Many modern vampire mythology makes reference to ancient Egyptian vampires. Is there any evidence to support Egypt had some form of vampire mythology in its ancient past?

by moxthunder

Many modern sources of vampire mythology such as world of darkness or queen of the damned reference an ancient Egyptian vampire mythology. Is this just a quirk of literature?

I have heard of Chinese vampires (I believe they were called something similar to Jin or jumping vampires) but what of Egypt?

Are there any texts that have a fantastical blood sucking man/woman beast? What resources can I use for further reading?

abutthole

The ancient world has a lot of monsters that have sort of been retconned into being vampires because they share traits - most notably blood drinking or consumption of the dead. The modern vampire is mostly based on Romanian folklore about strigoi, adapted to western sensibilities through horror stories like Varney the Vampire and Dracula.

The first stories that we have any record of that could be identified as a part of the "vampire canon" are from the ancient near east, but interestingly enough - not Egypt. Persian shards reveal that they had some blood drinking creatures in their myths. Babylonia and Assyria had lilitu that could have been very early figures in the vampire myth. Charles Fossey in his 1902 translation of cuneiform tablets translated it to female night being/spirit and they'd also been associated with the wind and bringing disease - disease being a common theme in later vampire myths.

In response to this part of your question:

Are there any texts that have a fantastical blood sucking man/woman beast? What resources can I use for further reading?

Yes, but not really identifiable as anything close to a vampire. The goddess Sekhmet drinks blood. She was a war goddess and a lioness and was ultimately transformed into a more relaxed goddess Hathor because she was tricked into drinking a ton of red beer that she thought was blood. But Sekhmet was just a violent goddess that drank blood, she wasn't part of a race of creatures that resembled vampires.

"Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites", archaeologists find evidence for ancient version of ‘Girls Gone Wild’. From MSNBC, October 30, 2006

Lichtheim, Miriam (2006) [1976]. Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume Two: The New Kingdom. University of California Press. pp. 197–199