Crime and Punishment in “The Contendings of Horus and Seth”

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Egyptologists, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 150

Peeters

Lugar: Leuven; Año: 2007; p. 263 - 270

Ancient State societies –including Ancient Egypt– used to be organized by two different but coexisting principles, related, respectively, to kinship and the State. On the one hand, the logic of kinship allowed the inner organization of peasant communities as well as the State elite itself. On the other hand, the logic of the State, which implies the monopoly of coercion, prevailed in the relationship between those communities and the State elite. In Ancient Egypt, the coexistence of both principles of social organization can also be seen in the divine world, where gods usually appear –as it happens in this account– exerting kinship and State-like practices. Here we will focus on the tale of The Contendings of Horus and Seth, contained in the Papyrus Chester Beatty I, in which these two gods litigate for the right to the office of Osiris before a divine court. At first sight, the judicial practices involved in the tale might appear as representatives of State judicial procedures. However, several events which take place during the trial tend to offer an image very different from those representations coming from the realm of state judicial courts, and suggest a scenario comparable to the ways of solving conflicts in non-State societies, organized through kinship practices. We will consider four episodes of The Contendings, in which four different gods –namely, Baba, Anty, Horus, and Seth– are regarded as deservers of some kind of punishment. We will suggest that the remarkable differences in the resolutions of these episodes can be connected with the diverse influence kinship and State principles exert throughout the tale.