Temple of Dreams: Nightmares
Clients slept on special ritual dreaming beds known as klines. More like a couch, the kline often included a stone neck or head rest, facilitating clients to elevate their heads and sleep on their backs. These sleeping styles are known today to encourage lighter sleep, more awakenings, as well as longer experiences in REM sleep. Given the universality of sleep biology, it seems as if Aesclepian temples directly encouraged vivid dreams as well as realistic hypnagogic hallucinations.
When those seeking healing crossed the threshold of the healing sanctuary, they entered an inner sanctum where sleep and prayer intertwined until a strong dream came. Clients hoped for and actively sought an interaction with a healing figure. Priests and priestesses also whispered in the ears of the sleepers to encourage dreams of Aesclepius. Today we know that dreams can incorporate sounds and suggestions into the dream narrative, as well as smells.
Before the intense dreaming incubations began, dreamers relaxed in baths, walked around the beautiful gardens around the temple, and took naps. They were removed from their everyday life in order to focus on healing. They also adhered to a cleansing diet while staying at the temples, further setting the stage for ritual purification in the final part of the healing process.
Snakes roamed the temple unmolested. As an ancient symbol of healing, snakes are at the center of the Aesclepian worldview. Dreams about snakes were taken to be dreams of Aesclepius himself.
So, physician-priests made good use of the startling presence of snakes. According to lucid dreaming educator Tim Post, this is the perfect example of an effective dreamsign: This article is drawn from the Lucid Immersion Blueprint. Drawing from the wisdom of dream cultures like the Aesclepian sanctuaries, as well as the latest in lucid dreaming research, Lucid Immersion Blueprint is a home study course. The Blueprint sets you up with a container of mindful and structured rituals to effectively stimulate greater self-awareness in the dreamworld…. Watch my short video about Lucid Immersion.
Where can I learn more about that? In the Biography if Ipwy, the dreamer described his dream as follows: Then I was revitalized with her food. The deity referred to in this text was Hathor, a popular goddess of love, beauty, dance, and joy. Another text describes how the same goddess actually spoke directly to another Egyptian, Djehutiemhab. YOll arc the onc who ha.. I have come in order to instruct you: See your place-fill yourself with it, without travelling north, without travelling south.
Whereas a few centuries earlier the recording of divine dreams was restricted to the pharaoh, these spontaneous dreams could now be included in texts as an appar- ently sanctioned venue for communication between ,the divine world and the world of the nonroyal elite. In pharaonic Egypt, at least until the Late Period, it is no coin- cidence that the only dreams having enough impact to merit being written down were those involving inhabitants of the Netherworld-the dead and the gods.
The reality of these dreams was taken for granted and the genuineness of the experience in the eyes of the dreamers was substantiated by the fact that they did not require interpretation to be understood. The only evidence of dream interpretation at this time comes in the form of a single dream book, discovered in a cache of documents in Der el-Medineh.
This papyrus out- lines a total of dreams and their interpretations and is divided into three sections. The first is comprised of the visual images of dreams an': This division of dreams into at least two distinct psychological types of men who apparently saw different dreams and required separate interpretations is intriguing. Unfortunately, the latter portion of the text is broken and only four of the dreams of the followers of Seth re- main.
The beginning of the text is also missing, leaving us without any description of the counterpart of the "Sethian" man, and we remain uninformed as to what his tem- perament would have been or whether more categories are missing. Each dream and interpretation is composed of the initial premise "If a man sees himself in a dream," written in a vertical column, followed by horizontal lists of dream images, an evaluation of the dream as "good" or "bad," and finally an interpretation.
Both the image seen and the interpretation of each of the dream passages refer to events or images that were within the realm of possibility in the Egyptian worldview. Szpakowska The relationship between a visual image and its interpretation in this dream book was largely based on linguistic and cultural associations, reminiscent of the patterns and categorizations that Bert O.
Recent Dreams
States suggests dreams follow. One of the most intricate is "If a man sees himself in a dream sailing lfaj-tchaw downstream khed ; bad, it means a life of running backward. The mental image of a boat using sails to go downstream would have been disturbing and thus would have provoked an interpretation of a life going the wrong way as well.
The dream book contains other common divinatory schemes, such as symbolism i. Some of the dreams might seem familiar to a modern reader: The inhabitants of this village were rather well off and literate-not necessarily representative of the major- ity of Egyptians. It appears that nourishment, wealth, prestige, and the impact of the divine world were of greatest concern to the villagers, while emotions and recreational activities were much less important.
This dream book has received much attention, but it should be noted that it is cur- rently the only evidence for dream interpretation until the end of the Nubian dynasty years later and that there is no evidence that specialists in dream interpretation existed in the New Kingdom. Even this dream book is suspect, for it is not clear that it was ever actually used.
It is possible that it was kept as a curiosity or as a literary ex- ercise and did not necessarily require a specialist to be used. For nearly the first 2, years of Egypt's history, there is no extant evidence for the mantic use of dreams nor for rituals designed to solicit dreams. Dreams appear in the earliest teach- ing texts, written ca. Their authors recognized that dreams could be used as metaphors to accentuate that which is insubstantial, ephemeral, or uncontrollable. The negative repercussions of even a proac h mg. The disti nct telnporal distortion of a dream made it an ideal metaphor for tht' ephemeral nature of earthly life and led to the earliest-known attestation of the now- popular phrase: JII Sinuhe attempted to explain his unjustified flight by claiming that " don 't know what separated me from my place.
As these examples show, dreams were not necessarily viewed as positive experi- ences. Medical texts include several prophylactic spells designed to resist bad dreams. Similarly dreams appeared as undesirable. J9 These lists of menacing people and forces wt're wriut'n on bowls or figures that would be smashed or buried, thus rendering them harmless.
In these texts, the dreams were classified with hostile speech, plots, and other militant acts and were treated somewhat as potential weapons of war. The textual evidence consistently reveals certain characteristics of the ancient Egyptian perception of nightmares.
A Dream Cure? The Effective Healing Power of Dream Incubation in Ancient Greece
The cause of night- mares was not ascribed to any particular demon, but rather to the hosts of hostile dead and other denizens of the Netherworld. These entities were blamed for a variety of ailments and conditions, and spells could be used both prophylactically and as a rem- edy to combat them. In one of these spells. The spells often referred to fire-spitting co- bras who, along with other types of genies. Fire was a particularly eflective weapon, for it not only brightened the night but it destroyed the chaotic enemies of order.
Egypt, unlike its Mesopotamian neighbors, never incorporated dreams into myths nor a god of dreams into its pantheon, neither as a deity personally responsible for the nocturnal antics of his minions nor as a specific protective deity responsible for pro- tecting the sleeper from nightmares. By the Greek period, a god known as Bes had ac- quired a reputation for facilitating good dreams.
Sometime in the early years of the Third Inter- mediate Period, a series of texts now called "Oracular Amuletic Decrees" came into vogue. One typical example reads: We will make all dreams which she will see good ones.
A Dream Cure? The Effective Healing Power of Dream Incubation in Ancient Greece | Ancient Origins
We will make all dreams which any man, any woman, any people of any kind in the entire land saw for her, good ones. We will drive away their bad intent which is in them. These texts also reflect the marked change that occurred in the worldview of the ancient Egypt- ian culture during the transitional Third Intermediate Period. From this time on, deities played an expanding role in the daily life of Egyptians, apparently even to the point of determining the quality of their dreams.
The twenty-fifth dynasty of Nubian kings ushered in the Late Period, a span of time when Egypt struggled and failed to maintain its independence against a rising Assyrian empire. The last pharaoh of the twenty-fifth dynasty, Tanutamani, introduced yet an- other element of dreams into the royal discourse-the symbolic dream.
The dream was interpreted for him as representing Upper and Lower Egypt, over which the pharaoh had total do- minion. But while this dream has been often discussed, sometimes even in comparison with the symbolic dream of the pharaoh in Genesis, the dream ofTanutamani remains the only instance of a royal symbolic dream found in the Egyptian sources. It is clear that a dramatic change occurred in the Late Period treatment of dreams in Egypt. From this time on, solicited oracles and spontaneous wondrous signs in- cluding dreams were woven into the fabric of Egyptian society. New ideas and divinatory practices entered the mainstream of Egyptian soci- ety through the process of diffusion.
A general feeling of insecurity among Egyptians led to a demand for increased divine guidance in many forms, including oracular dreams. As these once-autonomous mechanisms for divine discourse gradually became institutionalized, the power structure shifted in favor of those who controlled the mechanisms. By the time of the Libyan dynasty, the oracle was required to legitimize the rule of the pharaoh, thus guaranteeing that the real power rested with those who physically manipulated the oracle-the priesthood of Amun. Al- though the interpreter was not specified in this instance, it is likely to have been a priest of Amun, at whose instigation the pharaoh 46 attributed the source of the dream as Amun-Ra.
In contrast to some of Egypt's contemporary Near Eastern neighbors in the third to second millennia, there is an obvious lack of attested dream narratives,journeys, or epics and a distinct indifference toward the ritual use of dreams for divination or in- cubation. In contrast, dreams were seen as ideal metaphors and literary devices from the dawning of the art of belle-lettres and were recognized as a unique plane of reality berween the world of the living and the Netherworld.
The dark sides of dreams were also acknowledged and feared, with apotropaic spells, rituals, and talismans designed to repulse nightmare-causing demons and other terrors in the night. It is unlikely that psychology can offer any sort of unified theory applicable to the study of dreams in the ancient world without taking into account the cultural and temporal matrix in which these dreams were formed. Psychoanalysis fails in light of the lack of individual background.
There are no narrative descriptions of dreams, only short snapshots i. Unfortunately, these are completely lacking in the earlier Pharaonic Egyptian texts, which for the most part do not describe the dreams in any detail. For example, in one letter to the dead, a son Heni wrote to his dead father, concerning his father's dead servant Sen. It is useful to pay attention to the one who provides for you, on ac- count of these things which your servant Seni does: Indeed, it is his own character that drives him away.
Indeed, that which happened agajnst him, did not happen by the hand of me, your servant. Indeed, it is not I who first caused wounds against him. Others acted before I, your servant, [did. Please, may his lord be protective, and do not allow him to do harm. May he be guarded in order that he may be done with watching me, your ser- vant, forever. Clearly, this was a troublesome dream for Heni, who expressed guilt and anxiety concerning his relationship with Sen. This type of emotional dream is precisely the type of dream that is often recalled by the dreamer,SI and it must have been com- pelling for Heni to go to the expense of putting it in writing.
That the dream may have caused Heni some sort of mental anguish is linguistically indicated as well. In the phrase "do not allow him to do harm," the word "harm" is written with a particular determinative, 52 one usually associated with abstract "bad things. By combining a psychologica.! The unfortunate paucity of material offers lit- tle more than a glimpse into the perception of ancient Egyptian dreams, but it is suf- ficient to show that uses of dreams by individuals can be a looking glass onto the social and historical tensions affecting the society as a whole, even if the dreamers themselves did not believe their dreams to be of great importance.
Modern research focusing on the biological nature of sleep and dreams has ques- tioned the boundaries between waking and dreaming, 56 suggesting a more fluid rela- tionship that might have sounded familiar to an ancient Egyptian. Throughout Egypt's history, a dream was often a frightening phenomenon, arising not from within the in- dividual but from a liminal zone between the living and the dead--a spontaneously generated phenomenon that could be seen but not manipulated or invoked. Its func- tion varied through time, both reflecting societal mores and being influenced and shaped by external contacts.
In ancient Egypt, dreams were sometimes terrifYing, sometimes awe-inspiring, but always disturbing. Dreams and Nightmares in Ancient Egypt: This work is currently being revised for publication and includes an appendix with the author's transcription and translation of all the known texts men- tioning dreams, including those cited in this chapter.
American Philosophical Society, A new work has recently been published which complements and expands the work on Mesopotamian dreams begun by Oppenheim: Butler, Mesopotamiall COllceptiolls '!! N Ruler, r Historical Evcnv ]. Dead Egypt reunified, stable and NotIon of kingsasshepherds powerful Alsea!
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Arts and Literature Amenemhat I Uterary works: JlllEllte 10" during m:: KasJa Szpakowska and Shawn Higgins 6. The practice of sleepmg m a temple or another sacred spot order to solicit a dream is called incubation. The Coptic language uses the ancient Egyptian grammar but IS written with Greek letters plus five additional letters from Demotic, an anCient Egyptian scnpt. It continues to be used today as a liturgical language. The word qed appeared with the meaning of dream only durmg a specific time pertod and in a specific genre of textse 9. The major publications of these texts are: Ae He Gardiner and K.
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The Egypt Explo- ration Society, ; A. Finally, in Egypt is conquered by Alexander the Great Source: Guilmot, "Lettre it une epoll,e de- nll1cte Pap. Wente, Leflers from Allciellt E. The hieroglyphic text can be found in W.
Heick, Urklmden der An English trans- lation of the campaign can be found in P. This passage is found in lines of the Karnak description of Merneptah's Libyan War campaign. The text publication can be found in K. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscrip- tio"s Oxford: An English translation can be found in B.
Paul Astroms, , The entire stela was published in C. Translations of this text can be found in many works, includ- ing B. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Posener, De la divillite du Pharam. Imprimerie Nationale, , In certain other cultures, the oneiric call to office seems to have been much more prevalent and to have served a clearly political purpose.