Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

BALTIMORE - Today, it sounds like a spring-break splurge on the order of "Girls Gone Wild": Drink huge quantities of beer, get wasted, indulge in gratuitous sex and pass out — then wake up the next morning with the music blaring and your friends praying that everything will turn out all right.

But back in 1470 B.C., this was the agenda for one of ancient Egypt's most raucous rituals, the "festival of drunkenness," which celebrated nothing less than the salvation of humanity. Archaeologists say they have found evidence amid the ruins of a temple in Luxor that the annual rite featured sex, drugs and the ancient equivalent of rock 'n' roll.

Johns Hopkins University's Betsy Bryan, who has been leading an excavation effort at the Temple of Mut since 2001, laid out her team's findings on the drinking festival here on Saturday during the annual New Horizons in Science briefing, presented by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

"We are talking about a festival in which people come together in a community to get drunk," she said. "Not high, not socially fun, but drunk — knee-walking, absolutely passed-out drunk."

The temple excavations turned up what appears to have been a "porch of drunkenness," associated with Hatshepsut, the wife and half-sister of Thutmose II. After the death of Thutmose II in 1479 B.C., Hatshepsut ruled New Kingdom Egypt for about 20 years as a female pharaoh, and the porch was erected at the height of her reign.

Some of the inscriptions that were uncovered at the temple link the drunkenness festival with "traveling through the marshes," which Bryan said was an ancient Egyptian euphemism for having sex. The sexual connection is reinforced by graffiti depicting men and women in positions that might draw some tut-tutting today.

The rules for the ritual even called for a select few to stay sober — serving as "designated drivers" for the drunkards, she said. On the morning after, musicians walked around, beating their drums to wake up the revelers.

Prayerful party
The point of all this wasn't simply to have a good time, Bryan said. Instead, the festival — which was held during the first month of the year, just after the first flooding of the Nile — re-enacted the myth of Sekhmet, a lion-headed war goddess.

According to the myth, the bloodthirsty Sekhmet nearly destroyed all humans, but the sun god Re tricked her into drinking mass quantities of ochre-colored beer, thinking it was blood. Once Sekhmet passed out, she was transformed into a kinder, gentler goddess named Hathor, and humanity was saved.

Bryan said the festival re-enactment came to its climax when the drummers woke up the celebrants. "The ultimate intention of inebriation is to see and experience the deity," she said.

That's when the Egyptians would ask the goddess to preserve the community from harm. "It was a communal request, not an individual request," Bryan said.

MORE FROM SCIENCE

Science Section Front

Chimps don't talk: Now experts may know why Auctioneer: T. rex fossil headed for museum Monkey business: Baboon may have been mates Cosmic Log: Science stories that soar Israel displays coins from ancient Jewish revolt Human extinction: How could it happen? New dinosaur species may fill evolutionary gap Bug wears armor made of poo King Tut's tomb to get makeover Cosmic Log: How the Maya lived Science Section Front   Add Science headlines to your news reader: