The problem is that the Egyptians believed most of their gods were able to manifest themselves in animal form, but there were so many types of animal to suffice. Thus any one species might represent a number of different gods...
An extraordinarily ignorant remark for Andrews to have made; she would know as well as anyone that there were many animals in the Egyptians' environment who were never used to represent any deities.
The use of a common animal form for multiple deities expressed a common function. Thus, for example, Goddesses depicted with a lioness head all operated at times as the "Eye" (i.e., agent, punning on ir.t 'doing/doer' as well as 'eye') of Re.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-04-27 06:43 pm (UTC)An extraordinarily ignorant remark for Andrews to have made; she would know as well as anyone that there were many animals in the Egyptians' environment who were never used to represent any deities.
The use of a common animal form for multiple deities expressed a common function. Thus, for example, Goddesses depicted with a lioness head all operated at times as the "Eye" (i.e., agent, punning on ir.t 'doing/doer' as well as 'eye') of Re.