Which Of These Animals Was Considered Sacred By Ancient Egyptians?
Herodotus: The Sacred Animals of Ancient Egypt
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Sacred Animal in Ancient Egypt
Dedicated to Dekayla, Samantha, and Brooke in California
This is Bertie, and I'm here with some more than from Herodotus, the father of history who lived ii,500 years ago. Herodotus was a Greek who liked to travel. He went effectually much of the Persian Empire, including Egypt, and wrote downwards what he saw. A fair scrap of what nosotros know about life in Ancient Arab republic of egypt comes to us from Herodotus.
In the last episode, I told you nigh some of the wild animals of Aboriginal Egypt that Herodotus mentioned. In this episode, I'm going to be focusing on the animals that the Egyptians worshiped equally gods.
The holiest of all animals in Aboriginal Egypt were cows and bulls. The aboriginal Egyptians were not the but people to worship cattle.
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For example, in ancient times, bulls were worshiped on the Greek island of Crete - the home of the balderdash god, the minotaur - and cattle are sacred to Hindus to this day.
And perhaps y'all know the story of Moses from the Bible. He and his fellow Israelites escaped from captivity in Arab republic of egypt and crossed the desert. On the way, they paused while Moses climbed upwardly Mount Sinai to fetch a stone tablet on which were written the Ten Commandments - or laws like Y'all Shall Not Kill.
While Moses was away climbing the Mountain, some of his followers lost religion in God and began to worship a gold calf.
In many religions, gods and animals are associated with ideas.
People might worship a balderdash because he represents strength and masculinity. And they would worship a milk-giving cow because she represents maternity and nurturing. Perhaps they would pray to their cattle gods for a stiff healthy family and nation.
In ancient Egypt, bulls or cows were sometimes seen every bit gods on globe. For example, in the metropolis of Memphis people worshiped a balderdash called Apis or Hapi. The priests of Memphis always kept 1 bull to worship. They knew he was Apis because he would exist black with a white crescent shape on his side or a white triangle on his forehead. When he died, they establish another bull with similar markings.
But the ancient Egyptians were not vegetarians - and dissimilar Hindus today - they did sometimes consume beef.
The cede of a bull was an extremely solemn ceremony for the aboriginal Egyptians. The priests would choose a black balderdash and check that information technology did not have a single pilus that was not completely black. When they had killed information technology, they would cook the meat of the body, and they saved the head of the bull. They prayed that all their evil and bad fortune should be transferred into the head of the bull. Then they would take the head to the marketplace, and if there were any Greek traders there, they would sell it to them. But if there no Greeks to be found, they threw the balderdash'south caput into the river.
This odd ceremony was a fashion of getting rid of evil. In that location is a similar idea In the Bible when the people of Israel prayed all their sins onto a goat, then bandage it out into the desert. To this day, if we say that somebody is a "scape-goat" we mean that they are being blamed for other people's wrong-doing.
Bulls were far from the simply sacred creatures in ancient Egypt. The god Horus was often shown as a man with the head of the hunting bird called a Falcon. Falcons have fantastic eyesight, and equally they soar through the sky they can spot tiny animals on the ground. Kings are also meant to be farsighted and wise, and then Horus the Falcon god was closely associated with the Egyptian Pharaoh. The Pharaoh may even have been the god Horus in homo form, or so the ancient Egyptians believed.
I mentioned in an earlier episode how the Egyptians loved cats.
Cats kept families safe by killing snakes and rats. The true cat goddess was Bastet and every year the ancient Egyptians celebrated her with a huge political party. They sailed down the river Nile to her temple at Perbast singing and dancing and rocking the boats on the manner.
Herodotus tells us that if a home defenseless fire, people would save the cats before trying to save themselves. And if a household true cat died, the whole family would shave their eyebrows to prove their grief.
And if anyone killed a cat, they were guilty of murder and the penalty was death, which shows how much Ancient Egyptian respected cats.
But the manner, our word true cat comes from the Due north African word "quattah." But the ancient Egyptian word for cat was Mau because cats make a sound like MAU.
Dogs were besides important. The god Anubis who guarded the underworld had a dog's head. The caput of Anubis looks a trivial bit like a greyhound. There are besides dog breeds today called Basenji and Pharaoh hounds that come down to u.s. from Ancient Egypt.
Rich Egyptians sometimes kept Gazelles that were renowned for their grace and beauty. The Egyptian Queen Isiemkheb loved her pet gazelle so much, that when the deer died, she was mummified and placed with jewels inside an ornate box called a sarcophagus.
The god Sobek had the caput of a crocodile, and the priests of his temples kept sacred crocodiles and fed them on the most tasty cuts of meat and honey cakes.
And of course the mighty and mysterious Sphinx - often shown in giant statues - was a human being with the head of a lion.
For me, the animal gods are a large office of what makes ancient Egypt then fascinating, along with the mighty pyramids, the aboriginal mummies, the rich treasures, and the barges floating downwardly the river Nile. It actually was a civilisation like no other.
Source: https://www.storynory.com/herodotus-the-sacred-animals-of-ancient-egypt/
Posted by: craneacursent.blogspot.com
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