HPL and Egypt
David M Jacobs
As I was leafing through my copy of "Egypt" (by Vivian Davies and
Renee Friedman) today I noticed something interesting. The founder of
the First Dynasty was named Menes -- as was the little boy in "The
Cats of Ulthar".
Is this just coincidence, or did HPL's interest in Egypt extend beyond
the usual namedropping and vague mysticism? Was the choice of name
deliberate; were the little boy with the kitten and the founder of the
First Dynasty one and the same?
(As a side note, Menes wasn't the first Pharaoh. An expedition at
Abydos in 1988 uncovered evidence of an earlier dynasty -- Dynasty
Zero.)
David M Jacobs
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Cabrini
not sound as grandiose or "kingly" as the multisyllabic names of later,
more well-known pharaohs. I doubt if many of the Egyptology texts
Lovecraft could have read, back in the 1920s, would've deigned to talk
about the simpler names of lowborn Egyptians: archeological interest in
the day-to-day life of commoners, as opposed to monarchs and
conquerors, is a relatively recent phenomenon.
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Donovan K. Loucks
As I was leafing through my copy of "Egypt" (by Vivian Davies and Renee
Friedman) today I noticed something interesting. The founder of the
First Dynasty was named Menes -- as was the little boy in "The Cats of
Ulthar". Is this just coincidence, or did HPL's interest in Egypt
extend beyond the usual namedropping and vague mysticism? Was the
choice of name deliberate; were the little boy with the kitten and the
founder of the First Dynasty one and the same? (As a side note, Menes
wasn't the first Pharaoh. An expedition at Abydos in 1988 uncovered
evidence of an earlier dynasty -- Dynasty Zero.)
In _H.P. Lovecraft: A Life_, S.T. Joshi indicates that the name of Menes
may have been borrowed from the title character Dunsany's play _King
Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior_. He also indicates that the "dark
wanderers" in "The Cats of Ulthar" may have been inspired by the
"Wanderers" in Dunsany's "Idle Days on the Yann" and that the entire story
is reminiscent of several tales in Dunsany's _The Book of Wonder_.
Nonetheless, it's still perfectly plausible that King Menes (the Greek
word for the Egyptian Narmer) of Memphis lent his name to Lovecraft's
character.
-------------------
Donovan K. Loucks <webm...@hplovecraft.com>
The H.P. Lovecraft Archive: http://www.hplovecraft.com
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