Etiqueta: egyptian mithology

severalowls:

severalowls:

The story of the Distant Goddess is absolute proof that it’s a crime that Ancient Egyptian mythology hasn’t entered the popular conciousness in the same way as Greek stuff.

Short, super paraphrased version: Ra is sick of humanity being rebellious wee bastards, so he sends a goddess as an embodiment of his vengeance, usually Sekhmet in the form of a great fuckoff lion – first to the southern deserts to wipe out the followers of Set. She does so, and then for unspecified reasons, Ra decides maybe humanity is redeemable hey call off the murderlion. But being an embodiment of pure divine retribution, she isn’t really having it.

So Ra sends Thoth out in an effort to soothe the goddess before she arrives in the north and wipes out everything including the gods (she’s just that strong). He’s terrified, but he tries all sorts of cunning and wisdom and trickery and tells her moral tales and all that, but all he can do is delay her.

In the meantime, Ra’s priests of the north are hard at work. They brew thousands of barrels of beer, and mix pots and pots red dye. And when the goddess inevitably arrives, they mix it up and pour it into the reeds of the nile. Believing it to be the spilled blood of her enemies, she drinks it up proudly… And gets EXTREMELY drunk, calming down and transforming into Hathor, goddess of joy and love.

And once a year to celebrate this momentous occasion, Egyptians would get Absolutely Plastered.

abraxaswithaxes:

nyailist:

thatlittleegyptologist:

ezairick:

thatlittleegyptologist:

ezairick:

thatlittleegyptologist:

Fun fact: Egyptian gods do not have ‘animal heads’. The depictions of gods are meant to contain a duality, as is important in Egyptian Religion (life/death, red land/black land, chaos/order, human/animal). So when you see, say, Anubis with a man’s body and a Jackal head it represents both his human form and his Jackal form, meaning he might appear in either form. But never as a human with a Jackal head. That is only something you’d see on temple walls for the duality aspect.

How di you know??

I mean it sounds likely but where are you getting your information from?

I’m an Egyptologist? This is literally my job.

But if you want a source, read: Silverman, D. (1991) Divinity and Deities in Ancient Egypt, In J. Baines, L. Lesko, & D. Silverman, Religion in
Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths and Personal Practice. Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press. 7-87.

Thanks for the sources.

I had just never heard about that fact before.

No worries! (I realise I put a full stop instead of an exclamation mark at the end of “this is literally my job” which might have sounded harsh, so I apologise!)

This is a very pure interaction

this is exactly how you should react to hearing new information that you’re skeptical of or don’t immediately believe is true