Essay for Week 4: The Bond of Brothers

The Bond of Brothers

(A Silouhette of a Family! Source: Wikipedia)

This week's reading had a lot of familial ties in it. I feel like every mythological story has a ton of familial relationships, but I noticed this week's especially. From Isis and Osiris and their family, and Nu being the father of everyone, to The Tale of King Rhampsinitus, there are encouraged and discouraged practices a plenty. 

First of all, the parental aspect of all of this was very odd to me. They encouraged revenge a ton. and even the means of revenge was horrible, mothers and fathers were encouraging murder! Especially in Ra and Hathor, Hathor killed a ton of humans and swam in their blood in pleasure! What the heck? Also, the parents encourage the drinking of beer a lot too. In celebration and in tricking others into doing what they want them to do, beer was mentioned a ton. The parents only seem to care about riches and have their family come second, especially the fathers. Like The Book of Thoth, Nefer-ka-ptah just uproots his family and moves them for his own selfish reasons. Also, while he is away searching for the book, he leaves his wife to worry and starve on the beach! The worst part is that because of the father's actions, his wife and son both die. All of these are horrible examples to set for children. On a more positive note, in doing all of these things, the children learn that they can and should stand up for themselves. That is a very good thing in life to do, but there are limits.

Now for the children, they had some bad tendencies too. Granted, the children have bad tendencies because they see their parents have given them wrongful guidance, but it's still bad. In The Tale of King Rhampsinitus, the brother kills his other brother! In an instant, without hesitating or argument! And then he was totally cool with carrying his brother's head out of the room. Then, he was calm, cool, and collected when he had to take his brother's body off of the wall. I just can't even imagine doing that to my sister. The vengeance that these children portrayed throughout this unit was very unsettling.

I cannot imagine any stories being written like this for contemporary stories. I feel like mythology was a very sadistic place and time for everyone. I wonder if real life was this way for the people that lived when these stories were created. Stories often reflect real things; it just makes a girl wonder!