I participated in the conference
"Morality
and Ideology: Durkheim and the Durkheimians on Religion," held Dec. 9-11 at the University of Crete,
Rethymnon. This
international conference celebrated the translation into Greek of
Durkheim's classic work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
The Clan of the Falcon:
Alexandre Moret and the Durkheimian Interpretation of Egyptian Monarchy
Was totemism a universal stage of human
social and religious evolution? Can one find its traces in historical
civilizations? The Egyptologist Alexandre Moret (1868-1938), Director of
Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and professor of
Egyptology at the Collège de France, suggested that Egyptian monarchy
could be explained by assuming that the pharaohs succeeded in
monopolizing and incarnating the power of prehistoric totems. The symbol
of the pharaoh, Horus the Falcon, would be the totem of the clan that
triumphed in the struggle for the unification of Egypt. Friend and
colleague of the Durkheimians Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert, Moret used
Durkheimian sociology of religion to solve the riddle of the origins of
Egyptian civilization. He collaborated with another Durkheimian, Georges
Davy, to elaborate a general theory of social evolution. His efforts
were part of a lively debate over the application of the comparative
method to history, ethnography, and archaeology. The terms of the debate
have changed, but it still raises important questions about the nature
and role of religion in human society.
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John I. Brooks III