Free Don’t Know Much About® Mythology by Kenneth C. Davis

whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation.”
    Where Freud had taken a limited view of the importance of religion or a sense of the sacred in the realm of psychology, Jung saw mythology as a powerful connection to the sacred and he regretted the modern loss of faith in this mysterious part of the human experience. “From time immemorial, men have had ideas about a Supreme Being (one or several) and about the Land of the Hereafter,” Jung wrote in Man and His Symbols. “Only today do they think they can do without such ideas.”
    Acknowledging that humanity had progressed into a complex, rational, scientifically ordered world, which rejected those things that cannot be proved, Jung argued for a spiritual component in life that mythology—and, later, organized religion—has traditionally provided throughout human history.
    “There is, however, a strong empirical reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It is that they are known to be useful,” Jung wrote in Man and His Symbols . “A sense of wider meaning to one’s existence is what raises a man beyond mere getting and spending. If he lacks this sense, he is lost and miserable.”
    Echoing Jung’s theories, late in his life, Albert Einstein wrote, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.”
     
    Science, history, anthropology, language, psychology, rituals, religion, and spirituality. All of these frameworks help to explain how myth has operated since the dawn of human time. Yet none of them alone does it completely. As classicist Barry B. Powell has observed, “Myth taken together is too complex, too many-faceted, to be explained by a single theory.”
    That myths reflect so many aspects of the human condition—our history, our innermost thoughts, our best and worst behavior, an acceptable code of conduct—makes trying to fit them into one neat theoretical framework impossible. It is like trying to make many different people wear a single suit of clothes. There are just too many sizes and shapes for that to work.
    Needless to say, for thousands of years, the myths that have organized human civilizations and given faith to worshippers across all time are clearly something greater than a collection of compelling stories about dysfunctional gods, flawed heroes, sex-crazed tricksters, or primeval monsters lurking in the closets of our minds.
    Heady stuff. It may be wise to remember the words of American humorist James Thurber, who once wrote: “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”

GIFT OF THE NILE
     
    The Myths of Egypt
     
    Hail to you gods…
    On that day of the great reckoning.
    Behold me, I have come to you,
    Without sin, without evil,
    Without a witness against me,
    Without one whom I have wronged….
    Rescue me, protect me,
    Do not accuse me before the great god!
    I am one of pure mouth, pure of hands.
    — The Book of the Dead
(c. 1700–1000 BCE)
     
    Creator uncreated
    Sole one, unique one, who traverses eternity,
    Remote one, with millions under his care;
    Your splendor is like heaven’s splendor.
    — First Hymn to the Sun God
(c. 1411–1375 BCE)
     
    Egypt was old, older than any culture known at the time. It was already old when the political policy of the future Roman Empire