Sherkova T.A. The Motif of the Rod in Ancient Egyptian Culture: Culture-Historical and Psychological Sspects

Abstract: In the present research the motif of the road in ancient egyptian mythology and ritual practice is compared with the ideas and images of the unconscious developed within the framework of the integral personality in the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. Studying mythological conceptions of the eternal gyre of the Sun God – the supreme Creator – the author finds out that these mythological beliefs were reflected in the architecture of the motif of the road. This mythologeme also occurs in the initiation of the deceased walking along divine ways through the netherworld. Thoth – the God of knowledge and scholarship – was considered to be the guide of the dead. He could manage demons of the other world with the help of magic spells. Following these ways the soul of the deceased was brought to the divine celestial world of the eternal life. The discussed mythological beliefs are also compared with such fundamental concepts of the analytical psychology as libido, the inward man, the archetypes of what Jung has called in German – Selbst (Self), the wise man, etc. The research work is based on the comparative method in terms of scientific synthesis aplied in the area of mythological consciousness and analytical psychology. The main conclusions are the following: The mythological consciousness was based on the similarity between the material-sensual and the spiritual-psychical in the beliefs about the picture of the world and the role of man in it. The motif of the road in the ancient egyptian mythological conceptions was studied in terms of unity between the myth of the Sun God – Creator and initiation in the burial custom. In the course of research the author of the article 'built the bridge' to the philosophical-psychological idea of Carl Gustav Jung concerning the conflict of opposites and elimination of conflicts by means of what he has called Selbst in German – the symbol of uniform integrity. The main contribution to the theme is the detailed comparative historical and psychological analysis of the archetype of the road. It is for the first time in the academic literature of the comparative mythology that the deep-laid origins of the individual's motif of the road are studied on the basis of the analytical psychology founded by Carl Gustav Jung. This work can be applied in the course of lectures and in the practical work in psychotechnics.

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