Patrick Boylan
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1999 (reprint of 1922 edition).
cloth, dj., 224 pp.
Book Number 20956
According to the Osirian legend, Thoth is one of the five principal deities: the friend and brilliant legal adviser to Osiris son and heir, Horus. In this essay Boylan makes a thorough examination of references to Thoth in ancient Egyptian literature and ritual, and in the Graeco-Roman literature of the Ptolemaic period, in order to determine the more important phases of Thoths character as conceived by the Egyptians, and to explain the various activities assigned to him in the legends and in the rituals of tomb and temple. The study refers particularly to the early Pyramid texts and The Book of the Dead examining, among other topics, the fusion of local worship of Re-Atum with the theology of Osiris in the Pyramid texts, Thoths symbol of the ibis on a perch, his appearance as a lunar deity, and his functions as the founder of ritual and author of the Divine Books.