Ptah was a craftsman. Following the instructions of Thoth, he created the world, and humankind, on the potter’s wheel. He is shown in mummiform shape wearing a skullcap. His wife or consort is the lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet, who was also the avenger of the sun god Re. In her gentler aspect, Sekhmet was a goddess of healing and medicine. Their son, Nefertum, was called the “god of the blue lotus,” the blossom with which he was associated. The Theban Triad Amun was the principal god of Thebes, and his name means the “hidden one.” He can appear in many forms but was often portrayed holding a was scepter and an Ankh, the signs of power and life, and wearing a double feather crown. When Amun represented one ofthe primordial gods in the waters of chaos, he had the body of a man with the head of a frog. Amun’s chief consort or wife was Mut, whose name means “mother,” and she was sometimes called “World Mother,” She Who Brings Forth into Existence. Mut was portrayed either as a woman wearing the double crown and holding a papyrus scepter or as a lioness-headed goddess.

Ptah, the principal god of Memphis, is often shown in mummiform with a close-fitting cap and holding a staff of authority. (Photograph by Pat Remler) overthrowing his enemy Set. Hathor was the wife or consort of Horus, and the temple inscriptions also tell the story of her journey from her cult center in

fIElD of rEEDs

In this guise she was associated with Sekhmet and


Bastet. The third member of the triad was their son, Khonsu, moon god. Curiously, the most popular and powerful triad—that of Osiris, Isis, and their son Horus—did not have a particular cult center where they were worshipped together. Instead, each one had his or her own cult center: Osiris at Abydos, Isis at Philae, and Horus at Edfu.

fertility, goDS of See Min and Osiris. feStivAlS Numerous festivals were scheduled throughout the year in ancient Egypt to honor the gods in their temples—some were local celebrations, and some were celebrated throughout the land. A festival usually began with a procession of the cult statue by the priests, who were accompanied by musicians and dancers. Sometimes the statue traveled in procession from one temple to another, spending a certain numberThe Festival of the New Year, corresponding with the rising of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The Festival of Opet on the nineteenth day of paophi, the second month, for 24 days. The Beautiful Festival of the Valley, a procession of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu.

The Field of Reeds was a mythical place where the fields produced crops of enormous height. In this tomb painting, the deceased and his wife are shown harvesting grain. (Photograph by Pat Remler) The goddess associated with the Field of Reeds was called Neheb-Kau and was often shown as a serpent with wings and the arms and legs of a woman. In her hands she carries two pots of food for the souls of the dead. Mention of the Field of Reeds


first occurs in the Pyramid Texts:
Cleansed is he who is cleansed in the Field of Reeds Cleansed is Re in the Field of Reeds Cleansed is he who is cleansed in the Field of Reeds Cleansed is this Unas in the Field of Reeds Hand of Unas in hand of Re! O Nut take his hand! O Shu, lift him up! O Shu, lift him up!

The food offerings for a festival varied greatly: One required 84 loaves of bread, for example, while another required more than 4,000. During the festival, the extra food not used by the priests was distributed to the people.

fielD of reeDS (also sehet aaru or elysian fields) A mythological realm of the western sky,
where crops in the fields grow to enormous heights.

In the MiddleKingdom (2055–1650 b.c.), the Coffin Texts suggest that the deceased will be required to labor in the Field of Reeds, and at about the same time the Coffin Texts were written, magical figures called ushabtis were introduced. Each ushabti was given a magical spell so that when the deceased was called upon to work in the Field of Reeds, the ushabti would answer for the deceased and perform the work. The concept of the Field of Reeds was expanded during the New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.), when it was regularly included in the vignettes that decorated the Book of the Dead. According to Osirian mythology (see Chapter 145 of the Book of the Dead), the deceased was required as part of his passage into the next world to spend


time working in the Field of Reeds. In another

fIsh
version, when the deceased had completed his journey through the Underworld and had undergone his final judgment and acquittal (see Weighing of the Heart Ceremony), his ultimate goal was to acquire a plot of land. This symbolized the resuming of his earthly activities in the Netherworld, the Field of Reeds. In the vignettes of the Book of the Dead, the deceased is often shown plowing, sowing, and harvesting, sometimes with his wife, and they are always dressed in their best clothes as if they were on holiday. The location of the Field of Reeds is never specified, but the Book of the Dead seems to place it in the Netherworld. According to myths, the Field of Reeds produced an abundanceof wheat and barley that grew to enormous heights. It was said to be the food of the dead, like the nectar and ambrosia of the gods. It was different from the actual food offerings left for the deceased on Earth. Over the centuries, various texts suggested that there was also an earthly location for the Field of Reeds, perhaps in the eastern Delta, or on an island in the Delta, or in the remote Kharga Oasis. The term “field of reeds” eventually became a euphemism for the Netherworld or for a death. a salve which was then rubbed vigorously on the sufferer’s head. Hatmehty, a fish goddess whose name means, “She Who Is in Front of the Fish,” was worshipped at her cult center in the Delta.


and acceptable in ancient Egypt. This taboo seems strange, since fish from the Nile, Mediterranean, and the Red Sea were plentiful staples in the Egyptian diet. In some nomes or provinces, fish were considered sacred, but in others, fish were considered unclean. A fish that was forbidden in one town could be eaten in another. Temple priests were forbidden to eat fish, and the king avoided it as well. Fish is almost never shown on the offering table in tombs or on temple walls. The only exception is a scene on the wall of the tomb of a nobleman named Mena in the Valley of the Nobles in Luxor. The Lates niloticus, known as the bolti fish today, appears on his offering table. The taboo no doubt sprangshapes; roasted joints of beef, wild game, and ducks; prepared vegetables and fruits; and brewed the best quality beer. Before the gods could be served, each group of food was purified with water, natron, and burning incense. Food bearers carried platters piled high with every kind of food and set them on offering tables in front of the god’s shrine. When the shrine was opened, a selection of food was taken from each tray, placed on a special serving platter, and presented to the cult statue of the god. Later the food was distributed among the priests, except for the loaves of bread; they remained on the offering table until the next morning, when the ceremony would be repeated. The only food item that was never served to


with the head of a falcon; Hapi, with the head of an baboon; and Mesti, with a human head. Each of the four sons was responsible for protecting one of the mummy’s internal organs (stomach, liver, intestines, and kidneys). The organs were placed in limestone jars, with each lid shaped like the head of one of the sons. These were canopic jars from the Greek legend of Canopus, the pilot of Menelaus, king of Sparta, who was buried in Egypt. He was said to have been worshipped in the form of a jar with feet. Once wrapped, the internal organs were placed in the canopic jars. A fluid (probably dissolved natron) called the “liquid of the children of Horus” was poured over the organs. The jars were thena patron of women during childbirth. Frog amulets have even been found in Amarna, the city founded by Akhenaten when he banished Egypt’s traditional religion. This suggests that Heket continued to be a talisman for women even

ü

lrh

Painting from the tomb of Senedjem where the deceased is shown in the company of Anubis, the jackal-headed god. (Photograph by Pat Remler)

funErAry tExts

when every other traditional deity was outlawed. The Egyptian creation myth that originated in Hermopolis suggests that four of the gods of the Ogdoad—Heh, Hek, Nun, and Amun—appeared with frog’s heads. As late as the fourth century a.d., when Christianity became popular in Egypt, the frog retained its association with rebirth. Another frog goddess, Heka, is a mistress of magic and she appears as a guardian of the sun


god in the Book of Gates.

Egypt. Instead, they were incorporated into a new idea or evolved into an aspect of another deity.

funerAry beliefS Most of what we know about ancient Egyptian mythology and religion comes from funerary beliefs and burial customs. The Egyptians believed that death was a transition between this life and the next. They also believed that it was possible to achieve eternal life through resurrection. Because of their belief in resurrection, preserving the body was all-important to the Egyptians. Without an intact body, the deceased could not magically travel to the next world where he or she would exist for all eternity. This belief led to complex funerary practices that changed very little over ancient Egypt’s 3,000year history. The earliest burials were shallow pit gravesfrom exposure, because they were no longer resting in hot, dry sand, they began to rot rather than dehydrate. By this time, religious beliefs required that the body be intact, and artificial mummification was necessary. As the art of mummification developed, so did the religious rituals and the importance of the funerary gods (see Osiris and Anubis). Although the funerary texts tell us that beliefs changed—the Pyramid Texts refer to the king transforming into a circumpolar star, for example, while the Coffin Texts describe an afterlife toiling in the Field of Reeds—no belief system or god or goddess was ever completely discarded in ancient

funerAry textS Funerary texts are prayers, spells, and incantations intended to help the deceased reach the next world. Called Pyramid Texts, the first funerary texts


originated in the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 b.c.). Carved on the walls of the burial chamber of the pyramid of the Fifth Dynasty King Unas (c. 2345 b.c.), the Pyramid Texts are the first large body of written texts in Egypt, and they express a well-developed idea of the afterlife. The Pyramid Texts are concerned primarily with the protection of the body of the king and offer suggestions like “cast the sand from your face.” In some texts the king tries to bully the gods into accepting him as one of them. Versions of the Pyramid Texts, comprising some 800 spells in all, are found in eight later pyramids dating from the Sixth to the Eighth Dynasties (2345–2125 b.c.). The spells appear in no particular order, and not everyspell was included in every pyramid. During the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 b.c.), funerary practices were no longer restricted to royalty and the wealthy. Now ordinary people could also have a proper funeral and an afterlife in the next world. With this development, new religious texts were needed. The Pyramid Texts were expanded and became the Coffin Texts. Called the Book of Two Ways, Coffin Texts were guides for the deceased in their quest for the next world. They were inscribed in vertical rows on the wooden coffins popular during the period. One of the innovations of the Coffin Texts was that the sun god was no longer supreme. Osiris, god of the Underworld, became the patron of the dead, for they were destined to spend eternity with him.


The Coffin Texts also developed the idea of the Field of Reeds, where the deceased would spend an undetermined amount of time plowing, sowing, and harvesting—working in the fields. It was at this time that the idea of a magical substitute worker was initiated. Mummiform statuettes called ushabtis, complete with magical spells to activate them, would perform the agricultural tasks required of the deceased. When texts became too numerous to inscribe on coffins, they gave way to the Book of the Dead, a New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.) innovation that continued to assist the deceased on their journey to the next world. The Book of the Dead is a series of magical spells, more than half of which came from the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. They include aseries of vignettes illustrating various chapters. The virtue of the Book of the Dead was that it could be written on papyrus and copied

funErAry tExts
easily. Because the Book of the Dead developed from a series of earlier writings, it had no particular organization, and chapters were sometimes repeated or omitted in error when they were copied. Eventually there were several different versions of the Book of the Dead, but the most important chapters were included in each one. A later group of assorted texts, derived in part from the Book of the Dead, have been grouped together in the modern designation the Book of the Netherworld. These texts, unlike the Book of the Dead, an assortment of magical spells, prayers, and incantations, are religious essays relating, in step-by-step


detail, the sun god’s journey through the realm of darkness each night. They also describe the World of the Beyond. The Books of the Netherworld included the Amduat, the Book of Caverns, the Book of the Earth, and the Book of Gates.

G 8
geb
The god of Earth, Geb was one of the nine gods of the ennead, the creation myth that arose in Heliopolis. He was the son of Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture, who were the children of Atum, the creator god. Geb’s sister and wife was Nut, the sky goddess, and their children were Isis, Osiris, Nephthys, and Set. As the god of earth and vegetation, Geb is sometimes colored green, and with plants sprouting from his back and water spurtingfrom his body. One of his symbols was the goose, which he sometimes wore on his head. His daughter Isis once held the obscure title “Egg of the Goose.” At other times Geb was portrayed as a man wearing the red crown of the Delta and reclining on one side or seated on a throne. One myth says that when Geb and his wife, Nut, became the parents of the sun, he was hailed as the “Father of the Gods.” Geb’s most important role was that of judge in the Contendings of Horus and Set. As “Father of the Gods,” Geb gave his son Osiris the Earth to rule.

The ancient Egyptians believed Gebel Barkal was a holy mountain and home of the great god Amun. They covered the


stone peak was examined by Egyptologist Tim Kendal, he discovered that in ancient times the peak was covered with a sheath of gold (the nail holes are still visible). Egyptian mythology calls Gebel Barkal djew wab (the pure mountain), home of the great god Amun, who dwells in the mountain along with other gods. His title “Lord of the Thrones of Two Lands” represents his dominion over Egypt and Nubia. For the Egyptians, the uraeus (or rearing cobra) was a symbol of kingship, of protection of the king, of the divine mother of the king. Images natural or man-made could hold powerful magic, and the Egyptians and the Nubians who followed the Egyptian religion recognized Gebel Barkal as a sacred and magical space. Because Nubia had gold mines,the pharaoh’s armies and trading parties invaded Nubia from the time of the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 b.c.). In the Eighteenth Dynasty, King Thutmose III (1504–1452) defeated the local king, erected a stela (stone slab) at Gebel Barkal, and declared that this was Egypt’s new southern boundary. He built a fortress to secure his gold and a large temple to Amun—inscriptions on the temple wall tell us that a statue of Amun “spoke” to the priests. Near the great Temple of Amun were other temples for the goddesses Mut, Hathor, Tefnut, and perhaps Isis—one name has been lost. Later kings enlarged the temple and created new sanctuaries and temple administrative offices of their own. By the Twentieth Dynasty, Egypt had grown weak, and Gebel Barkal was abandoned. By this


time, the Nubians had adopted much of Egyptian culture and religion, and as the Nubian kings grew stronger, they saw themselves as legitimate heirs to the throne of Egypt. Finally they invaded and ruled Egypt for about 60 years. The cult of Amun at Gebel Barkal was continued by the Nubian kings who also worshipped Horus, Osiris, and Khnum. The Nubian kings revived the failing religion in Egypt, rebuilt the temples, and built their own pyramids in Nubia, for they wanted to be buried near Gebel Barkal. Within close proximity to Gebel Barkal

gebel bArkAl

One of the decorations on the wall of the Temple of Mut is a picture of Gebel Barkal with the peak shown as a rearing cobra. (Photograph by Pat Remler)

are three of the four Nubianoften Egyptian gods, had to be in place. Magical gemstones are best known in the ancient world as Gnostic or Abraxas gems. When the Greeks

gemStoneS ,

golD

assigned a number value to the Greek alphabet, the magic became more complex, and the idea evolved into mystical texts.

girDle

of iSiS See Knot of Isis.

paintings show us that power was in the hands of the gods and the king, who was a divine being (a god on Earth) and whose job it was to serve as the messenger between the gods and the people.

goDS of Ancient egypt Egypt’s pantheon— group of gods and goddesses—emerged along the banks of the Nile. Wandering the river valley, the first nomadic Egyptians must have feared the unpredictable power of nature—the violent forces of thunder, lightning, and storms.


These and the desolate desert became the archetypes for the first gods and goddesses. The early frightening gods of nature changed as Egypt’s civilization changed from nomadic groups into farming settlements. Settlements grew into cities, and Egypt prospered. The gods remained powerful, but they became benevolent and kindly and developed human forms with superhuman powers. The gods and goddesses developed personalities: they fell in love, they were jealous, they were angry, and they felt despair. Mythology tells us they lived much like the humans who worshipped them. Living close to nature, the Egyptians recognized the powerful traits of animals—the strength of the bull, the fierceness of the lion—and wanted to gain the same power for themselves. The powers and essence of an animal seemed to magically transfer toduties with others (see Isis and Hathor). Over Egypt’s long history, many new, sometimes foreign deities joined the pantheon—there seemed to be room for everyone, and rarely was one discarded. The one exception to ancient Egypt’s religious tolerance was Akhenaten, the heretic king. He changed Egypt’s religion from the worship of many gods (polytheism) to the worship of one god (monotheism), the Aten. The change lasted only about 17 years, and then the religion reverted back to the worship of many gods. Egyptian tomb and temple

goD’S wife, the The title “the god’s wife of Amun” was first used in the New Kingdom (1550– 1069 b.c.) and was bestowed on Queen Ahmhose Nefertari, wife of Ahmose I (1550–1525 b.c.). A title of great prestige and honor, it meant that


in religious ceremonies the queen was viewed as a goddess and played the part of the god’s wife on Earth. During the Nineteenth Dynasty (1295–1186 b.c.), the title was passed to the daughter of the pharaoh and was combined with another title, “divine adoratrice.” The princess, upon whom this title was bestowed, was expected to devote her life to the god and never marry. Because she could not have children, when the time came for the “god’s wife” to leave her post, she chose her successor from one of the current king’s daughters. While the position of “god’s wife” was a religious one, and the princess who held the title served Amun in the great temple in Thebes, it was also a political position. As the priesthood ofthe Wadi Hammamat in the eastern desert and to Nubia. One of the earliest known maps is a drawing of the location of the gold mines in the Wadi Hammamat. The great quantities of gold flowing into the country caused envy among Egypt’s neighbors, and King Tushratta of Mitanni wrote to Akhenaten (in what are known as the Amarna Letters), “Gold in your country is dirt. One simply gathers it up. Why are you so sparing of it? I am engaged in building a new palace. Send me as much gold as is needed for its adornment.” Because of its association with the gods, and because it did not tarnish, gold was the perfect funerary adornment. The mummies of kings were

∂

grEAt cAcklEr
fitted with gold masks. Tutankhamen was placed


in a solid gold coffin as well. In the tomb, the chamber that held the sarcophagus was called “the chamber of gold,” and sometimes the head or the foot of the sarcophagus was decorated with the goddess Nephthys kneeling on the hieroglyph for gold. Name for the sacred goose who appears in the creation myth of the Ogdoad. One version of the myth tells us that the Great Cackler laid the primeval egg from which the Earth was hatched. In that myth, the Great Cackler is associated with Atum, the creator god who is sometimes depicted as a goose. The Great Cackler is mentioned in the Coffin Texts (Spell 307):
I am the soul who created the watery abyss and made a place in god’s land: My nest willnot be seen nor my egg broken, for I am the lord of those on high, and I have made a nest in the sky.

greek

greAt cAckler

goDS AnD egyptiAn mythology Over its 3,000-year history, Egyptian mythology added and merged gods and goddesses into its ever-growing pantheon. Rather than discard or eliminate any god whose popularity had diminished, the attributes were incorporated into newly evolved deities. When the Greek rulers, the Ptolemies, came to power, they brought two things with them: a pantheon of Greek gods, and a respect for the ancient and enduring religion of the Egyptians. It was clear to the Greek rulers that if their gods were merged with the Egyptian gods, it would promote goodwill among the people. Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine, and Imhotep,


the Egypt god of healing, were called Ptah-Aesculapius, and the healing abilities of the two gods would remain the same.

It is said that the sound of the Great Cackler broke the silence that existed before the world was created:
. . . He cackled, being the Great Cackler, in the place where he was created, he alone. He began to speak in the midst of silence . . . He commenced to cry when the earth was inert. His cry spread . . . He brought forth all living things which exist. He caused them to live. He made all men understand the way to go and their hearts came alive when they saw him.

The Book of the Dead associates the Great Cackler with the goddess Nut:
Hail thou sycamoreking but closely supervised by the gods. As a god of the desert, Ha was responsible for transporting the sand that would be used in the ceremony of placing the foundations of the temple. Being a god of the western desert, Ha was also responsible for warding off Egypt’s enemies from the west, the Libyans.

hA

hADeS

When the Greeks ruled Egypt during the Ptolemaic dynasty (332–32 b.c.), they associated the Egyptian god Osiris with their god of the Underworld, Hades. Unlike Osiris, who was a god of resurrection and hope, Hades was a god of terror and one to be avoided. His name eventually became associated with hell, the place of the lost souls.

For the soul of the deceased to reach the Netherworld, one of the most important rituals to


be performed was the negative confession, which took place in the Hall of Double Truth. The deceased stood before 42 gods and named all the evil deeds that he or she had never committed during life.
(Courtesy of Bob Brier)

hAir In the myth of Isis and Osiris, Isis is said to have cut a lock of her hair to symbolize her grief over the death of her husband, Osiris. When Egyptians mourned their dead, they often cut a lock of hair to express their sorrow over the death of a loved one. The Greek writer Plutarch (a.d. 46–126) believed the tradition of Isis cutting her hair became part of the Isis and Osiris myth when the Ptolemies ruled Egypt. The custom of cutting a lock of hair and wearingblack as a sign of mourning is, Plutarch says, more a Greek tradition than Egyptian. The hieroglyphic sign for mourning, however, is three locks of hair, t, and some scholars believe this may be a reference to Isis cutting a lock of her hair. The development of hieroglyphs is, of course, much earlier than the Greek influence in Egypt.

had to be judged by the gods. The first part of the judgment took place in the Hall of Double Truth, where the deceased was confronted by a tribunal of 42 gods. The deceased had to “separate himself from evil doings” by making a negative confession. It listed all of the evil deeds he had not committed and convinced the gods of his innocence. Once this test was successfully passed,


the deceased moved on to the Weighing of the Heart Ceremony. God of the Nile who lived in the caves under the cataracts or boulders in the Nile. Hapi was actually the god of inundation, the flood, and as such he personified the annual flooding of the Nile. Hapi was a fertility god, for the fate of the crops each year depended on how high the Nile rose and how much rich silt was spread across the flooded fields. Aquatic plants crown Hapi’s head, and his

hApi

hAll of Double truth In order to spend a pleasant eternity in the Netherworld, the deceased

hApI

As a god of fecundity, Hapi, the god of the Nile, was shown with both male and female attributes. He was responsible for the flooding of the Nilebattle of King Narmer. The goddess Hathor is represented in many different ways. She is the “Great Wild Cow,” and her home was the papyrus thicket, where the papyrus plant was sacred to her. When Hathor appeared as a cow-headed woman, she was crowned with the sun disk resting between her cow horns, and in her hands she held a was, or papyrus scepter. In her temples, Hathor-headed columns with human faces were incorporated into the architecture. So important was Hathor in the Egyptian pantheon that eventually every other goddess, even Isis, sometimes called Hathor-Isis, was identified with her. The cow-goddess cult was well established even in Predynastic Egypt (5500–3100 b.c.), and Hathor must have shared attributes with other minor cow goddesses, such as the Predynastic goddess Bat.


Hathor is mentioned in the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 b.c.) valley temple of King Chephren as a guardian of the temple. She was so popular with the people that shrines to the great goddess could be found in almost every town. Because of her many attributes, Hathor became the great mother goddess of this world and the next, and her titles and her characteristics grew too numerous to list. In each of the nomes of Upper and Lower Egypt, Hathor was identified with the local goddess and showered with loving epithets. In Memphis she was known as the “Lady of the Sycamore.” As “the Lady of Turquoise” she was worshipped at Serabit

hAthor

U

hAthor
the goddess, represented pleasure and joy. During cult ceremonies, the menat, often decorated with the face of Hathor,was carried and shaken as an accompaniment to chanting and singing. One of Hathor’s many titles is “Golden One,” referring to her special association with gold and precious metals. Highly polished hand mirrors were often made from gold or bronze and were decorated with the image of Hathor, reflecting her association with Re the sun god. The name Hathor means “House of Horus” and, as a goddess of the sky, she personified the house and sky of Horus (the hawk) when he is portrayed as the sun god. Horus himself was the oldest form of the sun god, and Hathor is his wife. Since the king was closely identified with Horus (one of his five titles was his golden Horus name), Hathor became the divine mother and protector


of the king. This relationship is illustrated in the statue of Amenhotep II (1427–1400 b.c.) being nursed by his divine mother, Hathor, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Hathor is also the daughter of the great sun god Re, and mythology tells us that when he called upon her, she became the vengeful eye of her father, Re, bringing violence and destruction wherever she went. When Re wished to destroy humankind, he sent Hathor, as his vengeful eye, to carry out the slaughter. One ceremony in the Hathor cult involved pacifying her dangerous side by playing the sistrum, a rattle, something like a tambourine, one of Hathor’s ritual objects. Love, Music, and Dance As the personification of female sexuality, love, music, dance, and drink, Hathor was seenby the Greeks to be the same as their goddess of love, Aphrodite. The cult of Hathor focused on pleasure, and the rituals involved sensual music and dancing. As shown on tomb walls, dancing in honor of Hathor was part of joyous celebrations, of which music was an important part. Ritual music was accompanied by the sistrum and the menat, both of which were shaken with great enthusiasm during processions. The sistrum, a rattle with a long handle, was often decorated with a Hathor head. As a nurturing goddess, Hathor was sought as a “bringer of fertility” and a protector of women in childbirth. It was believed that Hathor could predict the destiny of a newborn child. Hathor also was a mortuary goddess, and in Thebes she was


known as the “Lady of the Western Mountain.” In one myth, each night Hathor protects the evening sun while the deceased offer prayers to

Hathor, the goddess of love and music, was called the Lady of Heaven. She wears a metal necklace around her neck. (Drawing by Mary Jordan)

el Khadim in the Sinai, a remote region in the desert. The remains of her temple can still be seen high on the mountaintop, where it was one of the few Egyptian temples built on foreign soil. Hathor was the patron goddess of the miners digging for turquoise, a stone highly prized in ancient Egypt. When Hathor was honored as “the Lady of the Underworld” she wore a menat, a counterpoise, or balance, to a large necklace. The menat, a symbolson Horus the child, Har-pa-khered (or Harsomtus; see Horus), Hatmehty eventually became part of the triad of Mendes. Hatmehty means “She Who is in Front of Fish,” and she is represented as a woman with the head of a fish that looks something like a dolphin. The dolphin was the sacred fish of Hatmehty, and hers is one of the few fish cults in ancient Egypt.

hAtShepSut

When Queen Hatshepsut chose to rule Egypt as a king rather than queen, she claimed the right because of her divine birth. Hatshepsut claimed her father was Amun, the great god of Thebes, and in her mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri, she carved the story of the union of her mother Queen Ahmes and the god. The scene shows the queen and


the god sitting

hAwk-hEADED goD
next to each other on a couch, and then the queen is shown to be pregnant. Hatshepsut was the first woman to rule as king of Egypt, and she had to legitimize her right to the throne by claiming to be the daughter of a god and by claiming that her earthly father, Thutmose I, chose her to succeed him while he was still alive. Had Hatshepsut been a son, she would have succeeded her father on the throne of Egypt. When, after 20 years of marriage, her husband, Thutmose II, died, Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as queen, for the heir to the throne, her nephew Thutmose III, was a young child. After a few years of ruling as queen, Hatshepsut crowned herself king and ruledEgypt successfully for many years. She brought peace and prosperity to Egypt, avoided wars, and initiated trading expeditions and building projects. For a brief period at the beginning of her reign, Hatshepsut ruled jointly, in co-regency, with her nephew Thutmose III. Heart amulets were generally make of carnelian, a red, hard stone, although some were made of red glass or other materials and painted red. They were shaped like vases with small handles on either side and often placed on the chest of the mummy during the wrapping procedure.

hAwk-heADeD goD

See Horus.

heArt (Ab, Ib) For the Egyptians, the heart, or ib, was the center of all human emotions; love, anger, evil, and courage all came from the heart. The heart was believed to be the source of memory and


intelligence, and although the Egyptians did not understand the connection between the heart and the circulation of blood, they believed the heart was the most vital organ in the body. A man’s actions were often described in terms of his heart. For example, a Middle Kingdom text says, “Their hearts are the cause of evil . . .”, and a Coffin Text says “. . . he whose speech comes from his heart.” It was believed that the heart could reveal the true nature of a person. During mummification, the heart was not removed with the other internal organs but left in the body so that when the deceased resurrected in the next world, his heart would be with him. One of the five chapters of the BookCelebrating the rejuvenation of the king’s powers every 30 years, the heb-sed festival was a demonstration of a king’s strength and prowess. During the festival, the king ran around a heb-sed court performing feats of strength to demonstrate his ability to continue to rule Egypt. In doing so, he experienced rebirth, maintaining his position as a god on Earth. The heb-sed court of King Zoser at Saqqara is a long, rectangular, open court where the king performed the heb-sed ritual, part of which was to wrestle with a young man in order to prove he was strong enough to continue ruling Egypt. A limestone relief in a chamber under the Step Pyramid shows King Zoser during his heb-sed festival running between the markers representing Upper and Lower Egypt.


the bottom.

hErAklEopolIs

Heh is crowned with a winged scarab, symbolizing existence, and a sun disk. The message is clear: Heh is giving Tutankhamen millions of years.

hek One of the eight primeval deities that arose in Hermopolis, Hek was one of the gods of the Ogdoad, or the eight deities of the Egyptian creation myth. The first primeval forces appeared as frogs or serpents that later evolved into the personification of the primeval forces. Hek and Heket represented space. hekA
A goddess of magic that appears in human form as a woman. Heka and Sia, also a goddess of magic, battled the evil serpent Apophis each night as the sun god made his nightly journey through the Netherworld. One of Heka’s most important roles is in the Book of Gates, whereshe is indispensable as a guardian of the sun god.

temple at Deir el Bahari. In the Netherworld, Heket was present when the deceased was “reborn.” The frog sign in hieroglyphs was a cryptogram for the phrase wehem ankh (“repeating life”), a phrase that originated in the Middle Kingdom used to describe the deceased.

heliopoliS

The biblical city of On is Heliopolis, one of the most ancient cult centers in Egypt. It is the home of the Heliopolitan Ennead, one of the creation myths in Egyptian mythology. Heliopolis was also the site of the first temple dedicated to ReHorakhty. The ancient cult combined the worship of Re the sun god and Horakhty, a form of Horus, the falcon god.

heliopolitAn enneAD

heket

One of the original group of eight deities that form the Ogdoad,


the basis of the Hermopolis creation myth. Heket was the female counterpart of Hek, a god of space. She later evolved into a frog goddess who assisted at childbirth. Heket is first mentioned in the Pyramid Texts (c. 2345 b.c.), a group of magical inscriptions, in which she accompanies the spirit of the deceased king to his place in the sky. Her most important association was with childbirth, a distinction she shared with Bes and Tauret, who also protected mothers and children. Heket was especially called upon during the last stages of labor. A Middle Kingdom papyrus (2055–1650 b.c.) tells how Heket assisted the wife of the high priest of Re when she was about to give birth to the future king. Amulets and scarabs in the shapeof a frog were often worn by pregnant women in the hope that Heket would assist them during labor. Magical inscriptions on ivory wands, popular in the Middle Kingdom, refer to Heket as the “defender of the home.” A temple dedicated to Heket was found at Qus in Upper Egypt, and there is a reference to her cult in the tomb of Petosiris (fourth century b.c.) at Tuna el Gabel in Middle Egypt. Petosiris was a high priest of the god Thoth, and he recorded on his tomb that Heket led him to a shrine flooded by the yearly inundation of the Nile and asked him to repair her temple. Petosiris says that he summoned his scribe and gave him orders to build a new temple with a


wall around it to keep it safe from future floods. During the Eighteenth Dynasty, representations of Heket, with the body of a woman, are shown in the “divine birth” scenes of the king in Queen Hatshepsut

A popular creation myth developed by the priests of Re, the Heliopolitan Ennead was one of three myths that arose during the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 b.c.) in an attempt to explain the universe. The most complete source of information on the ennead is from the Pyramid Texts. They tell us that the Heliopolitan Ennead has two groups of nine gods: the Greater Ennead and the Lesser Ennead, a group of lesser gods ruled by Horus, who was associated with Re. At the beginning of the Greater Ennead, Atum the creator god willed himselfinto being, or he was created by Nun, the waters of chaos; several versions of the myth have been found. Atum emerged onto the primordial mound, the first bit of land, and since he was associated with the sun god Re, he became Re-Atum and brought light to the darkness. He created Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture. Their children were Geb, the god of Earth, and Nut, the goddess of the sky. These five gods and goddesses were cosmic deities and personified the forces of nature. Geb and Nut were the parents of Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Set, who had human characteristics and had important cults of their own. God of the east wind (see also Winds, Gods of the Four).

henkhiSeSui

hephAeStuS Called


“the divine artificer,” Hephaestus, the Greek god of craftsmen, was associated with Ptah and the Roman god Vulcan. The patron gods of craftsmen and smiths were believed to practice magic along with their crafts, and the weapons and tools dedicated to them could have magical powers. herAkleopoliS A capital city of the Upper Egypt Nome by the same name, Herakleopolis was a

0 hErIshEf
cult center for the ram-headed god Herishef, who was called Harsaphes by the Greeks. They saw him as a version of their god Herakles. The first temple appears to have been built at Herakleopolis during the Middle Kingdom and was in use through Christian times, for several Coptic inscriptions have been found there. An ancient fertility god whose name means “he who is upon his lake,”Herishef had many different traits over Egypt’s long history. When Herishef took the form of a ram with a sun disk on his head, he was associated with Re the sun god. When he wore the atef crown, the tall crown of Upper Egypt with ostrich plumes, he was affiliated with Osiris, the god of the underworld. One of his titles is “Lord of the Blood,” and in this role Herishef is linked to Shesmu, a god with a dual personality. When Plutarch the Greek historian (first century a.d.) writes about him, Herishef is called Arsaphes. The son of Nut, the sky goddess, born on the third Epagomenal Day, and the twin of the evil god Set, Heru-ur is the Egyptian word for Horus. He was associated with


Horus the elder, one of the most ancient gods of Egypt. In the Pyramid Texts, Heru-ur was equal to, but in constant opposition to, his brother Set, owing perhaps to their opposite natures. As a child of Nut, the sky goddess, Heru-ur ruled the sky by day, and his brother Set ruled by night. In the mythology Heru-ur represented light, day, cosmos, life, and good as opposed to Set’s darkness, night, chaos, death, and evil.

heru-ur

heriShef

heSAt

hermeS The winged messenger of the gods in Greek mythology, Hermes was associated with the Egyptian god of knowledge and writing, Thoth. hermonthiS
See Armant.

Cow goddess who nursed the children of the gods and who gave birth to the king in the form of the golden calf. As the goddess of milk, Hesat quenched thethirst of mankind when she provided her divine milk, “the beer of the people.” During the Late period (747–332 b.c.), Hesat was understood to be the mother of the Mnevis Bull and was honored in the bull cult.

hierAkonpoliS

hermopoliS mAgmA (khenmu)

The most important cult center for the worship of Thoth, Hermopolis Magma, renamed by the Greeks, was called Khenmu or “eight town” by the Egyptians. The “eight” referred to the Ogdoad, four pairs of primeval gods who appeared in one of the early creation myths developed in Khenmu. One of Thoth’s most important titles was “Lord of the City of Eight.” Under the rule of Amenhotep III in the New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.), Hermopolis was a thriving city, and the king placed two giant statues of Thoth as a


baboon in front of the god’s temple; one of them is still standing. In the fourth century b.c., the high priest of Thoth, Petosiris, renovated the temple and created a park full of sacred baboons and ibises. Their mummified bodies were discovered by the thousands in catacombs near Petosiris’s tomb in nearby Tuna el Gabel.

heroDotuS (c. 485–425 b.c.) Greek historian who traveled to Egypt and recorded the customs and religion of the Egyptians. Although some of his observations appear a bit fanciful, his writings were a major source of information on mummification and ancient Egyptian religion. The records of Egypt are found in the second of his nine volumes called The Histories.

An ancient cult center for Horus, the falcon god, dating from Egypt’s Predynastic period (3,500 b.c.). Longbefore the pyramids were built, Hierakonpolis was a bustling trade and religious center stretching more than three miles along the banks of the Nile. It is the site of many important archaeological finds. In 1897, the British Egyptologists James Quibell and Frederick Green discovered a cult statue with a gold head of Horus, the falcon god, and a life-size statue of the Sixth Dynasty king Pepi I cast in copper. A mound the excavators called the “Main Deposit” revealed hundreds of small objects of ivory, stone, and faience and may have been a ritual burial of offerings left for the falcon god. Best known of the discoveries is the Narmer Palette, perhaps the first political document in the world. It commemorates the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt


aesthetics, the shape and placement of each sign, were of great importance as well. In some instances the hieroglyphs were believed to be magical, and they were rendered with the utmost care. The ancient saying, “magic is everywhere,” suggests their belief in the magical nature of hieroglyphs. Tacitus, the Roman historian, tells us that in the first century a.d., when the Roman emperor Germanicus visited the ruins of Thebes, he was curious about the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the walls of the tombs and temples. He found an old man wandering through the crumbling buildings who claimed he could read the carvings. When the last Egyptian priest died, knowledge of the sacred script was lost, and for almost 1,500 years, scholars wondered what the carvings meant. Numerous attempts weremade to decipher the hieroglyphic inscriptions, but they all failed because it was assumed that the signs were picture writing—that the carving of a foot represented a foot, and so on. Not until the eighteenth century did linguists propose that the ancient Egyptian language was for the most part composed of signs that had a phonetic value—they represented sounds, not objects. However, a select group of hieroglyphs, called determinatives, are pictograms, and they represent what they depict, such as the sun or a figure of a person. Finally, the combination of brilliant scholarship and good fortune revealed the key to understanding hieroglyphs. When Napoleon invaded Egypt with his army in 1798, he took with him a large group of scholars to study the architecture and art of ancient


Egypt. The most significant discovery of the expedition occurred

in the summer of 1799, when Napoleon’s men were fortifying the northern coast of Egypt. In the course of their digging, they discovered a large black stone, later called the Rosetta stone, inscribed with three scripts: hieroglyphs, Greek, and demotic. This lucky find gave scholars their first clues about how to translate hieroglyphs. After much study, the French linguist Jean-François Champollion cracked the code and became the first person in 1,500 years to read the ancient script. The following is the classical Egyptian alphabet, the alphabet used in Egypt for approximately 3,000 years. While the Egyptians did not write vowels, some of the signs are today used to represent vowels in writing modern names. Thus the Egyptian vulture may bethat some of the signs were “determinatives.” That is, after a word was spelled out phonetically, there was sometimes a sign at the end of the word that helped clarify the meaning of the word. For example, in , the first three signs spell boat, and the last sign confirms that the word is boat. had been performed, the doors to the shrine were closed until it was time for the next ritual. The only time the average Egyptian ever saw a cult statue was on an important festival day, when the statue was taken out of the temple and placed in a portable shrine made of gilded wood that rested on two long, wooden carrying poles. Priests placed the poles on their shoulders and carried the shrine


into the open courtyard of the temple. During these special festivals, the Egyptians would crowd into the yard for a glimpse of the statue that represented their god.

hippopotAmuS goDDeSS

See Tauret.

holy of holieS Innermost sanctuary of an Egyptian temple where the statues of the gods were kept. Closed to all visitors except select priests who attended the statues, the holy of holies was a dark and mysterious place. Each morning the priests opened the doors to the holy shrine and cared for the statue as if it were a living god. Food was placed before the statue for its morning meal, cosmetics were painted around the eyes, perfume was poured over the statue, and it was wrapped in white linen. Once these rituals

horoScope cAlenDAr Ancient horoscope calendars told theEgyptians what to do on each day of the year. Unlike our modern horoscopes, which are individually based on birth dates and the position of the stars, everyone in ancient Egypt used the same horoscope calendar. If the calendar advised the people not to leave home on a particular day, then they would stay in their houses on that day. The Egyptian calendar had only three seasons:
1. Inundation, or akhet, when the Nile overflowed its banks and farmland was covered with water. This lasted from approximately June 21 to October 21. Emergence, or proyet, when the water receded. This season lasted from about October 21 to February 21. Summer, or shomu, from February 21 to June 21.

2.

3.

In the back of every Egyptian temple a small chapel called the


sequential mythological story, in part because the papyrus is damaged and portions are missing. While the Egyptians did not follow our calendar system, an attempt has been made to reconcile the ancient with the modern. See the following page. The one-month calendar begins on August 1 because Sirius no longer rises on June 21, as it did in ancient times, but on August 1.

is one of the most important gods in the Egyptian pantheon. He appears on the Narmer Palette, the earliest record of a historical event, in celebration of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. An ivory comb with the inscription of King Djet from Dynasty I shows Horus prominently above the king’s name. When the king died, the phrase used to announce his death was“The Falcon has flown to heaven.” This not only announced his death but also emphasized the notion that the king was a manifestation of the god. In his many mythological roles, Horus was portrayed both as a falcon and as a man with a falcon’s head, but he is most often shown in his anthropomorphic form, with the body of a man. Besides being the solar deity, “Lord of the Sky,” Horus was active in the Underworld, vanquishing the

horSe The horse arrived relatively late in Egypt’s history, during the Second Intermediate period (1650–1550 b.c.) with the invasion of the Hyksos. Having no history in Egypt, the animal was associated with a foreign goddess, Astarte. Once the Egyptians adopted the horse and chariot, it revolutionized their military and allowed


them to build one of the ancient world’s greatest empires. Horses were considered the miracle of the New Kingdom. Ramses spoke with great passion about his two horses, Victory in Thebes and Mut Is Pleased, and praised the part they played in his great victory at Kadesh. No divine horse arose in the Egyptian pantheon to honor the noble beast, however, possibly because the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt either evolved from ancient prehistoric deities or were composites of gods that over time had merged into one.

horuS

“Lord of the Sky” and symbol of divine kingship in ancient Egypt, Horus, the falcon god,

Horus, the falcon god, avenged the death of his father, Osiris. (Drawing by Mary Jordan)

horoscopE cAlEnDAr

First Month of Akhet—INUNDATION
august 1
First Day of the Year Very favorableReeds. Re-Horakhty is the title bestowed by the priests of Heliopolis, where Horus was worshipped as the son of the sun god Re. Horematawy Mythology tells us that Horus as Horematawy, “Horus, Uniter of Two Lands,” is the son of Hathor. Horus of Baki Horus as guardian of Quban, a Nubian fort through which passed the gold being sent from Nubia to the Egyptian treasury. Horus of Behdet Symbolized by the hawkwinged sun disk, Horus of Behdet is the title of Horus as he presides over the marshy northern

Horus as a child was called Harpocrates, a corruption of the Egyptian words meaning “Horus the child.” (Drawing by Mary Jordan) enemies of his father, Osiris. In the Book of Gates, he calls upon the many serpents that spew fire


Buhen During the New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.), a southern temple erected at the second cataract was dedicated to Horus of Buhen. Horus the Elder (also Heru-ur) The son of Nepthys, he was born on the third Epagomenal Day and was said to be the twin of the evil god Set. Horus the Elder was one of the most ancient gods of Egypt and seems to have existed long before his appearance in the Pyramid Texts, where he is equal but in constant opposition to his brother Set. Horus the Elder as Heru-ur ruled the sky by day and his brother Set ruled by night. Horus of Mesen An ancient version of the myth of Horus, the harpooner, when he attacks Set, who appears as a hippopotamus. Horus ofMesen was one of the titles of Horus at the temple of Edfu, which was dedicated to him. On the walls of this temple, the carvings reveal the sacred drama of Set’s defeat that worshippers reenacted each year. Horus of Miam The first temple to Horus, built at the Nubian city Aniba, was erected in the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 b.c.). Horus was eventually associated with the local cult god Miam and was known throughout Nubia as Horus of Miam, the one who opposed his evil uncle Set. Horus’s Eye See Eye of Horus. Horus’s Four Sons See Four Sons of Horus. The cult of Horus was universal throughout Egypt from 3000 b.c. to a.d. 400, but the particular cult centers were Edfu, in Upper Egypt; Behdet, in the


to have ended early in Egyptian history. But the idea was ritually continued when ushabti statues were placed inside tombs so they would magically come alive and serve the deceased in the next world. Thus the little statues took the place of living servants.

hutchAiui hykSoS

God of the West Wind (see also Winds, Gods of the Four). Foreign invaders who ruled in Egypt’s northern Delta after the Middle Kingdom during the Second Intermediate period (1650–1550 b.c.) and introduced their mythology and religion to the area. Many references to the foreign god Set show that his cult was well established in the Delta and that Set was the patron god of the Hyksos capital, Avaris. The cult of Set seems to have been a blend of an early god inHeliopolis and the Syrian storm god Baal. Because Egyptian religion was polytheistic, accepting many gods, it was not a problem for the Hyksos gods Set and Astarte to be accepted into the Egyptian pantheon.

of life A small temple or building in a larger temple complex, the House of Life was a library, scriptorium (where manuscripts were copied), and a school all in one. Here, priestmagicians studied magical texts, physicians studied medicine, and they all practiced their arts. They were custodians of all the knowledge of the temple and

houSe

p?

hyMn to AMun
Because of his violent nature Set was viewed as a god of chaos, but there were devoted followers of Set, and the pharaoh Seti I was one of them. The identity of the Hyksos foreign kings remains a mystery


today. The name Hyksos is the Greek version of the Egyptian hekau khasut, meaning “rulers of foreign countries.” They were sometimes called aamu or Asiatic—the name Egyptians gave anyone from western Asia—and the Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus (a.d. 160–240) called them Shepard Kings. Whatever the origin of the Hyksos, it is clear from modern excavations that there was a thriving, large, international community in the Delta when the Hyksos ruled. The Hyksos capital, Avaris, is modern Tell el Daba in the eastern Delta. Excavators have found Minoan-style frescoes (wall paintings) in the royal palace, Canaanite style temples, pottery from Syria and Palestine, and Egyptian-style scarabs decorated with scroll designs. While the Egyptians resented having foreign kings ruling in the Delta, the Hyksos were in many ways innovators.of remembrance in the Hall of Justice, Secret ba of the lord of the cavern . . . Ba of Re, his very body. Lord of acclaim in the southern sky, Sanctified by the northern sky, The imperishable stars are under his rule, The unwearying stars are his abode . . . The ancestors rejoice to see him. Those yonder are in awe of him . . .

hymn to iSiS As the universal mother goddess, Isis’s virtues are extolled in the hymns to Isis. Priestpoets continued to find new ways to confirm her position as a supreme goddess and to praise her virtues. She was called the Divine Mother, the Lady of the Palace, the Goddess of Nature, and the Lady of Heaven, Earth, and the Netherworld. The


All beasts browse on their herbs; Trees, herbs are sprouting, Birds fly from their nests . . .

The sun rises, they retire, going back to Their lairs, And man goes out to work, And to labor until dusk. Yahweh, what variety you have created.

hymn to ptAh The hymn to Ptah was written in the New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.) and is inscribed on the funerary stele of Nefer-Re-Bu, who confesses that, because he told a lie, the gods made him blind. Nefer-Re-Bu is shown at the top of the stele kneeling before Ptah, who sits inside his shrine.
Give praise to Ptah, Lord of Maat, King of the Two Lands, Fair of face upon his great seat, The one God among the Ennead, Beloved as king of the Two Lands.May he give life, prosperity, health. . . .

the supreme god of Thebes, Amun-Re. There are many variations of the hymn to Re, but generally the first part mentions the sun god by several of his 75 names. The second part is a series of incantations associating the king with various gods and the sun god in particular. A passage from the first part of the hymn to Re carved on the stele of the brothers Suti and Hor (now in the British Museum) follows.
Hail to you, Re, perfect each day, Who rises at dawn without failing, Khepri who wearies himself with toil! Your rays are on the face, yet unknown, Fine gold does not match your splendor; Self-made you fashioned your body, Creator uncreated. Sole one, unique


to me and give me counsel, Make me skillful in your calling; Better is you calling than all callings, It makes (men) great. He who masters it is found fit to hold office, I have seen many whom you have helped. They are (now) among the Thirty. . . .

I 8
iAbet
A goddess of the vast eastern desert and personification of the land of the East, Iabet was associated with the rising sun and with fertility and rebirth. It was said that she washed the sun god Re each morning when he was reborn. Because of this association she was sometimes linked with Kebecht, a goddess of pure water. The Egyptians personified the four cardinal points (north, south, east, and west) by giving each one the name of agoddess. Iabet is the goddess of the East, and her counterpart is her sister Amemtet, goddess of the west. Mythology tells us that Iabet was thought to be both the mother and wife of the god Min. A princess in the court of Khufu in the Old Kingdom was given the name Nefer-Iabet, “beauty of the east,” or “beautiful Iabet.” Unlike her sister goddess Amentet, who appears in the Fifth Dynasty tomb of King Sahure and in the Pyramid Texts, Iabet is not shown in a tomb until the New Kingdom. Images of Iabet appear on the walls of some private tombs along with the sun god Re.

B 9 (also iabtet, abet)

µ

portrayed on tomb walls. Ibis amulets and statuettes were produced by the thousands for pilgrims to the


cult centers. The ibis was also important to the cult of Isis, and wall paintings from Pompeii show them wandering freely in the Isis temples.

ichneumon An African mongoose about the size of a large house cat, the ichneumon was celebrated for its skill in killing snakes. Several Old Kingdom tombs at Saqqara show an ichneumon in their wall

ib

[ See heart.
q

There were several species of ibis in ancient Egypt, but the one considered sacred to the god Thoth was distinctive because of its long curved beak, black neck, and white feathers on its body. The tips of its wings, end of its tail and its legs were also black. Herodotus, the Greek traveler, wrote that no one was permitted to kill an ibis, for the bird was believed tobe an incarnation of the god Thoth. However, the cult of Thoth was especially popular during the Ptolemaic period, and thousands of ibises were raised on ibis farms to be killed and mummified and used as votive offerings. Elaborately wrapped mummified ibises were offered at the cult centers of Saqqara and Tuna el Gabel. The ibis was frequently

ibiS

This nineteenth-century romanticized illustration shows the sacred ibises being fed in the temple.
(E. J. Poynter)

Ihy
decorations. The animal gained status in the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 b.c.), when it was included among the many sacred animals of Egypt. Because of its skill in killing snakes, the ichneumon became a symbol of the Underworld, where legend has it that Re once turned himself into an ichneumon in order to defeat his enemy, the evil


serpent Apophis. The ichneumon was shown with a sun disk on its head, symbolizing its association with Re. Small bronze statues of the animal were plentiful during the Ptolemaic period (332–32 b.c.), when they were left as votive offerings in the temples.

ihy A minor god worshipped in Upper Egypt, Ihy was the son of Hathor and Horus of Edfu. Ihy was a god of music who personified the sound made by the sacred sistrum rattle. He is shown as a child, with the child’s side lock of hair and a finger to his mouth. imhotep
(2667–2648 b.c.) Imhotep was vizier (prime minister) to the Third Dynasty king Zoser and architect of his magnificent funerary complex at Saqqara. Zoser’s funerary complex included the first stone building in the ancient world,the Step Pyramid. Imhotep was not only recognized for his talents as an architect, but he also was revered as a scribe, counselor, physician, and astronomer. After his death, he was awarded the title “Son of Ptah.” Eventually Imhotep joined the triad of gods worshipped at Memphis (the ancient capital of Egypt), replacing the god Nefer-Tem. One of the few nonroyal persons to be deified, over the centuries Imhotep was worshipped as a god of wisdom and medicine. During Egypt’s Late period, the Ptolemies associated Imhotep with Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, and pilgrims flocked to Saqqara, the supposed burial site of Imhotep. His tomb has never been found. Votive offerings were left by the thousands for Imhotep, usually ornately wrapped mummified ibises, for the ibis was


associated both with Thoth, the god of wisdom and learning, and with Imhotep. Sometimes pilgrims left clay models of arms, legs, or body parts, hoping to be healed. Bronze figures of Imhotep holding a papyrus scroll were popular offerings in the Late and Ptolemaic periods. His cult center was at Saqqara, but he also had shrines at the Karnak and Philae temples. Imhotep is mentioned in the Eleventh Dynasty Harper’s Song from the tomb of King Intef: “I have heard the words of Imhotep and Hardedef, whose sayings are recited whole . . .”

An obscure fetish, the imiut seems to have originated in Egypt’s most ancient past. Associated with Anubis and Osiris, the imiut is also connected to resurrection and the Netherworld.

imiut

(anubis fetish) A mysterious fetish or ritualbeen placed at the west end of the burial chamber, along with several magical paddles for rowing the king’s funerary boat to the next world.

this saying is true, then Tutankhamen has gained immortality, for he is a household name today, and his treasures in the Egyptian Museum attract a multitude of people from around the world.

imkihiu

The Imkihiu were called “the Venerated Ones.” They were the deceased who, by virtue of having the proper prayers, spells, and rituals performed, were able to obtain passage in the solar boat of the sun god Re as it passed through the 12 hours of the night.

immortAlity The belief in immortality, the idea that you will live forever in the next world, is central to ancient Egyptian religion, and Egyptians spent much of


their lifetime preparing for it. Mythology tells us that even the gods were not secure in their exalted positions, and the myth of Isis and Osiris tells of Osiris’s murder by his brother Set. In the myth, Osiris becomes the first Egyptian to gain immortality by resurrection in the next world. We do not know when the Egyptians first began to hope for immortality, but it must have been early in the religion. A belief in immortality is clearly stated in the Pyramid Texts. As gods on Earth, Egyptian kings began preparing for their resurrection and immortality as soon as they came to the throne. Kings fitted their tombs with all the things they liked in this world, so they could enjoy them for eternity in the nextworld. At first it was only the king who was assured of immortality; his family could only hope that when he ascended to the next world, he would take them with him. Everyone wished to live forever, and by the New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.), it seemed possible. If the family of the deceased could afford the several steps required to reach immortality (such as mummification, funeral rituals and ceremonies, and a tomb), then the deceased could resurrect in the next world. Immortality became such an appealing concept that Egyptian funerary customs and rituals were incorporated into the later Greek and Roman religions. In ancient Egypt the deceased had to pass a test in order to gain immortality. During the Weighing of the Heart Ceremony, the deceased’s heart was


was part of every important ritual and was specifically required when making offerings to the gods, performing the rites of mummification or magical spells, and perfuming the body during mummification. While priests chanted, they burned frankincense and myrrh in the temple sanctuary in hope that the smoke would carry their prayers to the gods, who would be pleased with the fine aroma. At festival time, shaven-headed priests carried braziers of burning incense in the processions, and incense was always included on the lists of offerings made to the gods. In the Pyramid Texts, King Unas is said to rise to the heavens on the smoke of the great incense. During the mummification process, once the internal organs had been removed, frankincense and myrrh were placed inside the bodycavity to help with the dehydration of the body and to lend a pleasant odor. Before the mummy was wrapped in linen bandages, the body was anointed with oil and perfumed with frankincense and myrrh. During the “Opening of the Mouth” ceremony performed in front of the tomb on the day of burial, the priests purified the mummy with water, lit four incense burners, one for each of the four corners of the Earth, and invoked the gods.

IsIs
Frankincense was sometimes used in casting spells, and the magician might burn the substance at specific times while conjuring a spell. To ensure that a bad dream would not come true, a priest magician could recite a spell and then give the dreamer a bit of bread moistened with beer and


covered with myrrh, which he was directed to smear on his face. To have a vision from the god Bes, the dreamer was directed, among other things, to obtain ink made from the blood of a cow, the blood of a white dove, frankincense, myrrh, black writing ink, cinnabar, mulberry juice, rainwater, and the juice of wormwood and vetch. With this mixture the petitioner was to write his request before the setting sun. Chapter 140 in the Book of the Dead included a spell to be recited on the last day of the second month of the second season to ensure that Re the sun god would ferry the deceased to the Netherworld. Cones shown on the heads of banquet guests in tomb paintings have been a sourcebelieved she could influence the heavens, the Earth, and the realm of the dead. As the Great Enchantress, Isis held immense magical powers and knew all secrets. Isis’s celestial symbol is the star Sirius, and her husband, Osiris, was Orion. In the Lamentations of Isis, the goddess cries, “Thy sacred image, Orion in heaven, rises and sets every day. I am Sothis (Sirius), following him, and I will not leave him. . . .” Because the star Sirius appeared at the beginning of the New Year and announced the beginning of the inundation, the flooding of the Nile, Isis is also associated with the fertility of the land. Isis was the symbolic mother of the king and the benefactress of the people, and her universal appeal arose from


her devotion to her husband, Osiris, and her son Horus.

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Isis, the great Egyptian mother goddess and goddess of great magical power. One of her attributes is the throne of Egypt that she wears on her head. (Drawing by Mary Jordan)

The Birth of Isis The cult of Isis is among the most ancient, and her first cult center arose in the Delta, where she was worshipped at Sebennytos. The priests of Heliopolis included Isis in their creation myth (Heliopolitan Ennead) as one of the

IsIs

four children of Geb, god of Earth, and Nut, goddess of the sky. Isis’s mother Nut, the sky goddess, was originally the wife of Re the sun god but she was much loved by Geb, whose love she returned. When Re heard of Nut’s infidelity,he placed a curse upon her, saying that she could not bear children in any month or in any year. The curse of the mighty god Re could not be ignored, and Nut begged Thoth, who also loved her, for his help. Thoth made a bet with the moon goddess, and won some of her light, with which he was able to create five Epagomenal Days at the end of each year. On each of these days, Nut gave birth to a child, and Isis was born on the fourth day. Isis and her husband, Osiris, were also brother and sister, and their son was Horus the hawkheaded god. Their sister Nephthys and their brother Set were also husband and wife. One myth says that Nephthys had a


child, the jackal-headed god, Anubis, with Isis’s husband, Osiris, but the event seems not to have caused a rift in her close relationship with her sister Isis. Isis and Hathor During the New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.), Isis and Hathor were closely linked because of their many similarities. Isis began to wear the Hathor crown—cow’s horns with a sun disk resting between them—instead of her traditional throne crown. The attributes of the two goddesses became intertwined, and they shared the titles “Lady of the Heavens” and “Sovereign of the Gods.” Isis first appears in the Valley of the Kings in the burial chamber of Tutankhamen. Isis, wearing the traditional throne on her head, and the goddesses Nephthys, Neith, and Selket all spread their wings in protection around the foursides of Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus. The same four goddesses also appear on the canopic shrine that holds the king’s mummified organs. A figure of Isis standing behind the king was destroyed when a portion of the tomb’s wall was dismantled during excavation to remove the large shrines covering the sarcophagus. In the scene, Isis and Anubis welcomed Tutankhamen to the Netherworld, and Hathor, the principal goddess of the west, offered the king eternal life by holding an ankh to his nose. Isis, who plays an important role in the myth of Isis and Osiris by gathering the dismembered parts of her husband’s body, reassembling his limbs, and breathing life into his body, does not accompany him when he resurrects in the realm of the dead. Isis remains among the


on coffins and on canopic jar boxes, where they guard the mummified organs of the deceased. Sometimes the sisters are represented as hawks wearing their respective symbols on their heads: X Isis and T Nephthys, their outstretched wings protecting the deceased. In the Book of the Dead, Isis and Nephthys appear with the sun god Re when he prepares for his nightly journey through the Netherworld. Isis and the Seven Scorpions After the death of Osiris, Isis was faced with many hardships. Her evil brother Set held Isis and the infant Horus captive in a house. Thoth, the great god of wisdom and magic, came to Isis and urged her to escape from Set and to hide her child in a papyrus thicket in the marshes of theDelta. Seven scorpions, who were a manifestation of Selket the scorpion goddess, guided Isis as she fled her evil brother Set. As she traveled to the Delta, Isis sought shelter one night with the wife of the town official, but when the woman saw the seven scorpions accompanying Isis, she shut her door and refused them sanctuary. Angered because Isis had been treated so badly, six scorpions emptied their poison on the tip of the tail of the seventh scorpion, and the seventh entered the house of the inhospitable woman and stung her son. The distraught woman ran through the town crying and lamenting, for she did not know if her child would live or die. Upon hearing the cries of the mother, Isis felt sad, for the


fleeing from her evil brother. faces down to the ground and lead me to the swamps and the hidden places.” This tale is inscribed on a statue base in the Museum of Antiquities at Leiden in the Netherlands and on the Metternich Stele. The Infant Horus in the Papyrus Thicket The Metternich Stele also relates the myth of Isis leaving the infant Horus hidden in a papyrus thicket when she is called away. Thoth had advised Isis to keep her son hidden until he grew tall and strong and could claim his father’s throne. So Isis kept Horus hidden to prevent her evil brother Set from harming the child. One day Isis was called to a nearby town and an evil scorpion (perhaps a messenger from Set) creptthe people saluted me, and I passed the time seeking food and provision for the boy; but when I returned to embrace Horus, I found him, the beautiful one of gold, the boy, the child, inert and helpless. The ground was wet with his

IsIs AnD osIrIs, Myth of tears and foam was upon his lips; his body was motionless, and his heart was still, his muscles moved not, and I sent forth a cry . . .

Isis put her nose to Horus’s mouth and she found the poison. She embraced his limp body and cried out in anguish, “Horus is stung, O Re thy son is stung. Horus, thy very heir, and the lord of Shu is stung. . . .” Isis’s cries were so loud that they


were heard in heaven. The sun god Re stopped his solar boat that was sailing across the sky and sent his passenger Thoth, the god of wisdom, to comfort the distraught mother. Isis’s sister Nephthys appeared at her side, and when she saw the lifeless Horus, she went running through the papyrus thicket crying and weeping. Thoth calmed the sisters with his soothing words: “I have come from heaven to save the child for his mother.” And he spoke magical words, and he restored Horus to life, and the words protected him in heaven and on Earth and in the next world. Symbols of Isis Isis’s earliest symbol is a throne X worn as a crown, and it is thought to represent her association with the royal throneand protection of the king. It also may represent her role as guardian of the throne of Osiris. In addition to the throne, Isis also wears the Hathor crown, the cow’s horns and sun disk. Another symbol of Isis is the tet œ, or Knot of Isis. Mentioned in the Book of the Dead, the tet was an important funerary amulet, lending protection to the mummy. When the Greek Ptolemies ruled Egypt, the knot on the front of Isis’s dress represented the tet, and when Isis was shown in Greek and Roman costume, sometimes the tet was the only way to identify the goddess. Isis was the goddess of hundreds of titles: She was the Goddess of the Wind, the Great Enchantress, Great of Magic, Mistress of the


Heavens. Her cult centers flourished throughout Egypt at Giza, Behbeit el-Hagar, Dendera, Abydos, Esna, Edfu, and Philae. Isis in the Classical World During the Greek and Roman occupation of Egypt, the cult of Isis grew and flourished, and she was identified with the Greek goddesses Persephone, Tethys, and Athena. Eventually, worship of Isis evolved into one of the “mystery religions.” When Ptolemy I ruled, he introduced the worship of Serapis, a composite Greek and Egyptian god, and Isis was seen as his wife. Serapis was popular with the people, but he could not compete with Isis and her mass appeal, and her cult spread throughout the ancient world. These mystery religions (cults) fascinated rich and poor alike, because they were full of exotic rituals, and they gave theirfollowers hope for a happy life in the next world. The cult rituals were austere, requiring initiates to make pilgrimages,

fast, and abstain from sexual pleasures so they might enter a state of mystical contemplation. Mystery plays celebrating the life of Isis with pantomimes and music were very popular. The Roman writer Apuleius, in his book Metamorphoses, describes the ceremony of initiation into the cult of Isis, who was called “Queen of Heaven.” On her festival day, the priests entered the temple of Isis at dawn, opening all the doors of the sacred shrine so that only a linen curtain hid the statue of Isis. When the faithful arrived, the curtain was opened to reveal the cult statue. The people began to chant and pray and the women shook


a rattle called a sistrum. Silent prayer and contemplation followed the opening prayers, and when the sun had risen, prayers were offered to the sun god and the crowds went home. In the afternoon the ceremonies included sacrifices, the shaking of the sistrum, the burning of incense, and a sacred ritual using holy water from the Nile. Isis became so popular in Rome that a school for the Pastophori, priests of Isis, was opened around 80 b.c. The main temple of Isis in Rome was called the “Isis Campensiis.” The only Roman temple of Isis standing today is at Pompeii, preserved by the ash that covered the town in a.d. 79 when Mount Vesuvius erupted. Isis’s popularity was so great that in addition to those in Italy, remainsof her temples and shrines have been found in Greece, Lebanon, Syria, and England. When Christianity was adopted by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in the fourth century a.d., the cult of Isis died out.

iSiS AnD oSiriS, myth of The myth of Isis and Osiris, a story of death and resurrection, was central to Egyptian religious beliefs and embodied all the crucial elements of Egyptian funerary rites. No complete Egyptian copy of the myth of Isis and Osiris exists, but the best ancient version comes from Plutarch, a Greek priest at Delphi, who wrote De Iside Et Osiride about a.d. 100. The two principal gods, Isis and Osiris, were brother and sister and husband and wife. Their brother, Set, and their sister, Nephthys, were also husband and


wife. Osiris brought civilization to Egypt by introducing farming and cattle raising to the early inhabitants of the Nile Valley, and Isis taught the people the art of spinning and weaving. So successful was Osiris in his mission that he set out to bring farming and cattle raising to neighboring countries. He left Isis, the goddess of magic, to watch over the people of Egypt and to keep their evil brother Set in check. While her husband was gone, Isis ruled the land wisely and controlled Set, who was secretly plotting against his brother.

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been carved into a pillar in the palace, she befriended the handmaidens of Queen Astarte, who had just given birth to a son. The queen noticed the heavenly scent of the goddess that accompanied thehandmaidens and asked that Isis be brought to her. The goddess was made nursemaid to the queen’s newborn son. One day, while Isis was performing magic to make the child immortal, the queen was startled to see her nursemaid turn into a bird, and her cries of alarm broke the spell. Isis then enlisted the aid of the queen to help her recover the body of her husband, Osiris. The king cut open the pillar and gave the chest to Isis, who brought the body of Osiris back to Egypt for proper burial. During the journey, Isis magically conceived a child with her dead husband. Once in Egypt, Isis hid in the marshes in the Delta so the evil brother Set would not discover that she was pregnant


(with her son Horus). Set discovered the body of Osiris while hunting in the marshes and hacked his brother into 14 pieces, which he scattered throughout the land. Isis once again began searching for her husband and gradually found all the parts of his body except one, the phallus, which had been eaten by fish in the Nile. Isis held a funeral and erected a stele for each part of Osiris’s body in the place where it was found, hoping that Set would think each piece was buried separately. Then Isis assembled the pieces of her deceased husband, anointed his body with precious oils, and fashioned an artificial phallus for him. Isis magically assumed the form of a bird, hovered over the body of Osiris, and brought himthe chest that held Osiris’s body. During a violent storm at sea, the chest washed up on the shores of Byblos in Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) and came to rest in the branches of a tamarisk tree. In time the tree grew to extraordinary size, and the trunk encompassed the chest with the dead Osiris inside. While she was searching for Osiris, Isis had a vision and saw the chest in Byblos. Malacander, the king of Byblos, was building a palace and needed a large tree for one of the pillars, so the tree was cut down. When Isis learned that the tree had

itum

Wife of Reshef, the Syrian war god adopted by the Egyptians, Itum was worshipped along with her husband. She was considered a healer and was particularly


mythology of their own, Roman gods often assumed the character of the Greek and Egyptian deities. That was the case with Jupiter-Amun, the Roman name for the oracle at Siwa Oasis, which provided answers given by the gods by means of a priest or cult statue. The oracle at Jupiter-Amun gained fame when Alexander the Great traveled across the desert to ask his important question: “Who was my father?” He was told that he was the son of Amun. The oracle at Siwa Oasis was known to the Egyptians as Amun-Re, to the Greeks as Zeus-Amun, and to the Romans as Jupiter-Amun.

jupiter-Amun

city became infatuated with her and the cult of Isis. Juvenal’s intense dislike for all things Egyptian may stem from his exile from Rome, possibly to Egypt,when he fell out of favor with the Roman emperor Domition. Juvenal saw the Roman upper classes’ devotion to Egyptian religion as a silly waste of time, and he ridiculed them in his satires.
If Isis shall order her, a woman will journey to Egypt to fetch water from the Nile with which to sprinkle at the Temple of Isis . . . [The Temple of Isis in Rome was in the Campus Martius near the polling-booth]. For she believes that the command was given by the Goddess herself—The highest place of honor is awarded to Anubis [the jackal-headed god who serves Isis], who, with his linen-clad and bald crew [of priests], mocks at the weeping of the people lamenting for Osiris as he runs along. He obtains pardon


for wives who break the law of purity on days that should be kept holy, and exacts huge penalties . . . His tears and carefully-studied mutterings make sure that Osiris will not refuse a pardon for the fault, bribed, no doubt, by a fat goose and a slice of sacrificial cake. —Satire VI

juStice, goDDeSS of See maat.

juvenAl (decimus junius juvenalis,

65–128) The Roman poet whose biting satires on the religion of ancient Egypt often focused on the cult of Isis. When Cleopatra VII, known as the “Living Isis,” entered Rome, the women of the

c. a.d.

K 8
ka The Egyptians believed that a person was born with five elements: (1) the physical body, (2) the shadow, (3) the name, (4) the ba, and (5) the ka. The ka was akind of astral double or spiritual duplicate of the deceased that was necessary for existence in the next world. When a person died, the ka continued to dwell in the body, and one reason for mummification was to ensure the ka a dwelling place. In case the mummy was damaged or destroyed, many Egyptians were buried with a ka statue. The statue was a portrait of the deceased that the ka could recognize and was meant to be an alternative dwelling for the ka if the mummy was not suitable. It was believed that a person's ka continued to need nourishment, so priests or family members of the deceased visited the mortuary temple and left food offerings. They didn’t believe the ka actually consumed the food but that


it magically derived benefits from the offering. Sometimes pictures of offerings on the tomb walls replaced the actual food offering. After the priests or family member recited a special prayer, the ka could derive the benefit of either offering. The ka represented by the hieroglyph è, a pair of upraised arms, is in Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el Bahri, shown created on the potter’s wheel of the creator god Khnum.

è

gods worshipped in the temple: Amun-Re, Mut, and Khonsu. Karnak Temple is a series of buildings and monuments rising up around two sacred lakes and sprawling over 40 acres. Created over a period of several hundred years, the temple was the

kAmutef

One of the titles of Amun and Min when they were worshipped together as a fertility god. Kamutefmeans “bull of his mother,” an epithet given the two gods in the New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.). The combined god that embodied all the attributes of Amun and Min was called Amun-MinKamutef.

kArnAk temple

A large religious complex at Thebes (modern Luxor) with sacred precincts dedicated to the Karnak Triad, the three most important

The hypostyle hall at Karnak Temple is one of the architectural wonders of the ancient world. Pharoah Seti I and his son Ramses II had the columns decorated with scenes of the pharaohs in the company of the gods. (Photograph by Pat Remler)

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0 kArnAk tEMplE

Plan of Karnak Temple (Courtesy of Hoyt Hobbs)

most important religious center in all of Egypt. The first temple to Amun was built in the Middle Kingdom, and it was expanded and decorated by


later New Kingdom rulers as the city of Thebes gained wealth and prominence as a religious center. Religion played an important role in ancient warfare, and no temple represented the connection between the gods and the military as well as Karnak Temple. Making war on one’s neighbors was standard practice in Egypt, and the king and the military looked to the gods to ensure their

victory. A large portion of the spoils of war would be presented to the temple as gifts to Amun. On the second pylon in the Temple of Amun are scenes of Sheshonk I (Twenty-second Dynasty, 945–924 b.c.) commemorating his victory over Rehoboam, son of Solomon, the king of Judah. When Solomon’s temple was robbed of its treasure, it was the Egyptian King Sheshonk I,known as Shishak in the Bible, who defeated him. The relief shows Sheshonk in front of Amun, who offers him a scimitar. Above their heads are the list of cities

that Sheshonk claims to have conquered in Israel. Following are the biblical passages that refer to this campaign: And it came to pass in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem: and he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king’s house: he even took away all: and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made. (Kings 14:25–6)
. . . And it came to pass, that in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up


against Jerusalem, because they had transgressed against the Lord, with twelve hundred chariots, and threescore thousand horsemen: and the people were without number that came with him out of Egypt . . . (2nd Chro. 12:2–3)

kemet

was the name the ancient Egyptians gave Egypt. The name resulted from the annual flooding or inundation of the Nile. The fertile black soil from which the Egyptians derived their livelihood stood in stark contrast to the hostile desert—the “red land,” or deshret rR 9. For the Egyptians, the contrast of the black and the red land was another example of duality in their lives, along with the designations of Upper and Lower Egypt, represented by the two goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet and the lotus and papyrus plants.

±gµ “The black land” |

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Asthe city of Thebes grew wealthy from the pillage of foreign counties, so did Karnak Temple. Every king in the New Kingdom added something to Karnak Temple to show his devotion to the gods, sometimes destroying earlier structures to make room for his building. The site includes temples for Khonsu, the son of Amun and Mut, and numerous dedications to other gods. Several festivals were celebrated at Karnak Temple, but none was more important than the Great New Year Festival of Opet, when Amun visited his southern harem at Luxor Temple. The annual rise in the Nile signaled the opening of the festival that lasted for 24 days. Karnak Temple today remains one of Egypt’s most impressive sites.

khaibit The Egyptians believed that a person was born with five


the deceased. On the day of a funeral, special prayers were recited over the mummy to aid in its transformation into a spiritual body, akh, that could rise to heaven to dwell with the gods. The khat is mentioned briefly in the Book of the Dead regarding the preservation of the mummy.

kebecht

¢ (kabechet, kebechet, kebhut)

khepri

An obscure goddess, Kebecht is the daughter of Anubis, and a goddess of freshwater and purification. Her attribute is a container of sacred Nile water. She assists her father, Anubis, while he prepares the deceased by providing pure water for the souls of the dead while they await mummification. The goddess Kebecht first appears in the Fifth Dynasty and is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts of Pepi I: “Kebecht, the daughter of Anubis, goesforth to meet Pepi, with four nemset vases. She refreshes the breast of the Great God on the day of his watch, and she refreshes the breast of Pepi with life. She washes Pepi, she censes Pepi.” Kebecht is often portrayed as a serpent or an ostrich.

One of the manifestations of the sun god in the form of a scarab beetle (scarabaeus sacer), Khepri means “he who came into being by himself.” Always keen observers of nature, the ancient Egyptians noticed that scarab beetles rolled a ball of dung on the ground, from which their offspring emerged. This gave rise to the notion that beetles reproduced without benefit of a mate. Khepri, the scarab god, having been born from the womb of his mother, Nut, onto the eastern


horizon, pushes the sun disk across the sky as he emerges from a night in the Underworld. Also important to the notion of resurrection, Khepri appears in the Book of the Dead, Chapter 83: “I have soared as the primeval one soars: I have become Khepri. I have grown as plants grow . . . I am

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The ram-headed god Khnum fashions a man upon his potter’s wheel, while the god Thoth stands behind him and records the number of years allotted to the man. the fruit of every god.” Early inscriptions for Khepri appear in the Pyramid Texts, calling for Khepri to come into being as a manifestation of Re, the sun god. In Heliopolis, Khepri is called Atum-Khepri, arising from the primordial mound in the mansionof the Benu (bird). During the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 b.c.), the image of the beetle became the scarab amulet that magically imparted the sun god’s protection. They appeared in many sizes, and the underside could be inscribed with the owner’s name and titles. Some were produced to commemorate specific events, such as Amenhotep III’s lion hunts, or his marriage to Queen Tiye. During the early 1900s, a huge stone carving of the scarab Khepri was excavated at Karnak Temple at the northwest corner of the Sacred Lake, where it still stands. The British Museum has an even larger green granite scarab some five feet long and three feet wide. Huge scarab statues seem to have been common in ancient Egyptian temples as a symbol of the sun’s first


appearance on the horizon.

khnum

A ram-headed god who created man on the potter’s wheel, Khnum controlled the annual flooding of the Nile from the river’s hidden caverns. Khnum’s cult center was on Elephantine Island in Aswan, where he ruled with his wife, Anukis, and his daughter Satis. Because of his strong affiliation with the Nile, he is sometimes called “the Lord of the Crocodiles.” During the Greek and Roman periods of domination in Egypt (332 b.c.–a.d. 395), rams sacred to Khnum were mummified at Elephantine Island, elaborately wrapped and decorated with gilded masks, and placed in stone sarcophagi. A Ptolemaic copy of an early inscription by King Zoser (Third Dynasty,

kIngshIp AnD thE goDs 0

2686–2613 b.c.) on the rocks at Sehel Island, near Elephantine, records a seven-year famine and statesthat Khnum would let the Nile flood once again if his temple were renovated. The work was done, the Nile flooded, and Egypt was prosperous once again.

khonSu (khons)

An ancient moon god whose name means “the wanderer,” Khonsu was associated with the young or new moon. His cult was well established in Thebes by the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 b.c.). When the Theban Triad came into prominence in the New Kingdom (1550–1069 b.c.), Khonsu became the child of Amun and Mut. As the son of the great god Amun, Khonsu became increasingly popular throughout Egypt. Over time Khonsu and Thoth, the personification of the moon, were identified with each other. By the late New Kingdom, Khonsu assumed many of the attributes of Thoth. He was hailed as the lord of


writing and literature and as a divine judge.

kingShip AnD the goDS The idea of divine kingship was so imbedded in Egyptian society that for 3,000 years the pharaoh was the icon of Egypt. The king was portrayed on temple walls and in colossal statues on a scale nearly equal to the gods. From earliest times, the king of Egypt was viewed as divine—he was a mortal who was also a god. At first, the kings were associated only with Horus, the falcon god, and they inscribed their royal name in a serekh, a rectangle representing a schematic diagram of a palace. As early as the First Dynasty, Horus was shown perched on top of the serekh. When Horus, the son of Osiris, avenged his father’s death, he gainedjustice in heaven. By association, the pharaoh, who was identified with Horus, was responsible for justice on Earth. As the mythology became more complex, pharaohs took more names. In the Fifth Dynasty, when Egyptian religion focused on worshipping the sun god Re, the pharaoh Nefer-ir-ka-Re (“Beautiful is the soul of Re”) took another name, called a sa Re (“son of Re”) name, and his successor soon followed his lead. By the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 b.c.), the pharaoh had five names, each associated with a god.

The serekh, a schematic drawing of the front of the palace, represented the power of the king. (Drawing
by Jeremy Eagle)

the King’s five titles
1. The Horus Name. Written in a serekh with a falcon perched on top. An example is “Horus, Divine of Forms.” The


A famous example of this name is, “Son of Re, Tutankhamen.” the gods, divine beings, and mythological kings and gives a view of how the Egyptians saw their prehistory. It tells us that Ptah, Re, and Shu were the first three gods to rule and then goes on to list Egypt’s historic kings. The Turin Canon of Kings ends with the Second Intermediate Period, where the papyrus is fragmented. A thousand years later, the Egyptian priest Manetho (290–230 b.c.) compiled a kings’ list in his History of Egypt. Manetho left out the mythical kings but divided the historic kings into ruling families called “dynasties,” and it is his dynastic list that Egyptologists use today. Other kings’ lists were recorded in temples, but today many of them are fragmentedor incomplete. On the walls of the temple of Seti I at Abydos is the best-preserved list. Seventy-six kings are named, and Seti and his young son Ramses II, who would become Ramses the Great, are shown making offering to the ancestors. This list ends with Seti’s name and omits certain kings who could not be named as rulers of Egypt. Queen Hatshepsut, who crowned herself king, was not named because she was a woman. Akhenaten was not named because he was branded a heretic who changed the ancient religion. Tutankhamen was not named because he was the son of Akhenaten and associated with the Amarna heresy. And the last two kings of Dynasty Eighteen—Aye and Horemheb—were not named because they were minor kings who ruled for only


in two different shrines, one for Udjat of Lower Egypt and one for Nekhbet of Upper Egypt. Thus the gods gave their assent to the king’s rule and admitted him to their realm.

kingS’ liSt In ancient Egypt there were two kinds of time: mythological (before historic time) and chronological (measured time). Historic dates were recorded by the number of years a king reigned. An important date, such as a festival, was recorded as the year, month, and day of the reign of the current king. For example, it might be recorded that on the second day of the third month of the fourth year of the reign of Tutankhamen, the festival of Opet was celebrated. Mythology tells us that legendary kings ruled in mythological time. The earliest-known kings’list is the Palermo Stone carved in the Fifth Dynasty. It names mythological rulers who ruled in the time before historic time was recorded. The Turin Canon of Kings from Dynasty XIX is written on the back of a papyrus that recorded Egyptian tax records. Beginning in mythological times, the Turin Canon of Kings lists the reigns of

knot of iSiS (blood of isis, tet) Called tet by the Egyptians, the knot of Isis is similar to the ankh in shape but with what appear to be arms folded downward. It also closely resembles the knot worn by the gods at the top of their kilts. The sign is associated with the blood of Isis in the Book of the Dead. Popular as a funerary amulet, the knot of


the blood of Isis and the magical words of Isis be mighty and protect and keep safely this great god [the deceased] and to guard him from that which is harmful.” With this special protection from Isis and the tet amulet, the deceased could travel anywhere he or she wished in the Underworld. The tet was often combined with the djed pillar, a symbol for Osiris, as decorative elements on jewelry and temple walls, beds, and sarcophagi.

serpents wearing Egyptian royal crowns and holding the baton of the Greek god Hermes, and Medusa’s head on a shield. Kom el Shuqafa is unique in its curious mixture of Egyptian and Greek and Roman mythology.

el ShuqAfA A catacomb used for burials during the Roman period. Even after Egypt had been declareda Roman province by Octavian in 30 b.c., there remained a fascination with the gods and religion of Egypt. Attesting to this fascination is the curious mixture of Egyptian mythology as understood by the Romans that appears in the Kom el Shuqafa catacombs, built in Alexandria in the first and second centuries a.d. A descending passageway from the top of a hill allowed the deceased to be lowered by ropes into the catacomb, which has several levels. A vestibule on the first level provided cut rock benches where mourners could gather. The Romans, adopting the Egyptian custom of having a last meal with the deceased and feasting in their honor each year, created an underground banquet room with low benches so they could dine Roman style, reclining on


cushions while the meal was served. The bodies of mummified Romans were buried on the lower levels in niches carved into the stone. In an attempt to recognize both Roman and Egyptian gods, the rotunda is decorated with Egyptian papyrus capitals, a winged sun disk, and a falcon soaring overhead. One niche shows a man and woman in Roman dress,

kom

kom ombo The temple at Kom Ombo, about 25 miles north of Aswan, is dedicated to two gods at once, Horus and Sobek. The temple was divided into two sections with a separate door and aisle for each god. Half was dedicated to Horus as Haroeris (Horus son of Re) and the other half to Sobek, the crocodile. Crocodiles sacred to Sobek were mummified when they died, and manyof their mummies have been discovered in the temple. Because Kom Ombo, built by the Ptolemies, lacks a roof, the carvings on the walls are illuminated by the bright sunlight, and it is easy to detect the Greek influence on the art in this temple. All of the gods and goddesses appear with fuller figures than those created in earlier times. koptoS The cult center of the fertility god, Min, Koptos is about 25 miles north of Thebes (modern Luxor) and in ancient times was the last stop for caravans before entering the Wadi Hammamat, a hostile desert route between Thebes and the Red Sea. Koptos is one of Egypt’s earliest settlements, dating from about 3000 b.c., when colossal statues of the god Min adorned the temple complex.