This is my 6th Horus post...
Pleased to meet you. Actually very very pleased to meet you, as you can clearly see. The name is Min. I am Ancient Egyptian god of fertility, but you have probably already guessed that from my main "attribute"...
My skin is usually painted black, which symbolises the black silt brought to Egypt by the river Nile from the Ethiopian highlands...the thing that makes Nile valley fertile...
You can read more about the Nile, the black soil and fertility in the post "Horizon" about the "Horizon" hieroglyph, a hieroglyph which we find often associated with Horus, but whose meaning is much more complex than most people think...This hieroglyph actually depicts the sun over the Nile valley, Sun over Egypt...
Anyway, this is why I am depicted holding my erect penis...To emphasise that I am the source of life (giving black silt)...I ejaculate it in the Ethiopian highlands and it flows down to Egypt with the rising Nile waters until it spills everywhere during annual Nile flood...
This great ejaculator symbolism is ancient...In places where land fertility is the result of rain, the grain ejaculator is the sky father...You can read more about this in the post "Oldest narrative scene", which provides symbolic analysis of this 11,000 years old relief from Anatolian PP Neolithic...
And in the post "Ultime grida dalla savana" about this cool petroglyph from Wadi Mathendous, Libya, in which after the mandatory giggle, you can read about the symbolic link between men and sky gods...
But in places where land fertility is the result of annual floods, the great ejaculator is the source of the flooding rivers. Like in Mesopotamia...Where this role is "filled" 🙂 by Enki/Ea...
You can read about it in the post "The Great imposter" which explains why so many Mesopotamian supreme gods had an attribute "The Great Mountain". Cause they all wanted to be Enki. But there is only one Enki, who is (in) Abzu, "place that is a big mountain". All the others are just imposters...
In "Enki and the world order" we read: "...Father (Ea)/Enki...he stood up full of lust like a rampant bull, lifted his penis, ejaculated and filled the Tigris [and Euphrates] with flowing water...You can read about Enki in many other posts not just the above one...
BTW, why like a bull?
Tigris and Euphrates annual flood (fed by snowmelt caused by the sun) peaks in Taurus, beginning of summer...
So golden bull's head (sun in Taurus) with lapis beard (flowing water)
You can read about Utu/Shamash as the great bull in "Shamash young and old", "When Utu steps up into heaven", "Butt chewing", "Maran"...Anyway, back to me Min the merciful. I am normally depicted wearing a crown with ostrich feathers. Why?
Well ostrich mating season in Ethiopia begins in March or April and ends sometime before September. During that time male ostriches become aggressive, fight with each other for harems and make loud booming mating sounds...
This is exactly the period when rain season starts in Ethiopian highlands. We see increase in rainfall starting from March, and then the arrival of the full blown monsoon starting from April/May/June, peaking in Jul/Aug...
Check this post "Ennead" and linked posts if you are interested in the significance of the ostrich headdress...It talks about one of the most popular creation myths featuring the Ennead, a group of nine ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses...Which together literally depict the annual (re)creation of the (Egyptian) world...
As a god of male sexual potency, I am honoured during the coronation rites, when the Pharaoh is expected to hold his penis just like I do mine, and sow his seed...
You might like an explanation of the symbolic meaning of this ritual, which you can find in this post "Sceptre". In it, the author postulated that the first rulers held their penises as sceptres. What he didn't know was that in Sumerian "ñišuš-bar" meaning ruler's staff, sceptre, literally means "penis" + "to see, show"...Which confirms the hypothesis that penises were the original ruler's staffs, sceptres...
Male semen (seeds) are in agricultural magic linked with grain seeds...
You can read about this in this post, "Sowing", which talks about a strange custom from Serbia. There, in the past people lived in extended families called "zadruga". When grain needed to be sown, the family would choose one man to do all the sowing. He had to abstain from sex from that moment until all the seeds were sown...
This is why in my right hand I am holding a flail (tool for threshing grain)...Threshing is extracting grain seeds...For food but also for next sowing...Hence flail as symbol of fertility of the land and ability to provide food...See, it's all symbolically linked...
This is also why at the beginning of the harvest season, my image is taken out of my temple and brought to the fields to bless the harvest in the "festival of the departure of Min". Why departure of Min? Departure of what from where?
Well, as I said, I ejaculate the (water carrying the fertile) black silt in the Ethiopian highlands...And this ejaculation starts in Mar/Apr...Because this is when the Ethiopian monsoon season starts...And it is this monsoon that feeds the Nile...
It is this monsoon that provides the water of life, which carries the black silt to Egypt...So if anyone is looking for me between Mar/Apr and Sep/Oct, I will be standing in the Ethiopian highlands, wanking...
So the black silt (my spank), that will refresh the black soil of Egypt for the next year sowing, departs Ethiopian highlands for Egypt during the Egyptian grain harvest...All very symbolic...
Which is why Ethiopia is called "Land of the God" (that would be me) in Egyptian records...The land I "come" from...Now apparently "there is a dispute over" where this "Land of God" (also known as Land of Punt) actually was...
Ok apart from the fact that this is where I do most of my flute playing, based on Egyptian records, this Punt place was the major source of all these things: myrrh, frankincense, ebony, giraffes, baboons, hippopotami, leopards...
Now if you google:
"In which current country in Africa can we find all these: myrrh, frankincense, ebony, giraffes, baboons, hippopotami, leopards?"
You get: "Ethiopia and Somalia."
And because of the Nile, it can actually only be Ethiopia...
I mean this is not rocket science, but it is science, and for some reason science seems to be ignored when it comes to me...Everyone thinks I am just a figment of perverted imagination...
Anyway, I talked enough about myself. I am hungry. I need some lettuce, the food of the gods...Not any lettuce. The Lactuca serriola, the wild lettuce, also called prickly lettuce, also called milk lettuce...
Here it is depicted on the north wall in the Chapel of Amun, one of the seven chapels that are located directly west of the Second Hypostyle Hall of the Seti I Temple at Abydos...This relief detail shows two lettuces separated by a fan...
Egyptians believed the prickly lettuce is an aphrodisiac, as it was tall and straight and released a milk-like substance which resembled semen, and they associated it with me, THE GOD of male sexual potency...
This is why I was often depicted with "sacred" lettuces standing behind me....
Silly Ancient Egyptians...Prickly lettuce is not an aphrodisiac. It does not contain sexual stimulants. It doesn't give you a boner. It is an anaphrodisiac. It contains opiates and actually suppresses erection...
Ancient Greeks knew this...
So why would Egyptians associate prickly lettuce with me? And depict it behind me? Cause prickly lettuce flowers between Jul and Sep producing pile of bright yellow sun like flowers...
Jul-Sep...During the peak of the annual Nile flood. When I spill my semen all over Egypt...Basically the prickly lettuce is a plant calendar marker for the climax of my ejaculation (the Nile flood), the source of all fertility in the Nile Valley, in Egypt...
How cool is this?
You might want to also read my first Horus post "Great duel" and my second Horus post "Horus the Elder", my third Horus post "Horizon, my fourth Horus post "Nut" and my fifth Horus post "Ennead"...
If you are interested in reading more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...
