Many of these festivals and ritual processions were illustrated on the walls of Egypt’s great temples. The Egyptians believed that writing and drawing gave magical power substance and presence. Writing and magic were tied together in Egyptian metaphysics, and both were thought to come from the god Thoth.9 To give you some idea of how the Egyptians thought this all worked, let us say I was to write a mild curse on a piece of paper: “May there always be one less step than my nemesis expects.” The Western