Showing posts with label A Book of the Beginnings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A Book of the Beginnings. Show all posts

2019-10-26

Back to the Beginnings (5)

The works of Gerald Massey are, of course, in many respects products of their time.  In particular, of the Egyptology of the time; while Massey's conclusions were not those of the mainstream either then or now, he was still relying on the texts, translations & work on the language then available.  In many passages, the argument depends on now-rejected translations and transliterations, or on getting originally distinct glyphs confused, or has been shown to be nonsense by later discoveries.

For example, owing to the demonisation of Set during the Late Period, many of his names and images were systematically effaced, and it took a while for them to be positively identified. This had the effect that when Egyptologists in the mid nineteenth century were trying to identify which Egyptian deity classical Greek writers were talking about when they used the name "Typhon" (who in Greek myth is the son of Tartarus and Gé, and apparently a personification of destructive powers of nature, either volcanic or atmospheric), some ... mistakes ... were made.  Samuel Sharpe, who also managed to mis-identify an inscription showing the eighteenth-dynasty Aten cult as belonging to the period of Persian rule, in his Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity (1863) and elsewhere, identified an image of a hippopotamus-goddess, possibly Tawaret or Ipet (the hieroglyphic caption does not match either name: it is consistent with her being "Sheput" (Špwt), mentioned in passing in Budge's Gods of the Egyptians), as "Typhon."  This may have had the knock-on effect of spawning an entire school of speculation.

The main hieroglyphic dictionary and translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (generally cited as simply Ritual) cited in A Book of the Beginnings and The Natural Genesis was that by Samuel Birch, which was originally published in 1867 as an appendix to a monumental work called Egypt's Place in Universal History by C.K.J Bunsen, occupying a substantial part of the page count of the fifth volume.

The Book of the Dead version translated by Birch is late -- it is a Ptolemaic-era copy of the "Saïte Rescension" which had became more or less standardised during the Late Period.  It is from this copy that the numbering of the first 165 "Chapters" or spells in Egyptological literature derives.  New Kingdom papyri do not follow this order (though chapters are not arranged at hap-hazard and there is evidence of both sequence and thematic grouping).

For Ancient Egypt, Massey also made use of a translation by P. le Page Renouf (mainly based on New Kingdom papyri), which had been published by instalments in the Transactions of the Society for Biblical Archaeology from 1892 onwards.  It was unfinished at the time of Renouf's death (1897); the remaining chapters were translated by E. Naville and the whole published in book form in 1904.  Massey also occasionally cites an early edition of E. A. Wallis Budge's translation (first published 1890).  His comments on the Papyrus of Nu seem to miss the point that, while the person for whom the papyrus roll was prepared was quite credibly named for the god of the primæval abyss of water, "the Osiris Nu" referred to that person and not a compound God, and the texts in which that name appeared would be the same if it was the Osiris Nu or the Osiris Ani or the Osirs Bes-n-Mut.

The translation of the Book of Enoch (I Enoch, or Ethiopic Enoch) cited is that by Richard Laurence, first published in 1821 ("revised and enlarged" third edition, 1838).  Chapter numbering in this translation differs slightly from that in the more recently translation by R. H. Charles, a critical text using more manuscript sources than Laurence.

Progress update:
Book of the Beginnings -- proofed / formatted to vol. ii p. 128 (of 684)
Natural Genesis -- current pass at vol. ii. p. 272 (of 535)
Ancient Egypt -- current pass at p. 691 (i.e. a bit over a third of the way through vol. ii).

2019-10-24

Back to the Beginnings (4)

As you might have surmised, my work on Massey's major works ground to a halt shortly after the last post I made under this head.  I think it was about that time that my computer's mainboard died.  I still do not have a decent copy-text for vol. ii of The Natural Genesis and my last two backups of the Word document appear to have gotten corrupted meaning the whole thing will need to be reconstructed.

Book of the Beginnings, vol. i seems to be basically done.  Vol. ii is done to p. 84 of 684.

The Natural Genesis, vol. i -- looks like I managed to finished the latest pass on that.  Vol. ii -- hang on, it loaded this time.  Odd.  Done to p. 68 of 535.

Ancient Egypt.  Current pass is a third of the way through vol. i; this is a much quicker process than for Nat. Gen. as the original text was someone else's key-entry & generally accurate save for a few lines missed by eye-skip, mainly I'm just going through making sure layout & pagination matches print edition.

[UPDATED RATHER THAN MAKING A NEW POST.]
A Book of the Beginnings -- vol. i has now been assembled and uploaded.  Done another 40 or so pages of vol. ii.
The Natural Genesis -- vol i. assembled and uploaded (replacing the 2008 issue).  Done another 50 pages or so of vol. ii.
Ancient Egypt -- vol. i. assembled and uploaded (replacing the old issue); about a fifth of the way through vol. ii.

2018-03-04

Back to the Beginnings (3)

Quick update in case anyone was wondering -- now a bit over a third of the way through the total page count of A Book of the Beginnings, and making faster progress since I discovered that Acrobat 6's "paper capture" function produces text that needs significantly fewer corrections from the same scans than whatever OCR program I used for chapters 1-8 (probably something that came bundled with a cheap scanner a long time ago).

EDIT 2018.03.07 -- volume I now done, but need food & sleep, and vol. II is longer & has more hieroglyphics, Hebrew &c. to typeset.

2018-02-12

Back to the Beginnings (2) (or, putting the "LOL" in "Philology")

Currently re-set Book of the Beginnings to about the middle of ch. 4, i.e. a little over an eighth of the main text.  In an attempt to mitigate boredom and SAN loss, flipping between that and going over the  rest of Massey's major works.  I now have access to decent copy texts of vol. i. of Natural Genesis (from archive.org) and both volumes of Ancient Egypt (online at Hathi Trust but only downloadable a page at a time to discourage people from hammering their servers).  What I don't have is a copy text of vol. ii of Natural Genesis; the set of crappy page images I used as the basic for my e-text fell victim to my slackness in backing stuff up years ago, and there don't appear to be any page images readily accessible on the clearweb.  And gods, the CP edition is certainly in need of going over, I didn't realise just quite how horribly riddled with typos and OCR errors the thing is.

EDIT: and now it turns out that all my remaining copies of my Word document of Nat. Gen. vol. ii have gotten corrupted.

2018-02-07

Back to the Beginnings

Many years ago I acquired a print copy of A Book of the Beginnings, the first part of Gerald Massey's monumental work seeking to prove the Egyptian origin of everything, with the intent of preparing a re-set to go alongside the CP releases of The Natural Genesis and Ancient Egypt: the Light of the World.  As can be seen from previous posts, this did not go as planned and all I ever uploaded was a set of page images.  

At the time I was able to console readers with the fact that a complete HTML version of Massey's major works with extensive annotations was online at a site called masseiana.org.  Unfortunately at some time in the past few months this site appears to have vanished from the web due to its hosting having expired (the domain registration still has a couple of months to run).  Examining an archived copy of the front page on the Wayback Machine at archive.org indicates that the site's editor finally decided he'd had enough of the project in 2015.  I can sympathise.

In any case, I've resumed work on A Book of the Beginnings and also plan on giving the other major works a once-over.  Currently bogged down in the "Comparative Vocabulary" of ch. ii which pretty much needs to be typed from scratch.

2010-11-08

Book of the Beginnings, continued.

Finished scanning vol. 2 of Book of the Beginnings, page images have now been uploaded to Scribd. Actually completing a re-set of this monsterpiece will take a while, though.

2010-11-06

Book of the Beginnings, further progress of a sort.

Well, ended up staying out yesterday for longer than I originally intended, so have only just finished scanning vol. 1 of A Book of the Beginnings. Anyway, the complete page images are now on Scribd. Next up is seeing if I can scan vol. 2 without doing quite as much damage to it in the process.

2010-11-04

A Book of the Beginnings (progress of a sort report)

Scanned another couple of chapters of A Book of the Beginnings; these page images have been appended to the copy on Scribd. This still only amounts to about half the page count of vol. I, and my copy is rapidly falling apart.

Later: Now added cap. 7, but had enough of this for today.

Later later: A few hours break & some food, and managed to face scanning another chapter. Might finish scanning vol. 1 tomorrow -- 134 pages to go. My copy-text will probably be wrecked beyond repair by the time I'm finished though, not only have a number of complete signatures become detached from the binding but many individual pages, the paper horribly brittle after 130 or so years, are now seriously torn. Tired now . . .

2009-09-16

Gerald Massey's Lectures

“We learn as we come to a knowledge of joy, that all sorrow and suffering are but the passing shadows of things mortal, and not the enduring or eternal reality.” — Gerald Massey, “The coming Religion” (ca. 1887)

"Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains." — Liber AL vel Legis, The Book of the Law (1904)
After letting the thing gather dust under a table for over a year, finally fished out my rebound first edition of A Book of the Beginnings and managed to scan all of 20 pages. Don't expect the re-set any time soon. In the meantime, though, I made another attempt to put Massey's lectures on Scribd and this time it worked.

Massey, Gerald: Gerald Massey's Lectures. London: privately printed, n.d. (ca. 1900); many reprints. The ten lectures previously privately published as inidivual pamphlets (late 1880s).

This collection comprises "The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ," "Paul the Gnostic Opponent of Peter," "The Logia of the Lord," "Gnostic and Historic Christianity," "The Hebrew and other Creations fundamentally explained," "The Devil of Darkness in the Light of Evolution," "Luniolatry Ancient and Modern," "Man in search of his Soul during 50,000 years, and how he found it," "The Seven Souls of Man and their Culmination in Christ" and "The Coming Religion."

These lectures were intended as popular exposition of Massey's theories on the Egyptian origin of Christianity (and just about everything else) as well as being frankly polemical in a number of places; these theories are outlined in greater detail with at least a semblance of argument and presentation of evidence in his three major works, the (to steal a phrase) "Typhonian trilogy" of A Book of the Beginnings (1881), The Natural Genesis (1883) and Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World (1907).

While there is much to fault in Massey's works, and many of his arguments have been undermined by subsequent findings in Egyptology, linguistics and paleoanthropology, these is nevertheless material of value; and his championing of an African origin for humanity at a time when the mainstream, even those not promoting crude Aryanism, were obsessing with central Asia, marked him as ahead of his time (and endeared him to the "black pride" and "Afro-centric" movements of the latter half of the 20th century c.e.).

Electronic editions of the latter two of these major works have been issued by Celephaïs Press:

The Natural Genesis: Or, a Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings, containing an attempt to recover and reconstitute the lost origines of the myths and mysteries, types and symbols, religion and language, with Egypt for the mouthpiece and Africa as the birthplace.
Vol. 1
Vol. 2
(I note that vol. 1 is far and away the most-read CP title on Scribd, although vol. 2 has logged less than half the number of hits . . . I suppose most readers give up before then)

Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World
Vol. 1
Vol. 2

The omission here of A Book of the Beginnings is unfortunate; it was planned as a CP release for some time, but shortly after acquiring a decent copy-text I went through a period of general minor depression and could never face even scanning the whole thing (about 1200 pages); in any case, a complete HTML version with revisions and corrections by a modern editor can be read at a site called Masseiana.org which also has much supporting material, e-texts of some of the more obscure works Massey references, etc. A Book of the Beginnings is on one level vital to the whole scheme of the trilogy, but without some understanding of the system of Typology developed in The Natural Genesis, much of it looks like nonsense; Ancient Egypt, on the other hand, is written in a comparatively easy style which may mislead casual readers into thinking they understand it.

NOTE 2018.02.05: Masseiana.org apparently went offline recently; looking at the archived copy on the Wayback Machine (archive.org), it appears the editor gave up on the project and stopped updating the site in 2015.