Notes from "An Egyptian Bestiary"
Feb. 27th, 2008 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmet"Though bizarre at first sight, these deities sporting the heads of falcons or lionesses on human shoulders lent physical form, in a strikingly succint fashion, both to the divine power of which the animal was the visible symbol and to its potential influence - through human agency - on earthly affairs." (p 122)
Germond ponders representations such as the goose and ram for Amun-Re: "Are they gods or sacred animals?" He refers to a stela at Deir el-Medina which shows two geese, one captioned "the beautiful goose of Amun-Re", the other "Amun-Re, the beautiful goose". "... to the layman, [the animal] was often identified with the god himself, while for the priest and holy man it was understood more as one of the possible manifestations of the god." An animal may be the "repository of the divine soul" plus "a god in its own right." (p 122) For example, the Apis bull was "the living ba of Ptah"; the sacred falcons at Edfu and Philae were the ba of Re-Horakhte; the sacred crocodile at Kom Ombo was the ba of Sobek. (p 149)
Germond notes the lack of male lion-gods, with only one example in Mahes; by contrast, there were thirty snake gods. He notes that Wadjet was associated with the Eye of the Sun, perhaps because of the burning feeling of a snakebite, and cites a myth in which Re's temporary eye is insulted when his original Eye returns, so is compensated by a place on his forehead. (p177-8)
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Germond, Philippe. An Egyptian Bestiary: Animals in Life and Religion in the Land of the Pharoahs. Thames and Hudson, London, 2001.
Germond ponders representations such as the goose and ram for Amun-Re: "Are they gods or sacred animals?" He refers to a stela at Deir el-Medina which shows two geese, one captioned "the beautiful goose of Amun-Re", the other "Amun-Re, the beautiful goose". "... to the layman, [the animal] was often identified with the god himself, while for the priest and holy man it was understood more as one of the possible manifestations of the god." An animal may be the "repository of the divine soul" plus "a god in its own right." (p 122) For example, the Apis bull was "the living ba of Ptah"; the sacred falcons at Edfu and Philae were the ba of Re-Horakhte; the sacred crocodile at Kom Ombo was the ba of Sobek. (p 149)
Germond notes the lack of male lion-gods, with only one example in Mahes; by contrast, there were thirty snake gods. He notes that Wadjet was associated with the Eye of the Sun, perhaps because of the burning feeling of a snakebite, and cites a myth in which Re's temporary eye is insulted when his original Eye returns, so is compensated by a place on his forehead. (p177-8)
_
Germond, Philippe. An Egyptian Bestiary: Animals in Life and Religion in the Land of the Pharoahs. Thames and Hudson, London, 2001.
