Leopard priest

Priest wearing leopard skin, New Kingdom, 19th–20th Dynasty, c. 1200BC. Tomb of Nakhtamon (TT335), Deir el-Medina...

The earliest depiction of a priest wearing leopard skin can be found on the Narmer Palette, dated to c. 3100BC...

Leopard skins were worn by Sem-priests during the "Opening of the Mouth" ceremony, a crucial ritual that enabled the deceased to live, eat, and breathe in the afterlife...

A mural depicts King Ay (right) wearing a leopard skin, performing the "Opening of the Mouth" ceremony on Tutankhamun (left) depicted as Osiris. Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62), Valley of the Kings, West Thebes...

This makes me wonder what is exactly depicted on the Narmer Palette. But that is another story, for another time...

In ancient Egyptian religion, leopard skin was linked to rebirth, transformation, and the afterlife. The skin was believed to act as a magical guardian, protecting the body against the fragmentation of death, allowing the deceased to be reborn...

Pyramid texts describe the king wrapping himself in a leopard skin to travel with the sun god Ra, emerging rejuvenated and "reborn" at dawn...

"...[King] will live with his ka, his leopard-skin on him, his staff in his arm, his baton in his hand..."

Now here is an interesting question: Why was leopard linked with rebirth? Leopards never lived in Egypt and leopard skins were imported into Egypt from down south, Nubia and Sudan...

So why leopard? I am boring myself at this stage repeating the same thing over and over and over again...But I think it is because of animal calendar markers. Check this out:

In Ancient Egypt, rebirth was directly linked with water and terrestrial and celestial Nile. I talked about it in my post Nut...

Ra-Horakhty (Ra as Horus) in his Solar Barque, traversing the horizon on a Heavenly Nile, during the day (the time when we can see the world) from east, dawn (left eye) to west, dusk (right eye)...

Ankh, symbol for life and eternal life was also directly linked with water. 

Ankh symbolises union of father sky and mother earth...

Ankh was known as the Knot of Isis...

Ankh was also called the Key of Life...

Ankh was also known as the Key of the Nile...

Ankh Symbolises union of father sky and mother earth...

In Sumerian: Father sky (An) + Mother earth (Ki) = Life (AnKi) = Ankh? 

I talked about this in my posts Riddle, Square and compasses, An-Ki Ankh, Living nature

Sumerians in Egypt? Check this out:

Rediscovery of, now buried, branch of the river Nile that once flowed right next to 31 pyramids, including Giza ones...

And my articles Giza lioness and Sphinx about why the pyramids were built on the  Giza plateau. Spoiler: cause sphinx was already there...

Ankh was known as "the Knot of Isis"...

Interesting...This knot? Like Inanna's knont? A relief from the ancient Egyptian Temple of Hatshepsut. It shows a platter with food arranged to look like a duck by making an ankh knot using lotus, the symbol of the Nile flood without which there will be no food in Egypt...

Ankh was also called the Key of Life...

In Egypt, like everywhere else, drinking water is the key of life. Hence Ankh as symbol for water...

Sycamore tree goddess, Hathor, Isis, Nut, all goddess of flood, pouring water which is depicted with ankh (life) symbols inside it...Tomb, Siwa Oasis, 400-600 BC. Egypt...

I talked about this in my post Sycamore tree goddess...

Ankh was also known as the Key of the Nile...

It is the Nile river flood that makes life in Egypt possible. Hence the sacred knot = Ankh = Nile flood = Life

Ankh = Life = Water...

Papyrus - Lotus Ankh. The Nile water level starts to rise when the Papyrus flowers and peaks when the lotus flowers...

I talked about this in my post "Crux Ansata"...

Ok, what does any of this have to do with leopards?

The mating season of African leopards in Nubia and Sudan peaks in Apr/May, at the beginning of the rainy season in Nubia and Sudan...

And the birthing season peaks in Jul/Aug, the peak of the rain season in Nubia and Sudan...

Climate Nubia/Sudan

African leopards are typically silent, solitary, and elusive, but become exceptionally loud, vocal, and aggressive during mating season. Not something you would miss easily...

So, I could bet that, leopard soon became the animal calendar marker for the rain season in Nubia and Sudan.  And it is this rain that revives the dead parched land and causes its rebirth...

I already talked about plant calendar markers linked to the rain season in Nubia in my post Meroitic language, where I analysied very interesting offering tables (altars) from the Ptolemaic Period, 306–30 BC. Like this one frome Northern Upper Egypt, Dendera, currently in the Met Museum, New York...

I also talked about animal calendar markers linked to the rain season in Sudan in my post Sacred Ibis, in which I analysed this fresco from the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, built at the beginning of the 1st c. BC. Currently in the Archaeological Museum in Naples...And the reason why ibis was a sacred bird in Ancient Egypt...

Now I can hear you all ask: What does this have to do with Egypt?

Guess when the rain season started in Green Sahara? You can read more about this here...

You can see that the rain season started in May/Jun and peaked in Jul/Aug/Sep...

Today, the similar rain pattern is still found in Nubia and Sudan, and more importantly in the Ethiopian highlands. It is the monsoon rain that falls in the Ethiopian highlands that feeds the river Nile...

Causing the water level to rise in May/Jun and causing the annual flood in Jul/Aug/Sep...

Annual flood which causes the (annual) rebirth of Egypt...I talked about this in my post Min, the Egyptian god of fertility and his link to the source of the river Nile...

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"...

Is this why leopards were linked to resurrection? Because their breeding season overlapped with the old Green Sahara wet monsoon season?

BTW, the reason why I suspected that leopard from the Egyptian mythology could have originally been linked to rain (water, flowing water), is because leopard has been linked to rain (water, flowing water) in Eurasia too...

Article, The oldest narative scene with symbolic analysis of this 11,000 years old relief from Anatolian Neolithic, where leopard was used as an animal calendar marker for the cool wet season...

Great example of related animal calendar markers used together. Tepe Hissar, Iran, Neolithic.

Mating Ibex (Oct/Nov, start of winter) followed by Mating Leopard (Jan/Feb, start of spring). Both winter and spring are rainy seasons...

Symbolically, semen turns to rain which turns into flowing water...

I talk about this in my post A vessel from Tepe Hissar...

And it is because of that link to rain (water, flowing water) that leopard was also linked to resurrection (rebirth) of nature. I talked about it in my post Mosaic floor from Sulcis, Sardinia where I analyis this amazing mosaic which depicts leopards drinking from a krater for mixing wine and water with a grapevine growing from the krater...And I talk about the link between leopards and Dionysus, the god of death and rebirth of Nature...

To read 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...

Beard pulling

Muiredach's cross is a high cross from the 10th or possibly 9th century, located at the ruined monastic site of Monasterboice, in County Louth, Ireland. On one of the lowest panels of the cross there is a relief depicting two men pulling each other's beards.

Expression "Pulling someone's beard" means "Challenging someone's authority". Does anyone know how old this expression is?

Pulling someone's beard out was an act of insult. In Isaiah 50:6 we read: "I let them beat my back and pull out my beard. I didn't turn aside when they insulted me and spit in my face". This is because beard was a sign of manhood so pulling the beard out was a symbolic castration...

Romanesque sculpted stone capital from the Church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption in Thiviers (Dordogne, France), likely dating from the 12th century.

The link between beard and penis is symbolically represented in this late 15th century polychrome stone stature of Adam from Albi cathedral, showing Adam covering his penis with fig leaf with one hand and touching his beard with the other...

 

Earlier romanesque depictions of the same symbolic scene are much more explicit :) Like this one from the church of San Martín de Elines (dated to 8th-10th century AD). Basically Beard = Penis = Fertility = Fatherhood 

Serbian expression "He acts like he had pulled god's beard" which means "he acts like god gave him power". 

Apparently, this stems from the fact that in the Ancient Near East, grabbing someone by the beard (to kiss them) was a customary gesture of intense affection, respect, and familial intimacy...

So "He acts like he had pulled god's beard" means "Him and God are best palls"...

But the Serbian expression "He acts like he had pulled god's beard" has another version: "He acts like he had pulled god's penis". 

I talked about the link between penis and sceptre (symbol of power) in my post "Sceptre"...

For instance, in Sumerian:  ñišuš-bar: ruler's staff; sceptre, literally means 'penis' + 'to see, show'...

So are beard stroking penis wielding figures like this one from Mansilla de la Sierra depictions of god?

Like this Ithyphallic Norse statue of the male fertility god Freyr Holding his beard and his penis...

Remember god is god the creator, god the father. Beard = Penis = Procreation = Fatherhood...

I talk about all this in my posts "Beard of Osiris" "Braided beard"...

Sacred Ibis

Sacred Ibis - Fresco from the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, built at the beginning of the 1st c. BC. Currently in the Archaeological Museum in Naples...

Is the Sacred Ibis holding ripe grain in its beak? Why?

Animal calendar markers to the rescue...I know, again, boring...

For some reason Ancient Egyptians worshiped this bird and even depicted God Thoth as an Ibis...Why? 

Animal calendar markers...Oh shut up...All you see are animal calendar markers everywhere! No one else does! 

Well, maybe today that is true...But in the past others did too:

In the 1891 "Living animals of the world vol 2" we can read:

The naturalist Brehm says on this subject [why Ibis was sacred]:

"When the Nile, after being at its lowest ebb, rose again, and the water assumed a red tinge, then the ibis appeared in the land of the Pharaohs..."

"...as a sure guarantee that the stream, the giver and preserver of life, which the people in their profound reverence raised to the rank of a god, would once again empty the well-spring of plenty over the thirsty land..."

"...The servant and messenger of an all-bounteous Deity commanded of a necessity a reverence of a poetic and distinguished character, by reason of its importance: he too must be a god."

See 🙂 deified animal calendar markers...

But animal calendar marker for what time of the year? If we look at the available data for the nesting season of African Sacred Ibises, we can see that depending on the area, nesting takes place between Mar and Aug...

The naturalist Brehm says that Sacred Ibis arrived just after Nile reached its lowest level and started to rise again...So if we want to determine when ibises used to arrive to Egypt, lets have a look at the Nile water level chart...

As you can see the Nile starts to rise in Apr/May...Is this the time of the year that the Sacred Ibis is an animal calendar marker for? I think so. In another book, 1829 "Cassell's book of birds" we can read this:

"...According to our own observations, this species is now but rarely seen in Egypt, and was never met with by us below eighteen degrees north latitude; it, however, occurs regularly in South Nubia and the Soudan, where it arrives at the beginning of the rainy season..."

And this is the climate chart for Kharoum, capital of Sudan. You can see that the rain season starts in Apr/May...Very cool, right?

So if Sacred Ibis was indeed a deified animal calendar marker for Apr/May, why was the Sacred Ibis from the temple of Isis in Pompeii with a ripe grain in its beak?

Because grain harvest time in the Nile River Valley starts in Apr/May...

Soooo...Kudos to naturalist Brehm, whoever he was, for being on the right track...

One more interesting thing that Brehm said:

"When the Nile, after being at its lowest ebb, rose again, and the water assumed a red tinge..."

I talked about Red Nile in my post "White calf"...

And one more interesting thing. Apart from dressing up as an Ibis, Thoth also liked dressing up as a Baboon...Why? Remember my posts about Tefnut?

Tefnut was the deity of moisture in Ancient Egypt. One day, she got pissed off 🙂 with Egyptians for taking the piss 🙂 and not giving her enough kudos, and pissed off 🙂 to Nubia...

Sun god Ra, Tefnut's father, missed his daughter and so he sent Thoth (god of wisdom) as his emissary to ask her to return home.

For some weird reason, Thoth, disguised himself as a baboon (!!!) and went looking for Tefnut (???)

To understand why Thoth disguised himself as a baboon, and why Tefnut followed Thoth back to Egypt, you need to know that "Tefnut" (moisture) was married to her twin brother "Shu" (wind), and that together they mean "wet wind" = eastern monsoon...I talked about this first in my post "Menat"...

And baboons peak mating season is at the beginning of the monsoon season in East Africa...Which starts in Mar/Apr/May. And it is this monsoon that feeds the Nile flood...I talked about this in my post "Baboon"...

Oh and guess what? Thoth, our Ibis/Baboon cross dresser was also identified with Shu, the monsoon wind...And when depicted as Shu, Thoth was just like Shu depicted carrying ostrich feathers on his head. Why?

Well ostrich mating season begins in Mar/Apr and ends in Aut/Sep. During that time male ostriches become aggressive, fight with each other for harems and make loud booming mating sounds...While the Nile is rising...

Soooo....Hope this was interesting...At least a bit...I promise my next post is not going to be about animal calendar markers...🙂

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Ennead

This is my 5th Horus post...

Ancient Egyptians had several myths regarding the creation of the world. One of the most popular creation myths featured the Ennead, a group of nine ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses...Which together literally depict the annual (re)creation of the (Egyptian) world...

For the Ancient Egyptians, The World consisted of the Nile Valley and the Desert...This world was annually recreated by the Nile Flood...Which was the result of the monsoon rains that fell on the Ethiopian Highlands...Which were the result of the Sun heating the Indian Ocean...

This is how Ancient Egyptians described this natural process using The Enneads:

Atum. Who first created himself, and then created The World...Equated with the (setting) sun and later worshiped as Atum-Ra...

I would propose that the god "Creator of the World" was originally not just "the setting sun", but "the sun", and not just "the sun", but the summer (hot dry season) sun (Apt/May - Oct/Nov), which is also the sun of (which creates) the Annual Nile Inundation...

Apparently Atum appeared from the "Primordial Waters" (read annual flood) as a lion (read in Jul/Aug in Leo). Hence Sphinx overlooking the Nile flood plain...

I talked about him in my posts "Sphinx" and "Giza lioness"...

Leo here has nothing to do with constellations...It marks the beginning of the mating season of Eurasian lions, Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov...

I talked about this in many of my posts...

After creating himself, Atum then created (literally wanked and then ejaculated) Shu (Upward Rising Wind) and Tefnut (Moisture)...

Shu (Upward Rising Wind) + Tefnut (Moisture) = Ethiopian Monsoon which feeds the Nile flood

I talked about them in my post "Menat"...

The wet winds starts blowing over Ethiopian highlands in Mar/Apr and blow until Sep/Oct...

Shu wears an ostrich feather...

I think this is because ostrich mating season marked by ostrich dancing, begins in Mar/Apr and lasts until Sep/Oct...

The monsoon rains that feed Nile with water start falling in Ethiopian highlands in Mar/Apr (Aries)...

Which is why (I think) the god of the source of the nile is Ram headed Khnum...I talked about him in my post "Khnum"...

Aries here has nothing to do with constellations. It marks the end of the lambing season (Feb/Mar/Apr) and the beginning of the milking season...I talked about this in many of my posts...

As you can see in the above precipitation chart, the Ethiopian Monsoon peaks in Jul/Aug, Leo...Hence Tefnut having the lioness head...

In the earlier Pyramid Texts she is said to produce pure waters from her vagina...So when one day, she got pissed off :) with Egyptians for taking the piss :) and not giving her enough kudos, she stopped producing pure waters from her vagina, and pissed off :) to Nubia...

There, Tefnut, in a form of an angry lioness, became the terror of the land, attacking both men and animals. She blew smoke and fire from her nostrils and eyes and fed on the flesh and blood of her victims...

Leo, the end of summer, beginning of autumn, the time of maximum heat and no rain, would be the time of droughts and death in Egypt, if it weren't for Tefnut, the monsoon moisture which feeds the Nile...It is this moisture that transforms Leo into time of inundation and life...

Sun god Ra, Tefnut's father, missed his daughter and so he sent Shu (Tefnut's husband) and Thoth (god of wisdom) as his emissaries to ask her to return home. Of course he missed her. Because no Tefnut means no Nile. And no Nile means no Egypt. And no Egypt means no Ra...

For some weird reason, Thoth, disguised himself as a baboon (!!!) and went looking for Tefnut...

Why Baboon? Well, it has something to do with baboon mating season and also their ability to find water during droughts...I explain this in my post "Baboon"...

Shu and Tefnut (Ethiopian Monsoon) gave birth to Geb (Earth) and Nut (Sky)...

Now these are not any earth and any sky. These are Nile Valley (Egypt) and the Sky over the Nile Valley (Egypt)...

I talked about the Egyptian world view first in my post "Horizon", in which I talked about a hieroglyph which we find often associated with Horus, the "mountain" hieroglyph, and I will try to show that our current understanding of its meaning is...incomplete...

The Egyptian earth god Geb was intrinsically linked to the Nile, representing the fertile ground (silt) deposited by the river's annual flood. As a matter of fact, he was seen as the source of the silt brought by the Nile Flood...

And Nut, Milky Way, which from Jul/Aug, the beginning of the Nile flood, becomes parallel to the Nile, was seen as the Heavenly Nile, the heavenly equivalent (and the source) of the Earthly Nile...

I talked about Nut (and Geb and Horus) in my post "Nut"...

Ra-Horakhty (Ra as Horus) in his Solar Barque, traversing the horizon on a Heavenly Nile, during the day (the time when we can see the world) from east, dawn (left eye) to west, dusk (right eye). From a Book of the Dead dated to 1552–1069 BC, Currently in Louvre, Paris...

Geb and Nut's children were Osiris (fertile black soil of the Nile Valley, Egypt) and his wife Isis goddess of life and Seth (infertile red soil of the desert) and his wife Nephthys goddess of death (and resurrection)...

All four of these deities are directly linked to Horus...

Osiris = Father

Isis = Mother

Nephthys = Wet Nurse

Seth = Enemy

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"...

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...