Creation Stories :: African Creation Tales Essays

Creation Stories All acculturations seek to explain how everything in this world was created. They come up with their own entry stories that describe the innovation of themselves and the things around them. Most creation stories also attempt to explain secret phenomena, teach lessons to the listeners, and emphasize aspects of life that each culture finds important. The three creation stories that I chose to compare were the creation myths of the Mande, the African Bushmen, and the Egyptians. These creation stories, though extremely different do share some similarities. The African Bushmen myth and the Egyptian myth both have lessons or morals to be versed from the story specifically, they emphasize the importance of go aftering laws. The Egyptian myth, The Story of Re, shows that men essential obey the laws of Re, the creator, even if he appears weak in their eyes. When the men stop obeying Re, they were slaughtered by his daughter, Sekhmet. The African Bushmen myth de monstrated that one should always obey the laws of the creator (in this case, Kaang) beca accustom it is usually for ones own benefit anyway. The pot disobeyed Kaangs warning not to use acquit and so their use of fire ended up scaring off the animals breaking off chat between people and animals. All three myths reveal something about what its culture considers to be important in lifethe myths indicate what these cultures honour and what fascinates them. The Egyptian myth, The Story of Re, reveals the Egyptians fascination with bloodshed there is a great good deal of bloodshed when Sekhmet slaughters men and takes pleasure in their blood. The myth also indicates that Egyptians set cunning deception and magic arts. The myth involves two instances in which a character tricks another character using clever and/or witching(prenominal) means. In one instance, Re tricks Sekhmet into drinking large amounts of alcohol by dying it red with red ocher, so that she thinks it is blood . In another instance, Isis tricks Re into telling her his secret name by requiring it as part of a cure for a snakebite. Through their creation myth, the African Bushmen indicate that they value mans interaction with animals they show concern about fire and the fact that it frightens animals. They seem to feel that fire has ruined the relationship between men and animals.