Anubis
Anubis is the Greek name of a god associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head. Archeologists have identified Anubis's sacred animal as the African golden wolf. Like many ancient Egyptian deities, Anubis assumed different roles in various contexts. Depicted as a protector of graves as early as the First Dynasty, Anubis was an embalmer. By the Middle Kingdom he was replaced by Osiris in his role as lord of the underworld. One of his prominent roles was as a god, he attended the weighing scale during the "Weighing of the Heart," in which it was determined whether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead. Despite being one of the most ancient and "one of the most depicted and mentioned gods" in the Egyptian pantheon, Anubis played no role in Egyptian myths. Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolized regeneration, the soil of the Nile River, the discoloration of the corpse after embalming. Anubis is associated with Wepwawet, another Egyptian god portrayed with a dog's head or in canine form, but with grey or white fur.
Historians assume that the two figures were combined. Anubis' female counterpart is Anput, his daughter is the serpent goddess Kebechet. Anubis' name jnpw was pronounced, based on Coptic Anoup and the Akkadian transcription <a-na-pa> in the name <ri-a-na-pa> "Reanapa" that appears in Amarna letter EA 315. However, this transcription may be interpreted as rˁ-nfr, a name similar to that of Prince Ranefer of the Fourth Dynasty. In Egypt's Early Dynastic period, Anubis was portrayed in full animal form, with a "jackal" head and body. A "jackal" god Anubis, is depicted in stone inscriptions from the reigns of Hor-Aha and other pharaohs of the First Dynasty. Since Predynastic Egypt, when the dead were buried in shallow graves, "jackals" had been associated with cemeteries because they were scavengers which uncovered human bodies and ate their flesh. In the spirit of "fighting like with like," a "jackal" was chosen to protect the dead, because "a common problem must have been the digging up of bodies, shortly after burial, by jackals and other wild dogs which lived on the margins of the cultivation."The oldest known textual mention of Anubis is in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, where he is associated with the burial of the pharaoh.
In the Old Kingdom, Anubis was the most important god of the dead. He was replaced in that role by Osiris during the Middle Kingdom. In the Roman era, which started in 30 BC, tomb paintings depict him holding the hand of deceased persons to guide them to Osiris; the parentage of Anubis varied between myths and sources. In early mythology, he was portrayed as a son of Ra. In the Coffin Texts, which were written in the First Intermediate Period, Anubis is the son of either the cow goddess Hesat or the cat-headed Bastet. Another tradition depicted him as the son of Nephthys; the Greek Plutarch stated that Anubis was the illegitimate son of Nephthys and Osiris, but that he was adopted by Osiris's wife Isis: For when Isis found out that Osiris loved her sister and had relations with her in mistaking her sister for herself, when she saw a proof of it in the form of a garland of clover that he had left to Nephthys - she was looking for a baby, because Nephthys abandoned it at once after it had been born for fear of Seth.
George Hart sees this story as an "attempt to incorporate the independent deity Anubis into the Osirian pantheon." An Egyptian papyrus from the Roman period called Anubis the "son of Isis."In the Ptolemaic period, when Egypt became a Hellenistic kingdom ruled by Greek pharaohs, Anubis was merged with the Greek god Hermes, becoming Hermanubis. The two gods were considered similar; the center of this cult was in uten-ha/Sa-ka/ Cynopolis, a place whose Greek name means "city of dogs." In Book XI of The Golden Ass by Apuleius, there is evidence that the worship of this god was continued in Rome through at least the 2nd century. Indeed, Hermanubis appears in the alchemical and hermetical literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Although the Greeks and Romans scorned Egyptian animal-headed gods as bizarre and primitive, Anubis was sometimes associated with Sirius in the heavens and Cerberus and Hades in the underworld. In his dialogues, Plato has Socrates utter oaths "by the dog", "by the dog of Egypt", "by the dog, the god of the Egyptians", both for emphasis and to appeal to Anubis as an arbiter of truth in the underworld.
In contrast to real wolves, Anubis was a protector of cemeteries. Several epithets attached to his name in Egyptian texts and inscriptions referred to that role. Khenty-imentiu, which means "foremost of the westerners" and was the name of a different canine funerary god, alluded to his protecting function because the dead were buried on the west bank of the Nile, he took other names in connection with his funerary role, such as tpy-ḏw.f "He, upon his mountain" and nb-t3-ḏsr "Lord of the sacred land", which designates him as a god of the desert necropolis. The Jumilhac papyrus recounts an
Osiris
Osiris is the god of the afterlife, the underworld, rebirth in ancient Egyptian religion. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh's beard mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive atef crown, holding a symbolic crook and flail. Osiris was at times considered the eldest son of the god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, as well as being brother and husband of Isis, with Horus being considered his posthumously begotten son, he was associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, meaning "Foremost of the Westerners", a reference to his kingship in the land of the dead. As ruler of the dead, Osiris was sometimes called "king of the living": ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead "the living ones". Through syncretism with Iah, he is the god of the Moon. Osiris was considered the brother of Isis, Set and Horus the Elder, father of Horus the Younger; the first evidence of the worship of Osiris was found in the middle of the Fifth dynasty of Egypt, although it is that he was worshiped much earlier.
Most information available on the myths of Osiris is derived from allusions contained in the Pyramid Texts at the end of the Fifth Dynasty New Kingdom source documents such as the Shabaka Stone and the Contending of Horus and Seth, much in narrative style from the writings of Greek authors including Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus. Osiris was the judge of the dead and the underworld agency that granted all life, including sprouting vegetation and the fertile flooding of the Nile River, he was described as "He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful" and the "Lord of Silence". The Kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death – as Osiris rose from the dead so would they in union with him, inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic. Through the hope of new life after death, Osiris began to be associated with the cycles observed in nature, in particular vegetation and the annual flooding of the Nile, through his links with the heliacal rising of Orion and Sirius at the start of the new year.
Osiris was worshipped until the decline of ancient Egyptian religion during the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Osiris is a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek Ὄσιρις IPA:, which in turn is the Greek adaptation of the original name in the Egyptian language. In Egyptian hieroglyphs the name appears as wsjr, which some Egyptologists instead choose to transliterate ꜣsjr or jsjrj. Since hieroglyphic writing lacks vowels, Egyptologists have vocalized the name in various ways, such as Asar, Ausir, Usir, or Usire. Several proposals have been made for the meaning of the original name. Most take wsjr as the accepted transliteration, following Adolf Erman: John Gwyn Griffiths, "bearing in mind Erman's emphasis on the fact that the name must begin with an w", proposes a derivation from wsr with an original meaning of "The Mighty One". Moreover, one of the oldest attestations of the god Osiris appears in the mastaba of the deceased Netjer-wser. Kurt Sethe proposes a compound st-jrt, meaning "seat of the eye", in a hypothetical earlier form *wst-jrt.
David Lorton takes up this same compound but explains st-jrt as signifying "product, something made", Osiris representing the product of the ritual mummification process. Wolfhart Westendorf proposes an etymology from wꜣst-jrt "she who bears the eye". Mark J. Smith makes no definitive proposals but asserts that the second element must be a form of jrj; however alternative transliterations have been proposed: Yoshi Muchiki reexamines Erman's evidence that the throne hieroglyph in the word is to be read ws and finds it unconvincing, suggesting instead that the name should be read ꜣsjr on the basis of Aramaic and Old South Arabian transcriptions, readings of the throne sign in other words, comparison with ꜣst. James P. Allen reads the word as jsjrt but revises the reading to jsjrj and derives it from js-jrj, meaning "engendering principle". Osiris is represented in his most developed form of iconography wearing the Atef crown, similar to the White crown of Upper Egypt, but with the addition of two curling ostrich feathers at each side.
He carries the crook and flail. The crook is thought to represent Osiris as a shepherd god; the symbolism of the flail is more uncertain with shepherds whip, fly-whisk, or association with the god Andjety of the ninth nome of Lower Egypt proposed. He was depicted as a pharaoh with a complexion of either green or black in mummiform; the Pyramid Texts describe early conceptions of an afterlife in terms of eternal travelling with the sun god amongst the stars. Amongst these mortuary texts, at the beginning of the 4th dynasty, is found: "An offering the king gives and Anubis". By the end of the 5th dynasty, the formula in all tombs becomes "An offering the king gives and Osiris". Osiris is the mythological father of the god Horus, whose conception is described in the Osiris myth; the myth describes Osiris as having been killed by his brother, Set
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is the common title of the monarchs of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty until the annexation of Egypt by the Roman Empire in 30 BCE, although the actual term "Pharaoh" was not used contemporaneously for a ruler until Merneptah, c. 1200 BCE. In the early dynasty, ancient Egyptian kings used to have up to three titles, the Horus, the Sedge and Bee name, the Two Ladies name; the Golden Horus and nomen and prenomen titles were added. In Egyptian society, religion was central to everyday life. One of the roles of the pharaoh was as an intermediary between the people; the pharaoh thus deputised for the gods. He owned all of the land in Egypt, enacted laws, collected taxes, defended Egypt from invaders as the commander-in-chief of the army. Religiously, the pharaoh chose the sites of new temples, he was responsible for maintaining Maat, or cosmic order and justice, part of this included going to war when necessary to defend the country or attacking others when it was believed that this would contribute to Maat, such as to obtain resources.
During the early days prior to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Deshret or the "Red Crown", was a representation of the Kingdom of Lower Egypt, while the Hedjet, the "White Crown", was worn by the kings of the kingdom of upper Egypt. After the unification of both kingdoms into one united Egypt, the Pschent, the combination of both the red and white crowns was the official crown of kings. With time new headdresses were introduced during different dynasties like the Khat, Atef, Hemhem crown, Khepresh. At times, it was depicted that a combination of these crowns would be worn together; the word pharaoh derives from the Egyptian compound pr ꜥꜣ, /ˌpaɾuwˈʕaʀ/ "great house", written with the two biliteral hieroglyphs pr "house" and ꜥꜣ "column", here meaning "great" or "high". It was used only in larger phrases such as smr pr-ꜥꜣ "Courtier of the High House", with specific reference to the buildings of the court or palace. From the Twelfth Dynasty onward, the word appears in a wish formula "Great House, May it Live, be in Health", but again only with reference to the royal palace and not the person.
Sometime during the era of the New Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period, pharaoh became the form of address for a person, king. The earliest confirmed instance where pr ꜥꜣ is used to address the ruler is in a letter to Akhenaten, addressed to "Great House, L, W, H, the Lord". However, there is a possibility that the title pr ꜥꜣ was applied to Thutmose III, depending on whether an inscription on the Temple of Armant can be confirmed to refer to that king. During the Eighteenth Dynasty the title pharaoh was employed as a reverential designation of the ruler. About the late Twenty-first Dynasty, instead of being used alone as before, it began to be added to the other titles before the ruler's name, from the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty it was, at least in ordinary usage, the only epithet prefixed to the royal appellative. From the nineteenth dynasty onward pr-ꜥꜣ on its own was used as as ḥm, "Majesty"; the term, evolved from a word referring to a building to a respectful designation for the ruler by the Twenty-Second Dynasty and Twenty-third Dynasty.
For instance, the first dated appearance of the title pharaoh being attached to a ruler's name occurs in Year 17 of Siamun on a fragment from the Karnak Priestly Annals. Here, an induction of an individual to the Amun priesthood is dated to the reign of Pharaoh Siamun; this new practice was continued under his successor Psusennes II and the Twenty-second Dynasty kings. For instance, the Large Dakhla stela is dated to Year 5 of king "Pharaoh Shoshenq, beloved of Amun", whom all Egyptologists concur was Shoshenq I—the founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty—including Alan Gardiner in his original 1933 publication of this stela. Shoshenq I was the second successor of Siamun. Meanwhile, the old custom of referring to the sovereign as pr-ˤ3 continued in traditional Egyptian narratives. By this time, the Late Egyptian word is reconstructed to have been pronounced * whence Herodotus derived the name of one of the Egyptian kings, Koine Greek: Φερων. In the Hebrew Bible, the title occurs as Hebrew: פרעה.
Pharaō, in Late Latin pharaō, both -n stem nouns. The Qur'an spells it Arabic: فرعون firʿawn with n; the Arabic combines the original ayin from Egyptian along with the -n ending from Greek. In English, it was at first spelled "Pharao", but the translators of the King James Bible revived "Pharaoh" with "h" from the Hebrew. Meanwhile, in Egypt itself, * evolved into Sahidic Coptic ⲡⲣ̅ⲣⲟ pərro and ərro by mistaking p- as the definite article "the". Other notable epithets are nswt, translated to "king". Sceptres and staves were a general sign of authority in ancient Egypt. One of the earliest royal scepters was discovered in the tomb of Khasekhemwy in Abydos. Kings were known to carry a staff, Pharaoh Anedjib is shown on stone vessels carrying a so-called mks-staff; the scepter with the longest history seems to be the heqa-sceptre, sometimes described as the shepherd's crook. The earli
KV18
Tomb KV18, located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, was intended for the burial of Pharaoh Ramesses X of the Twentieth Dynasty. The tomb consists of two sections of corridor separated by gates; the entryway was used by Howard Carter in the early 20th century as the site of the Valley's first electricity generator. After penetrating the hillside for a distance of some 43 metres, it ends at the rock face into which a series of rough steps have been carved. Little is known about this tomb, the final section of corridor was properly cleared of the voluminous flood débris filling it only recently. Reeves, N & Wilkinson, R. H; the Complete Valley of the Kings, 1996, Thames and Hudson, London. Siliotti, A. Guide to the Valley of the Kings and to the Theban Necropolises and Temples, 1996, A. A. Gaddis, Cairo. Theban Mapping Project: KV18 - Includes description and plans of the tomb
KV34
Tomb KV34 in the Valley of the Kings was the tomb of 18th dynasty Pharaoh Thutmose III. One of the first tombs to be dug in the Valley, it was cut high in the cliff face of the furthermost wadi. A steep corridor leads down, in a dog-leg shape, from the entrance past a deep well to a trapezoidal antechamber. Beyond the antechamber lies the cartouche-shaped burial chamber, off which stand four smaller side chambers; the stone sarcophagus in which Thutmose's body was placed is still in place in the burial chamber, albeit damaged by tomb robbers. Many of the wall decorations are in an unusual style not found elsewhere in the Valley of the Kings. On a yellow-tinged background, the earliest known version of the Amduat is traced, depicting the gods of Ancient Egypt as simple stick figures, in papyrus writing style; the Litany of Ra appears in the burial chamber, with a similar execution. The tomb was plundered in antiquity and its location lost, it was first excavated in 1898 under Victor Loret. Theban Mapping Project: KV34 - Includes description and plans of the tomb
Hathor
Hathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, both of whom were connected with kingship, thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs, she was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra's feminine counterpart, in this form she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies. Her beneficent side represented music, joy, love and maternal care, she acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons; these two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds. Hathor was depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal and celestial aspect, although her most common form was a woman wearing a headdress of cow horns and a sun disk, she could be represented as a lioness, cobra, or sycomore tree. Cattle goddesses similar to Hathor were portrayed in Egyptian art in the fourth millennium BC, but she may not have appeared until the Old Kingdom.
With the patronage of Old Kingdom rulers she became one of Egypt's most important deities. More temples were dedicated to her than to any other goddess, of which the most prominent was Dendera Temple in Upper Egypt, she was worshipped in the temples of her male consorts. The Egyptians connected her with foreign lands such as Nubia and Canaan and their valuable goods, such as incense and semiprecious stones, some of the peoples in those lands adopted her worship. In Egypt, she was one of the deities invoked in private prayers and votive offerings by women desiring children. During the New Kingdom, goddesses such as Mut and Isis encroached on Hathor's position in royal ideology, but she remained one of the most worshipped deities. After the end of the New Kingdom, Hathor was overshadowed by Isis, but she continued to be venerated until the extinction of ancient Egyptian religion in the early centuries AD. Images of cattle appear in the artwork of Predynastic Egypt, as do images of women with upraised, curved arms reminiscent of the shape of bovine horns.
Both types of imagery may represent goddesses connected with cattle. Cows are venerated in many cultures, including ancient Egypt, as symbols of motherhood and nourishment, because they care for their calves and supply humans with milk; the Gerzeh Palette, a stone palette from the Naqada II period of prehistory, shows the silhouette of a cow's head with inward-curving horns surrounded by stars. The palette suggests that this cow was linked with the sky, as were several goddesses from times who were represented in this form: Hathor, Mehet-Weret, Nut. Despite these early precedents, Hathor is not unambiguously mentioned or depicted until the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, although several artifacts that refer to her may date to the Early Dynastic Period; when Hathor does appear, her horns curve outward, rather than inward like those in Predynastic art. A bovine deity with inward-curving horns appears on the Narmer Palette from near the start of Egyptian history, both atop the palette and on the belt of the king, Narmer.
The Egyptologist Henry George Fischer suggested this deity may be Bat, a goddess, depicted with a woman's face and inward-curling antennae reflecting the curve of the cow horns. The Egyptologist Lana Troy, identifies a passage in the Pyramid Texts from the late Old Kingdom that connects Hathor with the "apron" of the king, reminiscent of the goddess on Narmer's belt, suggests the goddess on the Narmer Palette is Hathor rather than Bat. In the Fourth Dynasty, Hathor rose to prominence, she supplanted an early crocodile god, worshipped at Dendera in Upper Egypt to become Dendera's patron deity, she absorbed the cult of Bat in the neighboring region of Hu, so that in the Middle Kingdom the two deities fused into one. The theology surrounding the pharaoh in the Old Kingdom, unlike that of earlier times, focused on the sun god Ra as king of the gods and father and patron of the earthly king. Hathor ascended with Ra and became his mythological wife, thus divine mother of the pharaoh. Hathor appeared in a wide variety of roles.
The Egyptologist Robyn Gillam suggests that these diverse forms emerged when the royal goddess promoted by the Old Kingdom court subsumed many local goddesses worshipped by the general populace, who were treated as manifestations of her. Egyptian texts speak of the manifestations of the goddess as "Seven Hathors" or, less of many more Hathors—as many as 362. For these reasons, Gillam calls her "a type of deity rather than a single entity". Hathor's diversity reflects the diversity of traits. More than any other deity, she exemplifies the Egyptian perception of femininity. Hathor was given the epithets "mistress of the sky" and "mistress of the stars", was said to dwell in the sky with Ra and other sun gods. Egyptians thought of the sky as a body of water through which the sun god sailed, connected it with the waters from which, according to their creation myths, the sun emerged at the beginning of time; this cosmic mother goddess was represented as a cow. Hathor and Mehet-Weret were both thought of as the cow who birthed the sun god and placed him between her horns.
Like another celestial goddess, Hathor was said to give birth to the sun god each dawn. Hathor's Egyptian name was ḥwt-ḥr, it is translated
KV16
Tomb KV16 is located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was used for the burial of Pharaoh Ramesses I of the Nineteenth Dynasty; the burial place was discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in October 1817. As Ramesses I ruled for less than two years, his sepulchre is rather truncated, being only twenty-nine metres long, it consists of two descending staircases, linking a sloping corridor and leading to the burial chamber. Like the tomb of Horemheb, the grave is decorated with the Book of Gates; the sarcophagus, still in place in the final chamber, is constructed of red quartzite. Reeves, N & Wilkinson, R. H; the Complete Valley of the Kings, 1996, Thames and Hudson, London. Siliotti, A. Guide to the Valley of the Kings and to the Theban Necropolises and Temples, 1996, A. A. Gaddis, Cairo. Theban Mapping Project: KV16 - Includes description and plans of the tomb
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