Becoming the Crocodile
Becoming the Crocodile
an excerpt from Awakening Osiris, the Egyptian Book of the Dead
The Book of the Dead is a misnomer applied by historians to a text which the ancient Egyptians referred to as the Book of Coming Forth by Day. I much prefer the Egyptian title as it seems best to represent what the book implies. No definitive version of the Book of the Dead exists. Rather it is a compilation of funerary texts and religious hymns written by priests and copied by scribes during a period spanning approximately 3000 B.C. to 300 A.D. In it are included versions of several other texts, which are detailed below.
The Pyramid Texts, the most ancient body of literature known, were inscribed on the walls of pyramids and pharaonic tombs during the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties of the Old Kingdom (2464-2355 B.C.). They were supplications to the gods that a man might achieve unity with the deities in heaven. The Coffin Texts appeared in the early Middle Kingdom (2154-1845 B.C.) and usually were written in ink directly on the coffins of the noblemen and women who composed the pharaoh’s entourage. These “spells,” as historians have called them (though the Egyptians called them “chapters”), were intended to assure a man’s unity with the gods by preventing the ravages of the body in the netherworld. Other chapters in the Book of the Dead owe their origin to such works as The Book of What is in Tuat (the netherworld), the Book of Gates, the Book of Transformations, the Litany of the Sun and various other hymns to the gods and goddesses. (Awakening Osiris, Normandi Ellis)
Sobek (also called Sebek or Sobki) was an ancient Egyptian deity with a complex and elastic history and nature. He is associated with the Nile crocodile or the West African crocodile and is represented either in its form or as a human with a crocodile head. Sobek was also associated with pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess, but served additionally as a protective deity with apotropaic qualities, invoked especially for protection against the dangers presented by the Nile.
Becoming the Crocodile
If you stand only on the safety of the banks spearing fish, how can you know the depths of the river? Can you fathom the darkness under a ledge of rock or understand the life of the fish writhing on your spear? You mistake the teeth of the crocodile as the edge of the abyss, but the chasm is more terrible than teeth, and certain.
I fulfill the law and the law demands your blood. I am Sebak the crocodile, the catastrophe, the devourer, the necessity. Impaled on my teeth, you shall be blessed for you will glimpse truth. I am only the secrets of your own dark heart, your lust, your greed, your anger, your flesh.
As long as you breathe, I shall exist to snatch you from yourself, to grind your bones and chew your flesh, to tear the darkness from your heart. I am the living power of water, the cry that catches in the throat, the sob that shatters stone.
On my teeth you smell the stink of flesh. To you I seem a living horror. But I tell you in truth, I am your own soul and it is with great sorrow that I crush the life you have made. I weep with the loss, but you do not believe.
Such destruction is madness you say. You do not understand. Is it madness to cut the wheat so that bread can be made? When you were born into this bright land, did you not weep for the lost dark of the womb? Whether or not you understand the law, you exist because of it.
When you’ve reached the lips of the great devourer, you are staring into the jaws of creation.
Sobek is, above all else, an aggressive and animalistic deity who lives up to the vicious reputation of his patron animal, the large and violent Nile crocodile/West African crocodile. Some of his common epithets portray this nature succinctly, the most notable of which being: “he who loves robbery”, “he who eats while he also mates”, and “pointed of teeth”. However, he also displays grand benevolence in more than one celebrated myth…
…It is from this association with healing that Sobek was considered a protective deity. His fierceness was able to ward off evil while simultaneously defending the innocent. He was thus made a subject of personal piety and a common recipient of votive offerings, particularly in the later periods of ancient Egyptian history. It was not uncommon, particularly in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, for crocodiles to be preserved as mummies to present at Sobek's cultic centers. Sobek was also offered mummified crocodile eggs, meant to emphasize the cyclical nature of his solar attributes as Sobek-Ra.
Likewise, crocodiles were raised for religious reasons as living incarnations of Sobek. Upon their deaths, they were mummified in a grand ritual display as sacred, but earthly, manifestations of their patron god. This practice was executed specifically at the main temple of Crocodilopolis. These mummified crocodiles have been found with baby crocodiles in their mouths and on their backs. The crocodile is one of the few reptiles seen to diligently care for their young, and often transports its offspring in this manner. The practice of preserving this aspect of the animal’s behavior via mummification is likely intended to emphasize the protective and nurturing aspects of the fierce Sobek, as he protects the Egyptian people in the same manner that the crocodile protects its young.
That was cool to read. There's a verse in Ezekiel I quoted in my post about crocodiles that seems to be sourced in the same ideas.