From Egypt to Rome

In Silence. Why We Pray
by Donald Spoto

(Page 5 of 6)

"It is difficult to imagine," wrote Mircea Eliade, "how the human mind could function without the conviction that there is something irreducibly real in the world." A prolific historian of religious ideas, Eliade demonstrated in more than fifty scholarly books the logic that our collective consciousness of a meaningful world is intimately connected with the discovery of the sacred: "Through experience of the sacred, the human mind has perceived the difference between what reveals itself as being real, powerful, rich and meaningful and what lacks these qualities - that is, the chaotic and dangerous flux of things."

In other words, the very idea of the sacred and our connection to it is an element in the structure of consciousness, and not merely a stage in its history. And notions about both the deity and life beyond the grave highlight the development of this "idea of the sacred" in almost every ancient culture about which we have any knowledge.

As it was in every ancient religion (including those of the Greeks, Romans and the Hebrews before the 8th century b.c.), polytheism was taken for granted in ancient Egypt, for which we have very extensive and detailed records. During the period from about 2700 to 2200 b.c., for example, the Egyptian kings themselves were worshipped as sons of the sun god. But from 2000 b.c., there is clear evidence of monotheism: Amon was regarded as the one supreme deity, and when one ruler addressed a spontaneous hymn to Amon, his prayer was set down in hieroglyphs: "Creator, Maker, Giver of breath - how manifold are your works, O sole God, whose powers no other possesses. You created the earth according to your heart." Egyptians also offered morning and evening prayer to Amon.

Along with the tendency toward monotheism, there was a conviction about the afterlife. The Papyrus of Ani, which can be dated to about 1250 b.c., is a major extant portion of the texts now collectively known as the Egyptian Book of the Dead; it contains hymns and invocations interred with the deceased and intended to guide them safely to the beyond. A typical prayer for mercy was addressed, for example, to "My Shining One, who dwells in the Mansion of Images . . . O Preeminent One . . . may you grant me life. . . . O my father, my brother, my mother - Isis! . . . I shall cross to the Mansion of him who finds faces, the collector of souls. . . . And I will not die again in God's do-main . . . I give you praise, O Lord of the gods."

Perhaps nowhere are the traditions of prayerful acts discerned more clearly than in this ancient conviction that life endures beyond the grave, a conviction to which the pyramids remain a grand and silent witness. Within them all manner of provisions were made for the entombed rulers in the hereafter. The custom of sprinkling corpses with red ocher - as a substitute for blood and hence as a symbol of life - is found in Egypt and from northern Europe to as far south as Tasmania. More to the point, ancient peoples often buried their dead in a fetal position, which may indeed signify the hope of rebirth; the appearance of the dead in dreams seems also to have suggested the survival of the spirit. The 20th century discovery and translation of Egyptian invocations is precious witness to prayer in one of the most sophisticated ancient cultures.

From the 3rd millennium b.c. to the time of Jesus, forms of prayer changed little in Assyrian and Babylonian cultures. The Babylonian god Marduk was addressed by an unknown speaker in an intimate tone: "O Lord, great are my sins - do not cast your servant down, but remove my transgressions." Another supplicant expressed confidence in his prayer for protection from enemies: "I have prayed humbly, and I have been heard by my Father, my God." Equivalent sentiments are found in Cretan civilization of the same era.

From the Sumerians and Egyptians to the Central American natives, the terms "father" and "mother" are everywhere to be found as expressive of the affinity between the human and divine. About 2000 b.c., the Sumerians asked a Father-Mother God to "strip us of our many sins, which we wear like a garment." In ancient Egypt, Isis was "my father, my mother, my brother," and the Babylonians addressed Marduk, "as a father and mother, you dwell with your people." And at the end of the 2nd century a.d., the Acts of St. Peter (a nonbiblical account of early Christian traditions concerning that apostle) placed on the lips of the dying apostle a boldly confident address to God in Jesus: "You are a father and a mother to me - a brother, a friend, a servant. You are all that is, and all that is, is in You."

The true primitive spirit of prayer is not the expression of a savage or uncivilized nature, nor of atavistic fear or selfish desire. Nor does "primitive" connote a naïve stage of human development; rather, it describes a basic experience of human contingency. Those we call primitives often disclose not what we have outgrown or put aside but what is fundamental to our humanity.

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Attributed to Homer in the 8th century b.c., the Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, contain both poetic prayer and ceremonial prayer. The former invokes a god, tries to justify a reason for a petition to be favorably heard, and then formulates the petition. The latter type follows a pattern of ritual washing, prayer, sacrifice and libations. Greek prayer reflected the tone of its mythology and hence presumed the reality of a feisty give-and-take between gods and mortals; the heroes are always aware of their dependence on the capricious power of preternatural (but not omnipotent) beings, of whom they beg favor and protection in time of need, and to whom they offer sacrifice and honor. Do ut des, as the Romans said later in Latin, was the working principle of reciprocity: "I give to you so that you might grant to me . . ."

The Greeks also knew their gods in an almost personal way - that is, the gods were comprehensible, even sometimes predictable in their emotional responses and their particular loyalties. Existing somehow in space but not omnipresent, the gods had to be summoned in prayer, but there was never a sense of intimacy or loving union between the supplicant and the deity. (The Judeo-Christian God, contrariwise, is both beyond space and time and intimately present within it: He does not have to be summoned, it is humans who are summoned by Him and to Him.)

The Iliad and Odyssey recount many petitions and prayers for safety, as well as curses hurled like Zeus's thunderbolts. The earliest extant prayer in Greek literature is probably that of the priest Chryses, in the Iliad, when he asks Apollo to avenge him: "I built your temple and burned sacrifice to you - so let your arrows make [my enemies] pay for my shed tears." One of the most touching examples of a personal prayer is found in the Odyssey. Penelope, faithful wife of Odysseus, has waited patiently twenty years for his return. Weary of temporizing with increasingly insistent suitors, she begs heaven to end her life: "Great goddess Artemis, let some whirlwind snatch me up and drop me into the ocean: I wish that the gods who live in heaven would hide me from mortal sight, or that you, fair Diana, might strike me. I would rather go beneath the sad earth awaiting Odysseus, without having to yield myself to a man so much less than he was."

By the 5th century b.c. and later, Greek prayer became more refined, as can be seen in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the poems of Pindar, the histories of Xenophon and the philosophical dialogues of Plato. There was now a greater concern for the spiritual efficacy of honor and reverence for the gods, and prayers for revenge are softened to entreaties for justice.

"Without thee, no mortal shall have strength to achieve or prevail," the Chorus prays to Zeus in Aeschylus's Suppliants; that sense of dependence has moral consequences. Timaeus, in the eponymous dialogue by Plato, observes that "all who possess even a modicum of wisdom, everywhere and always, at the beginning of every work, important or unimportant, call upon God." Elsewhere, Plato includes entreaties to the gods for the forgiveness of moral guilt. Xenophon and Sophocles also bear witness to the customs of daily prayer at sunrise, sunset and before meals.

It must be stressed, however, that Hellenic prayer was entirely focused on the needs of contingent mortals in this world: ecstatic or contemplative prayer - that is, the sort of prayer aimed at achieving an intimate life with a god - was unknown. Timaeus may have come closest to an intuition about mystical prayer, with its germ of a notion about humanity's almost existential relation to the Creator-Demiurge.

While Hebrews and, later, Christians employed a variety of postures for public and private prayer (kneeling, standing, sitting, bowing, crouching), the Greeks and Romans almost invariably seem to have stood while praying, extending both arms upward and bringing their hands together with the palms open; medals struck during the Roman Empire indicate that the arms were thrown wide apart.

To this day, Jews, Christians and Muslims extend arms or lift up hands in the act of prayer, much as a needy child does toward a parent. Prostration, bending, striking one's breast, bowing and kneeling, touching the forehead to the ground, bringing together upraised palms, folding the hands and interlacing the fingers - these are remnants of ancient gestures of greeting and petition and require no academic interpretation.

The most common form of Roman prayer, it must be noted, was to flatter or even to bribe a god - and it was critical to invoke the correct god for one's cause: "Help me, Jupiter, because it is in your power. . . . Cure me and I'll give you an offering. . . . Make me richer than my neighbor." In exchange for divine favor, a person might make a votum or vow to offer a sacrifice, to build a temple or even to bind oneself to the god forever. Two millennia later, this kind of bargaining quid pro quo still characterizes some naïve notions in just about every tradition of prayer.

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© 2005 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Donald Spoto, author of The Hidden Jesus, taught theology, Christian mysticism, and biblical literature at the university level for twenty years. His other eighteen books include internationally bestselling biographies of Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, and Ingrid Bergman.