ANCIENT DOCUMENTS OLD AND NEW |
Dreams and Prophecy from Ptolemaic Saqqara
(Dorothy J. Thompson, 30 October, 1997)
Based on documentary, epigraphical and archaeological material from Saqqara, this paper was a discussion of dreams from the mixed Ptolemaic community of North Saqqara. Imhotep was the Egyptian god who answered prayers in dreams, as did Asklepios in Greek. The dream of the Taimouthes, wife of a first century BC high priest of Ptah who prayed for a son, can be seen in an Egyptian context, and also compared to Greek material from Epidauros. The dreams, recorded in both Greek and demotic, of the sons of Glaukias and their circle in the Serapeum were placed in a religious and a personal context. Hor's predictive dreams, foretelling the date when Antiochus would leave Egypt in 168 BC, belonged to a well-established Egyptian tradition. Like Greek dreams, such dreams were primarily concerned with foretelling the future. Dreams form yet another area where relations between the two communities may be investigated.
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