Egyptian Cosmology: The Absolute Harmony

Rating:
Summary: Easily accessable introduction to a complex topic
Review: Gadalla does an excellent job of pulling together the myriad aspects of ancient Egyptian religion and symbolism and presenting it as a complete, unified, and understandable system. It is so easy for modern western monotheists to simply dismiss ancient Egyptian religion as bizarre polytheism, where even animals are worshiped as gods (and so it seemd even to the average ancient Greek and Roman!) After reading this book, however, I came away with a deep appreciation of Egyptian thought and philosophy. In fact, their world view is not so alien from our own as aspects of their thought was picked up Pythagoras and other ancient western philosophers and so comprises some of our own world view today.

My only quibble with the book is that the author tries to show that the ancient Egyptians "had it right all along" by comparing their beliefs with what modern science teaches about the way the world works. No problem with this, except I caught a few errors in his understanding of science. Also, he is not too subtle in suggesting that the world might be a better place if we returned to believing this ancient "truth". But is is easy to overlook the author's advocacy because his explaination is so clear and thorough.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding contribution to metaphysical studies.
Review: I think Mr. Gadella is a wonderful author and egyptologist, but his ideas are not as revolutionary as they are made out to be. A book written in the early 80's titled Egyptian Religion put forth a similar theory about the neterw and there is a small but growing religion called kemetic orthodoxy started in the 70's that follows a very parallel theology

Rating:
Summary: Egyptian Cosmology: The Absolute Harmony
Review: It is bunch of baloney. I undestand it is possible to interprete Egyptian culture and spirituality not only from the from the standpoint of professional Egyptologists. Without doubt one can wirite about Egyptian deities (netroo) and rituals e.g. from the point of view of Hermeticist. But author's theses about four fundamental physical forces, about physical cosmology etc. are shocking and unheard-of. Ths way of thinking goes astray.

Rating:
Summary: Only scratches the surface
Review: This is a good book, however the author clearly shows that he is but a beginner in this subject. This is a good book for beginners in egyptian cosmology being that Gadalla's explainations are not wrong just incomplete. The true nature and purpose of egyptian cosmology is much deeper than the author suggests. Read this book then read Ra Un Nefer Amen's "Metu Neter Vol I & II" for the definitive explaination of egyptian cosmology. If you want only but a brief description of this topic this book is a good buy but trust me you will thirst for more so it might be wise to leave this book on the shelf and pick up Ra Un Nefer Amen's works instead.