Questions tagged [egyptian]
For questions on the myths, legends, and religious beliefs of the people of Ancient Egypt.
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What is the original ancient Egyptian names for the "Book of Two Ways"?
After much research, I am asking for help with this matter. I can find no reverse translation for the "Book of Two Ways." Is it like the "Book of the Dead," a modern convenience ...
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What is the ancient Egyptian name for "The Book of Gates"?
The Book of Gates is an ancient Egyptian funerary text which describes the various bxn.t (gates), also known as a pylon (πυλών) in ancient Greek. I have been unable to find the full name of the Book ...
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What do we know about the ram-headed deities helping Shu support Nut in the Greenfield Papyrus?
The "Greenfield Papyrus" is a funerary illustrated manuscript from the "Book of the Dead" of Nestanebetisheru:
According to the British Museum curator's comments:
This scene is a symbolic ...
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Are there group names for gods in Egyptian mythology, similar to the Norse and Greek mythologies primordials, titans, Æsir, Vanir?
Like in the title said is there? If there is mind anyone help me by listing them?
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Mother Earth or Father Earth?
To explain my title, we humans call the earth 'Mother Earth'. I can trace this back to Gaia, the Greek goddess of the earth, Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and others. But, I remembered ...
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Is there any evidence of Christianization of Egyptian myths?
Christian symbolism can be found in sources for Irish and Scandinavian mythologies, as the authors that recorded it were Christian and probably wrote about it centuries later. Was there ever a ...
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What is known about A’ani, the ancient Egyptian God of Equilibrium?
Wikipedia’s article on Thoth states that A’ani is a form of Thoth, which is consistent with what I know about Thoth, although much of the information I'm working with comes through the hermeticism.
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Odin's Counterpart
I have always wondered are:
Odin,
Mercury,
Hermes,
Thoth
the same person?
If so, why they are celebrated by different cultures and praised by different myths?
I am in love with these deities...
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Did ancient Egyptian gods have weapons like the Greek gods?
Did ancient Egyptian gods have weapons, like the Greek gods (Zeus's thunderbolt or Poseidon's trident, for example)? If so, who made them? I've never read anywhere where they had weapons.
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Who came first, Egyptian pharoah Horus-Aha 3100bc, or, Horus the Deity?
Horus-Aha
Hor-Aha (or Aha or Horus Aha) is considered the second pharaoh of the First Dynasty of Egypt by some Egyptologists, others consider him the first one and corresponding to Menes. He lived ...
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How does merging of two gods actually work?
The only two examples I can remember at the moment are:
Ra merging with Horus
In later Egyptian dynastic times, Ra was merged with the god Horus, as Ra-Horakhty ("Ra, who is Horus of the Two ...
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Did ancient Egypt use the abbreviation IHS for "Isis, Horus, and Seb"?
The Chick Publications tract "Are Roman Catholics Christians?" has all sorts of questionable content (including many fundamental misunderstandings of Roman Catholicism), but there is one historical ...
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What is the story behind / are the circumstances surrounding the conception of Bastet by Ra and Isis?
Wikipedia lists them both as parents but gives no detail as to how it came about to be.
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Hall of Two Truths: Ancient Egypt
Does anyone know what the proper ancient Egyptian name for the Hall of Truth, Hall of Two Truths, or Hall of Judgement is? This is the hall where a soul is weighed on a scale against the feather of Ma'...
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Was the historical Hyksos account, the real story behind the biblical exodus narrative?
Hyksos
The Hyksos (/ˈhɪksɒs/; Egyptian ḥqꜣ(w)-ḫꜣswt, Egyptological pronunciation: hekau khasut,[4] "ruler(s) of foreign lands"; Ancient Greek: Ὑκσώς, Ὑξώς) were people of probable Levantine ...
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Why does the Greek Silenus and the Egyptian Bes look similar?
Today I was going through an old book on Greek sculpture and I notice that a number of pre-classical Greek statues feature Silenus and form in which he is depicted, full frontal nudity with tongue ...
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Is there any source before the decipherment of hieroglyphic scripts that mentions that the ancient Egyptians deified their kings?
According to Wikipedia:
Although the Egyptians recognized that the pharaoh was human and
subject to human weakness, they simultaneously viewed him as a god,
because the divine power of kingship was ...
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Prostration before bricks
The Talmud in Sanhedrin 107b and Sotah 47a brings a story about a sage named Yehoshua ben Perachiah and one of his students, called Jesus (whether this Jesus is the famous one of Christianity is ...
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Do any Mediterranean mythologies depict souls escaping from the Underworld without the help of a living rescuer?
Persephone was rescued from the Underworld (for a little while) by Hermes, who brought her back to Demeter.
Eurydice was (almost) rescued from the Underworld by Orpheus.
Semele was rescued from the ...
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Did the ancient Egyptians have a word for "cult"?
The ancient cultures of Greece, Rome, and Egypt did not have a word for religion, at least in our modern understanding of the word. Greece and Rome did have terms for religious practices though, ...
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What is the ancient Egyptian word for crocodiles?
I am doing research on the ancient Egyptian (Kemetic) gods, and am currently working on Sobek (Sbk). This made me wonder what the word for crocodile is in ancient Egyptian. I have found db or dbj, and ...
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Was there a concept of bringing about a perfect world in ancient pagan religions?
I was wondering whether there was a concept of bringing about a perfected world in ancient pagan religions, whether as something the gods were expected to do, something that mankind was expected to do,...
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Skagganauk abyss?
In Roger Zelazney's Creatures of Light and Darkness, he imagines the Egyptian Typhon, brother of Set, as a void that often takes the form of a stallion. He calls this entity "Skagganauk Abyss&...
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What is the significance of this part in the myth of the resurrection of Osiris?
After Osiris is tricked and killed by Seth he is dismembered, and it is up to his wife Isis to recover all the pieces and bring him back to life. There is something that always caught my attention ...
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Was Helen of Troy in Egypt during the war?
In the myth of Helen of Troy, there has been noted a story from Egyptian mythology of Helen coming to Egypt and staying there, her double being sent on to be imprisoned and have a war fought over. ...
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Egyptian Goddess Nakith
I am searching for background information on the ancient Egyptian goddess Nakith. Wikipedia says she's a goddess of the underworld. Apart from that I was unable to find more on the web, and Wikipedia ...
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Was Aaru considered part of the Duat (underworld) in ancient Egypt?
The sources I've found don't make a clear statement of whether Aaru was formally considered part of the Duat or distinct from it. I'm trying to understand if the deceased pass through the Duat and ...
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Are there any common concepts in Egypt and Norse mythology / civilization?
I'm looking for some concepts (could be objects, weapons, creatures, traditions, ...) that are common between both Egypt and Norse mythology/folklore or history/civilization.
Context: I'm working on ...
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How were eclipses explained in Egyptian mythology?
Eclipses were probably one of the phenomena that puzzled the ancient people. How was it explained in Egyptian mythology, and were there any gods connected with it (like thunder is connected to Zeus)?
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How did Atenism explain night-time?
Atenism was Egypt's state religion during the reign of Akhenaten. The religion considered Aten - the sun disc - as the supreme and only god, a radical departure from traditional beliefs.
I realize ...
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Do the myths of Malayalam Onam, Egyptian Osiris Myth and Vietnamese Tet show cultural contacts?
Were there any contacts between the ancient Egyptian, Keralan (South Indian), and Vietnamese civilizations that may have been significant enough for these people to have borrowed elements from each ...
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What is the name of Ancient Egyptian "water jousting"
I have come across a form of combat from ancient Egypt called 'water jousting'. Does anyone know the actual Egyptian term for this, or any other ancient Egyptian terms for things like wrestling, which ...
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Why did mankind rebel against Ra?
The Book of the Heavenly Cow revolves around mankind's rebellion against Ra:
The central theme of The Book of the Heavenly Cow is mankind's rebellion against the elder sun god, Re, resulting in the ...
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Do any ancient sources describe Set as a mortal? And could Set be Sekhen?
Set
Set /sɛt/ or Seth /sɛθ/ (Egyptian: stẖ;[a]) is a god of deserts, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners in ancient Egyptian religion.1 In Ancient Greek, the god's name is given as Sēth (Σήθ). ...
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How many lost continents are in Mythology?
A majority of people will know of Atlantis. It is a Greek, fictional island, misregarded as oral history. Atlantis is mentioned in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias and is placed in the Atlantic Ocean....
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Are the Memphis and Heliopolis cosmogonies competing or reconciliatory?
The Heliopolitan cosmogony attributes creation to Atum, the first god who created himself from the primordial waters.
The Memphis creation myth, however, places Ptah, god of craftsmen and architects,...
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Is there a myth about someone who constantly creates their own demise?
Since this is certainly a common theme, I'm wondering if there is a myth about someone who ignorantly walks themselves repeatedly into ill-fate or their own misery. It would be like Sisyphus, but ...
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What animals were represented in gods in ancient Egypt?
I cannot find many animals that were represented as gods and I am writing an essay on ancient Egypt.
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Why did Egyptian Gods have animal heads?
Most Egyptian gods have animal heads. Why is that?
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What is the connection of Egyptian mythology to Atlantis?
As writing an answer to my own question, I came across this,
Plutarch, Life of Solon 26. 1 (trans. Perrin) (Greek historian C1st - C2nd A.D.) :
"He [Solon] also spent some time in studies with ...
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"Decipher me or I devour you" has been cited in Brazil for decades as a challenge of the Sphinx. Is it actually made up?
"Decifra-me ou te devoro"/"Decipher me or I'll devour you"
Just recently I remembered hearing this phrase when I was kid.. I'm brasilian and I was thinking how bad*ss it is and all ...
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School in the Sky?
I'm looking for references to schools in the sky. Was there a school that the Greek gods attended? A university frequented by the Norse pantheon? An academy in Tian? I'd love any pointers you've ...
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What were the five parts of the Egyptian soul?
This is an offshoot of a question asked about the Ba and Ka.
What were the other 3 parts of the Egyptian soul and what did they represent?
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What's the connection between the Greek and Egyptian gods?
I heard from a story once that when Cronus attacked the gods, most of them were so scared of him that they fled to Egypt and adopted animal characteristics (except for Zeus and Hermes). That's why you ...
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Why mythical god-like figures share common attributes like wings or lion body parts in different mythologies/cultures
I know some of this mythological depictions are supposed to represent many things like nature forces, and I know Jung's Archetypes theory about symbols founded on the unconscious mind. However I want ...
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Why did Heracles transform into a fawn, during the gods flight to Egypt?
In some tellings of Typhon's revolt, the gods take animal forms and flee to Egypt in panic. The version in the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis references Nicander of Colophon and explicitly ...
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Did the ancient Egyptians worship Cats and Dogs deities at the same period?
Did Egyptians worship feline and canine gods at the same period in history?
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Why was Nekhbet depicted as a vulture?
Nekhbet, a predynastic goddess that eventually became the patron of Upper Egypt, was commonly depicted in art as a vulture.
Why is that? The vulture seems - at least to me - like an odd choice for ...
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If any Ancient Egyptian Texts exist as Hieroglyphics in Online Documents
Wondering if anyone has copied any Ancient Egyptian texts such as this into Unicode Hieroglyphs or something similar, rather than English translations. Or if not, if there are photographs of the ...
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What is the creation story of Taweret?
How was the goddess Taweret created? Is there a creation story, or was she just the child of two gods?
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