rubynye reblogged
Ancient Egyptian mythology: Gods and Goddesses.
rubynye reblogged
legend tells that Thoth, god of knowledge and magic, played cards with Khonsu, god of the moon, and won 5 extra days worth of moonlight. he gave them to the sky goddess Nut (who was forbidden from giving birth on any day of the then 360-day year), subsequently allowing her to produce Osiris, Isis, Horus, Geb, and Nepthys, all of them mighty deities
no one knows that Thoth was up to with the whole “leap year” thing. after all, there’s no way Nut could give birth to just 1/4th of a god. unless…..
no way!!!! this has become a CERTIFIED MEDJED POST!!!!!!!!!!
𓅓𓂝𓆓𓂧𓐦
TRUE MEDJ-HEADS REBLOG!!!!!!!!!!
#none of this is even true#the calendar we have today was formed by julius cezar and cezar augustus if i'm not mistaking#way after the egyptian religions were already well stablished#misinformation website#reblogging anyway tho#let's go medjed
a) it is true
b) this has nothing to do with what "calendar" anyone uses. a year was 365 (or 366) days before the romans and it continued to be 365/6 days afterwards. religion has no impact on the length of a year
c) egyptians months were all of equal length. given that 365 doesn't divide evenly, if they just kept going the farming calendar would get further and further out of sync
d) which naturally is what happened
e) because you see the egyptian calendar had 3 seasons each containing 4 months of 30 days. their "weeks" were actually decans and 10 days long. very important these stay in the same place. in order for the months to happen at the same time every year they'd have to account for the handful of extra days somehow.
e.2) they did not account for leap years. yes, the one day every 4 years does also slowly push the calendar out of alignment. during the ptolemaic period, ptolemy III tried to correct that by adding a 6th extra day every 4 years but Nobody Liked That
f) they became the "epagomenal" days, were considered not part of the actual proper year (hence, circumventing Ra being a dick and Nut being able to give birth. get rules-lawyered, bitch). they basically became the equivalent of a new year celebration. each day was the birthday of a different god (osiris, isis, seth, nephtys, horus) so a 5-day party situation.
g) however it was also regarded as a sort of "spiritually dangerous" time since it existed outside the Actual Proper Year (they literally took place between New Year's Eve (30 Wep Renpet) and New Year's Day (1 Thoth)). Pharaoh performed a ritual called Sḥtp Sḫmt (pacifying of sekhmet) to protect himself and Egypt, people wore protective charms written on linen around their neck, and carried torches. But generally it was a period of rest
This is one of my favorite stories of Thoth. He is such a damn trickster and he gets elaway with it because everyone is all like "her Der nerdy scholar". Don't believe it, not for a minute!
yeah literally he gets away with it because he's the only one who can fucking read
rubynye reblogged
rubynye reblogged
The story of the Distant Goddess is absolute proof that it’s a crime that Ancient Egyptian mythology hasn’t entered the popular conciousness in the same way as Greek stuff.
Short, super paraphrased version: Ra is sick of humanity being rebellious wee bastards, so he sends a goddess as an embodiment of his vengeance, usually Sekhmet in the form of a great fuckoff lion - first to the southern deserts to wipe out the followers of Set. She does so, and then for unspecified reasons, Ra decides maybe humanity is redeemable hey call off the murderlion. But being an embodiment of pure divine retribution, she isn’t really having it.
So Ra sends Thoth out in an effort to soothe the goddess before she arrives in the north and wipes out everything including the gods (she’s just that strong). He’s terrified, but he tries all sorts of cunning and wisdom and trickery and tells her moral tales and all that, but all he can do is delay her.
In the meantime, Ra’s priests of the north are hard at work. They brew thousands of barrels of beer, and mix pots and pots red dye. And when the goddess inevitably arrives, they mix it up and pour it into the reeds of the nile. Believing it to be the spilled blood of her enemies, she drinks it up proudly… And gets EXTREMELY drunk, calming down and transforming into Hathor, goddess of joy and love.
And once a year to celebrate this momentous occasion, Egyptians would get Absolutely Plastered.
I didn’t find details on the exact date, but some cross-googling suggests the festival occured around the start of the Nile flood season, which is in mid-July.
Anyone got a more precise date?
Well, the traditional beginning of the flood season varies from year to year based on the first rise of the star Sirius before sunrise, and also marks the beginning of the ancient Egyptian new year. The Festival of Drunkenness would be held about 20 days after that.
Sirius’ rise - which varies around the world based on longitude, but basing it on Egypt for consistency’s sake - happens on the 24th of July in 2018.
So if you want to get smashed on behalf of an angry cat, the 13th of August is the day to mark down.
Today’s the day fuckers, get smashed on behalf of a cat.
rubynye reblogged
Just a warm-up thing. Bastet, the ancient Egyptian cat goddess.
rubynye reblogged
What's the salad incident?
O-HOHOHOHOHOHO
THE SALAD INCIDENT.
Oh man, mythologies around the world all have their ownweird fucked-up stories, but this one? This is the one I tell friends for thesole purpose of weirding them out.
So Set is the god of chaos, the desert, and foreigners. Andone day, he kills and mutilates his bro Osiris, but Osiris’ wife Isis (thegoddess, not the Daesh, damn them) puts him back together, but can’t find hisdick, so she mAKES ONE. A GOLDEN ONE. And so she conceives and gives birth toHorus, god of the sky and kings.
Now Osiris’ throne was starting to look a little awkwardlyempty, so the question obviously was: who should be king? “Me!” said Set andHorus at the same time, followed by a long uncomfortable silence. Thus starteda bunch of trials and competitions between the two. At one point, Set eitherseduces or rapes Horus, but Horus captures Set’s semen in his hand because Set apparentlycan’t aim for shit.
So Horus, probably screaming internally, goes to his mom andis like, “Ma, look at what Uncle Set did,” and Isis screams and cUTS OFFHIS HAND AND THROWS IT A MARSH, because helping her son wipe the nasty off ofhis hand was clearly out of the question. Go big or go home, I guess. Who’sgoing to question Isis? Not me, no thank you.
Oh, and she jerks her son off afterwards. Can’t miss thatpart.
Obviously, Isis wants revenge on Set for trying to place hisseed inside her son, so she takes her son’s semen and hunts down Set’sabsolute, #1, ultimate favorite yum-yum food of all time: lettuce.
Can y'all see where this is going.
Yup.
Isis smears her son’s seed on Set’s precious lettuce. Andyes, Set eats it.
His tastebuds are as broken as his aim.
Later, Set and Horus stand before all the gods, and Set saysthat he should be the king, because he dominated Horus and Horus has his seedwithin him. Horus then steps up and says, “No, no, that isn’t true. It’s I who has dominated him.”
It should be noted at this point that nobody thought to ask,“What happened?” or “How did you do it?” or, most importantly,“Horus, where the fuck is your hand.”
So Thoth summons Set’s semen, and it answers from the marsh.Like it actually talked. Spoke. How? I don’t know, goddammit. But it answers.And while Set stands there, blinking confusedly, Thoth summons Horus’ semen,which answers from within Set.
Because Set ate the goddamn lettuce, extra dressing and all.
And while Set fumes, the semen emerges as a crown of somesort on his head, which Thoth then takes and places on his own head, because fuck,this is mythology—Egyptian mythology,I might add—and shit like this happens.
So there you have it. The Salad Incident. A great story tolet your friends know you read the strangest mythological tales.
(disclaimer: I am by no means a pro on Egyptian mythologies. If you want more stories with reliable accuracy, I strongly suggest asking @beautifultoastdream for more details)
beautifultoastdream
Yeah, you pretty much covered it. “Set can’t aim for shit” had me giggling, incidentally. Nicely done. <3
Though there’s one aspect of the story that gets sort of lost in the shuffle, which I feel obliged to bring to everyone’s attention: Thoth, the god of letters and all-around Cool Guy, can apparently talk to semen. And the semen answers back. People’s jizz will play Marco Polo with this guy.
Stuff like this is why I feel Thoth and Anubis should be buddies. Between them, they get ALL the jobs no one else wants. Anubis has to sit on his ass next to the slavering crocodile demon and help weigh the hearts, and Thoth has to act as celestial court reporter and God of Spunk-Speak.
Horus was also in the business of losing body parts, so I doubt the hand thing bugged him too much. One of his eyes got gouged out (by Set, natch) and became the moon. Egyptians also considered the Eye of Horus such a powerful symbol that they used slivers of it to represent fractions, which would be an incredibly ungainly way to do your math if we were talking about a culture that wrote ANYTHING in a not-ungainly way.
(Edited to insert the required-for-accuracy disclaimer: the fraction thing is now considered disproven. I still like it, though, because I’m an Egyptology nerd and it makes me laugh. And because it wouldn’t be nearly the craziest thing the ancient Egyptians did.)
(Also, our li’l Neenja is all grown up and scarring people with Egyptian mythology! *sniff* I’m so proud!)
“Tear of pride”
So beautiful.
rubynye reblogged
Anonymous asked:
Tell me about the domestic house cat.
Long ago in a kingdom by the Nile, a people cried out to their gods in anguish. A plague of rats, rats and mice and vermin of every shape, had devoured the grain and robbed the people of their dinners.
One god heard them, Bast, and tasted the meat and smoke of their offerings. She went up into the desert and found a pride of lions.
“Give unto me your smallest cub,” said the goddess, “that I may make an end of this plague.”
“Goddess,” said the lionesses, “surely you deserve the strongest and largest of our young for this divine mission.”
But Bast paid no heed, and took with her the weakling cub, so much smaller than her brothers and sisters.
“Blessed are thee, small daughter of the lionesses, above all others. Though you are small, you shall be brave. Once thought weak, you will be made strong, and entire kingdoms will sing songs of your greatness.”
And such is the wisdom of the gods, who make their greatest triumphs out of those who seem most unworthy. The small lion became a cat, with a goddesses blessing and a hunter’s heart, and soon the waters of the Nile ran red with the blood of the vermin.
For the smallest of lions is still a lion. For a small hunter is still a hunter. And the least among us are not to be underestimated.
