (object name in transliteration, its suggested meaning, the object type), both provided with the dictionary references. A most important example of Egyptian terminology expressing magic by rite is circumambulation (pXr "to encircle," "to control," "to enchant" pXrt "remedy"). The author argues that the practical mechanics of magic provide a focus not only for the pertinent materials (magic by essence) and attendant spells (magic by word) of any magical procedure, but also for the fundamental meaning of the procedure itself. It is in the actual practice, the rite - and not the spell -, that the essence of Egyptian magic lies.

As appears from ch. 3, the oral dimension extends well beyond the simple recitation of spells to include ritualized usage of the common bodily actions of spitting, licking and swallowing. The techniques are bivalent, being used to transfer powers, whether healing or harmful. Spitting and spittle is subdivided into the following subjects: creation by spittle; spittle as remedy; spittle as corruption, curse and weapon; blowing; their continuity and christianization.

Ch. 4 is devoted to images and intermediaries used for manipulation, since punishment inflicted on the representing object will produce an analogous result on the victim with whom it is identified by attached personal affects, name etc. Proceeding from a Roman Period female figurine found to be subjected to a private magical act of piercing by needles the author first examines the techniques of royal magic: the bound prisoner motif, trampling underfoot, the execration texts, binding and breaking, especially breaking the red pots (with a note on the colour red). Separate attention receives the M.K. Mirgissa deposit, which included the remains of a human sacrifice. In this connection the author discusses the roles of sand, incineration, of images, and knives, decapitation and reversal, and finally, burial. Also testimony to the magical practices of the Egyptians are the Letters to the Dead. The ch. ends with an assessment of private versus state magic. Neither terminology nor technique separate public from private ritual sorcery.

In ch. 5, on the roles of priests and practitioners, the author approaches the question of the difference between royal and private execration ritual through studying the single certain instance in which the use of magic by king and commoner was anciently felt to be in direct conflict, the Harem conspiracy under Ramses III, known from the Pap. Lee Cols. 1-2 and Pap. Rollin (given in translation, with notes and commentary). The crime of the conspirators was not the use of sorcery, but the complicity in the attempt on the life of the king.

The author notices that the private ownership of magical books was largely limited to priests who obtained the rolls from temple libraries or scriptoria, and that consequently the priest had a central role in the magical practice. The general limitation on literacy severely circumscribes the whole of private magic in ancient Egypt. The occurrence of the term pH-nTr within a context of hostile spells and manipulated figurines leads the author to a closer study. It is a direct confrontation and communication with the deity, an oracular divine audience. As the force of heka is morally neutral, so direct petitioning of the god may serve hostile purposes or produce unfavourable results. It is capable of inflicting hostile magic, which could be countered by corresponding magical means, such as protection in the form of oracular amuletic decrees granted by the gods and dispensed by the temples. This divine ambivalence, apparent from both hostile and beneficial oracles deriving from the same sanctioned temple rite, is susceptible to threat and constrained by magic.

From this Egyptian view, it is, therefore, the gods themselves who are made subject to the power of heka encoded in the temple rite. At once private and priestly, the pH-nTr epitomizes the Egyptian melding of the force of heka within the legally sanctioned practices of religion. This situation drastically changed with the conquest by Rome, which had long viewed foreign religions with great suspicion and hostility. The official Roman condemnation of these Egyptian activities did result in public religion being driven underground and exclusively private. Finally, stripped of its ancient theological significance, the Coptic term hik was reduced to a debased meaning.

The foregoing analysis of the pH-nTr reveals the intersection of religion and magic not merely in the practice, but in the practitioner, for as the priest was the author and compiler of magical spells and rites, so he was also the performer and "magician." This priestly affiliation strongly suggests that itinerant magicians did not exist in Egypt. In this connection of the identity of the magician the author deals with the significance of an ivory statuette of a herdsman carrying a calf, which was probably used in a fording rite. The last ch. 6 is concerned with questions of definition and decline, from Egyptian HkA from magic as integral part of religion to Coptic Hik with the negative connotation of magic. The definitions of the terms "religion," "magic," heka and "sorcery" in Egyptology and in wider religious-anthropological perspective are assessed.

3. Quack, Joachim Friedrich, Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat, Heidelberg, "Les Mages Egyptianises? Remarks On Some Surprising Points In Supposedly Magusean Texts," JNES 65 No. 4 (2006) at 267.