I was visiting the Albany Institute of History and Art recently when I happened upon this piece in the section of ancient Egyptian art. At first it didn’t seem like anything special, a stone fragment with some hieroglyphics carved into it, but then I read the descriptive label, and was intrigued. It’s a “Cippus of Horus,” circa 664-630 BC, and this explanation was given: “if any illness should trouble you in ancient Egypt, you could pour water over this stone inscribed with magical images and texts and by drinking the water, you would absorb the mystical power of the stone.”
That’s a pretty crazy idea, don’t you think? Curious to learn more, I see that the Metropolitan Museum of Art also has a few Cippus of Horus pieces, including one here and one here. The Met expands upon the description of these types of objects with the following: “the instructions found on some cippi (plural for cippus) indicate that they were used to heal afflictions caused by snake or scorpion venom. Specifically, the Egyptians believed that the water poured over these cippi would be transformed into a curative remedy that the afflicted could then drink or apply to the body.”
Just to help with the understanding of some of these terms: a “cippus” is a small low pillar usually inscribed, and a “stela” is another term applied to this type of object, meaning an upright stone slab or column typically bearing a commemorative inscription or relief design. “Horus” was an ancient Egyptian god in the form of a falcon whose right eye was the sun or morning star, representing power, and whose left eye was the moon or evening star, representing healing. Egyptian pharaohs were considered to be the earthly embodiment of this god.
So here’s a simple but unanswerable question: if an ancient Egyptian was bit by a poisonous snake, and someone ran to grab a Cippus of Horus and poured water over it and then onto the snake bite, what really happened? From a modern scientific point of view, one would say nothing happened, it’s just water poured over a rock. But looking over the various dates of these cippi that I’m seeing online, the ancient Egyptians made (and presumably used them) for decades, so if indeed they were just carved stones, what made any ancient Egyptians believe that they had magical powers? Is the power of the mind (and the placebo effect) that strong that it worked? Or were they magical? What do you think?